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i know i was just complaining about stylizing loop's body but i figured that out and moved on and it turns out the head is so much harder 😭 i'm very happy with canon loop head and post-bodycraft loop head but the in-between phase is kicking my ASS and i can't just half-ass it bc figuring out the in-between head is the ENTIRE POINT of this WHOLE PROJECT....
i think part of the problem might be that unlike with the body, i do have an extremely clear idea of what is happening with the head physically and how it would look irl, it's just. a very difficult thing to draw. so i keep rejecting ideas that look good bc they're not my actual headcanon, but then also rejecting attempts to faithfully depict the headcanon bc they don't look good. head in my hands
#i set the tablet down for the night on a sketch that looks good but#most of my other sketches have also looked good :/ then i line them and it's not right at all#sigh#it might be easier if i changed how i draw the canon head but. j don't want to i like it....#maybe just worry less abt being an in-between phase and more do something entirely unique?#and then theoretically there's phases between all three points#like using pink to blend yellow and purple instead of blending directly....#that's so much going on though 😭#idk hopefully that last sketch i did will work 😭😭#this has been a fun process tho#i don't usually iterate this much with anything except clothes#so it's cool to hammer away at a hard problem#and push myself to stylize in different ways#without feeling like i've ruined an entire illustration if the experiment fails#and i've figured out some cool techniques that might be fun to use in other places to give illustrations a particular vibe!#i'm just so invested in getting this head right tho that i'm like AHHHHHHH#😤😤😤#silverstarschat#ugh on third thought maybe the canon head rly is my issue#it looks cool but it's not rly faithfully depicting my headcanon is it#so ofc any attempt to draw smth sorta like it won't match my headcanons either#OH I JUSF HAD AN IDEA#FUCK#I WANNA TRY IT SO BAD BUT I ALREADY TOOK MY CONTACTS OUT#AHHH I GOTTA faLL ASLEEP SO I CAN WAKE UP AND DRAW IT!!!!#ooohhhhh this is gonna be so good#crossing my goddamn fingers it works out#!!!!!!!
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I’m pretty sure I’ve made a post about this before but I think I need some gifs to illustrate my point.
I’m something of a dog nerd. I don’t know a lot about breeds but I love diving into dog language and it’s a common misconception that a dog wagging its tail means it’s happy. That could not be further from the truth. A wagging tail just means it’s excited and that could mean happy, scared, curious or angry. A wagging tail is the dog asking you to pay attention to it. A dog that’s trying to hide never wags its tail.
First off, happy. A wagging tail combined with soft loose body language is a happy welcoming dog.
Stiff body means the dog is on guard and you should only approach with caution. It’s trying to determine if you’re a danger so if you approach you should avoid making eye contact and talk in a friendly high pithed voice. If the dog’s body remains stiff leave it be. If it lowers its head and starts wagging its tail more slowly and loosely that means it’s softening up to you.
Basically if it goes from acting like the dog on the right to the dog on the left you’re in the clear.
For understandable reasons I have trouble finding a gif of a truly scared dog but closed stiff body language with no snarling but a wagging tail means fear and you should only approach with caution because fear can quickly turn to anger.
If a dog looks away or try to avoid making eye contact it’s terrified and if it suddenly turns to look at you you’re probably in trouble.
And of course anger. We all know what that looks like but most people are so focused on the snarling teeth they don’t see the wagging tail. If you do don’t try to rationalize it. Listen to your fear. It’s not playing roughly. It’s fucking angry and you should absolutely not approach.
Btw, I don’t want to get into all the tiny micro expressions that dogs make but if you see a dog making this face it’s not smiling. It’s terrified. If it’s not accompanied by soft wiggly motions it’s a very very scared dog that is trying to appease you and though it’s not always the case it’s most likely a dog that’s used to getting hit or beaten.
These are broad guidelines but you should always approach a dog you don’t know with caution. They are individuals who doesn’t always follow set rules for how to behave but if you keep this in the back of your mind you’re far more prepared for interacting with dogs than just “tail wag means happy”.
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Our good friend Jonathan Harker is getting ready to leave for his business trip, Mina Murray is picking out a new journal, Lucy Westenra is charming a gaggle of smitten suitors, Abraham van Helsing is wrapping up his lectures, and Castle Dracula is prepping the guest room for a very long stay.
Which must mean that Dracula Season is here again!
‘Dracula Season’ being a catchall term for the voracious reading, memeing, writing, illustrating, analyzing, and general fun-having that’s ensued since Matt Kirkland’s project, Dracula Daily, caught on with us back in 2022. The Substack had already been running before then, but it sparked a conflagration as time went on and readers old and new to Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the actual novel, not Coppola’s fanfiction—devoured it in a way that scratched an itch none of us knew we had. Stoker wrote the book in epistolary fashion, clumping sections together as needed for the pacing without perfect adherence to chronological order. Matt went ahead and put all the events in order and proceeded to set up a lovely chain of emails that delivered entries on those correlating dates.
This style of organization and pacing turned out to not only make the virtual book club that much easier to engage with, but left space in-between to stew on the story and relate with the characters themselves. Every day of waiting in the book feels weightier when you have to pace and sweat and worry in tandem with poor Jonathan trapped in the castle or Lucy wasting away or Mina running out the clock before she loses the fight for her own humanity. And while we sat with the story or the lulls between Dracula Seasons, some of us found ourselves craving more of that ghastly gothic horror goodness to the point that we figured:
“Well. Why don’t I make something?”
And then we did! Tons of creative works have been churned out in the wake of Dracula Daily’s high. I figured that while we’ve still got a bit of time to wait for May 3rd, we should check out all this new stuff in the meantime. (Plus a handful of neat stuff that just clicks with the Dracula itch overall.)
So, in the interest of Dracula Season pregaming, let’s take a look at…
FICTION
Blood of My Blood – A recent addition to the Dracula Bad Ending AU pile, and definitely one of the most harrowing and addictive group-produced narratives I’ve ever come across, Blood of My Blood is the dramatically gothic currently-WIP work of @ibrithir-was-here and @animate-mush’s devious design. Give or take a heap of other fascinated folks (hello!) adding ideas to put more Horror into the Horrors that our cast has to face. The premise:
The Transylvanian climax went fatally sour and the Harkers were forced to shelter with Dracula himself, including their half-vampire son, Quincey. Cut to two decades later, and Quincey finds himself out in modern London, smitten with Lu, adopted daughter of Arthur and Jack, and diving into certain bloodstained old documents that detail the real history of how his parents came to live in the castle. Said revelations coming not a moment too soon, as a storm is coming for him straight from the Carpathians…
Dracula Daily Sketch Collection – An array of illustrations that captures every entry beat by beat, the Dracula Daily Sketch Collection by Georgia Cook, alias @georgiacooked was dished out over the course of the last Dracula Season. Some of the most fun character designs out there.
Fanfiction Spotlight: BlueCatWriter – With a whopping 99 works devoted to the novel Dracula (so far, the number may have gone up since I blinked), @bluecatwriter is one of the most prolific and talented fanfiction scribblers out there. Romances, nightmares, and overlaps between the two seem to crop up the most, give or take a crossover. Seems fitting that those blue paw prints have contributed to BoMB too.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk – An ongoing comic in which all your favorite characters from the Classics section get together and tackle some perils ranging from the mundane to the monstrous. Started by the amazing @mayhemchicken and posted on @lxgentlefolkcomic, this series is a love letter to beloved Victorian era lit, with a spotlight on the two couples leading the League. Namely, the Harkers, ala Dracula, and the Nortons, ala Sherlock Holmes,’ “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Mina and Irene are the driving investigative and steering forces here, and still deeply in love with their likewise-infatuated husbands, just like in their canons! What a concept! Alan.
Without spoiling the full character list, just know there are going to be a ton of familiar faces roaming around before you finish reading the first arc. Said arc having conveniently wrapped up just a few days ago! Give the comic and its bonus silliness a look if you’re in the mood for a new comfort-adventure epic.
Re: Dracula – Probably the most well-known and incredible thing to come out of the initial Dracula Daily wave. This podcast is a full audio drama that follows the same format as the Substack, with episodes coming out in time with the entries themselves. And it has an unfairly cool soundtrack. They have a Tumblr with @re-dracula, a site and a Patreon to check out before the series kicks up again on May 3rd. (Also, keep an eye out for their next work, an audio drama in the same style with Carmilla.)
The Soldier and the Solicitor – Another treat from @ibrithir-was-here, this one involves a bit of time travel trouble. Quincey Harker has stumbled out of World War I and into the same dark forest where his father once fled for his life…then runs into the man himself, on that same night. Jonathan Harker, young and starved and lost, who has no choice but to trust this stranger while the Weird Sisters are at his heels…despite said stranger having no shadow. It’s a tasty emotional trek, already complete on Tumblr, but now it’s turning into a Webtoon. While Ibrithir is juggling a number of other stories, she’ll be redrawing spruced up versions of the comic and adding a few new scenes as things unfold.
Substack Stack – You know what’s better than one emailed-out public domain book club? A mountain of them. Just. So, so many of them. You’ll see that a lot of these are finished, but some are still ticking along. Either way, they’re all great picks if you’re craving some more old school lit to fill the void between undead emails.
Frankenstein Weekly – Frankenstein
Jekyll and Hyde Weekly – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Voyage of the Nautilus – Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Letters from Watson – Sherlock Holmes
The Invisible Mail – The Invisible Man
Letters from Bunny – E.W. Hornung’s short stories of the eponymous Bunny and Raffles
Letters Regarding Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster short stories, including the novel, Right Ho, Jeeves
…
……
………
…The Beetle Weekly – The Beetle (NOTE: Do Not Read This.)
The Vampyres – A novella I finally wrenched through the gears of self-publication as of March this year. Starring a petite but powerful paranormal cast, The Vampyres, centers on an unscrupulous undead fellow who finds that the revenants of the world are being mowed down by an entity known only as ‘Quinn Morse.’ Between trying to save his neck and figure out where the shadowy bastard came from, the Vampyre in question crosses paths with a new paramour and handy human shield in the form of a grieving Good Samaritan. He’s even polite enough to invite the Vampyre into his home while he’s in dire straits! Surely this will end well. All the info is available here and a little author site is over here.
What Manner of Man – This is the one made for everyone who started out hoping there’d be a real love story with our good friend Jonathan Harker and the Count when he was at his most charismatic. Where that sea of wonders dried up into a mire of horror, What Manner of Man by @stjohnstarling keeps things firmly on the romantic tracks. This Substack stars the letter-writing priest Father Victor E. Ardelian as he finds himself meeting with one enigmatic Lord Alistair Vane. It isn’t long before interest turns into intrigue and intrigue into undead intimacies.
The entire novel has been completed—along with multiple epilogues in the author’s Patreon, allowing readers to choose for themselves just how the uncanny romance plays out in the end—and the Substack now has a number of other gothic goodies piling up in the meantime.
NONFICTION
Dracula Daily: A Unique Reading Experience: This one comes courtesy of @realwomenofgaming. It’s a short and sweet piece that amounts to a fun snapshot of the entire Dracula Daily ride. A cozy couple-minute read.
‘Dracula Daily’ is the One Substack You Need a Subscription To: Features my favorite Matt Kirkland interview. @mattkirkland, if you’re still floating around on here, thank you for dispatching our vampire newsletter again this year.
Dracula Daily is Tumblr’s hottest new book club: Alright, the ‘new’ part is worn out by now, but this one is still a delightful article to swing back around to. Two years on, this Polygon piece is a time capsule of those early months when people outside our bookworm bubble realized we were all happily receiving letters from our favorite classic gothic horror blorbos.
“How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” – Princess Weekes, if you ever read this, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am sending oceans of love and millions of rewatches to your video essay. If you haven’t seen it yet, “How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” is one of the most refreshing and well-made breakdowns of both the title subject and numerous other issues that have proliferated in the public view of Dracula’s cast and plot as adaptations endlessly warp or outright bastardize the actual novel. An incredibly cathartic watch.
Literary play gone viral: delight, intertextuality, and challenges to normative interpretations through the digital serialization of Dracula: A mouthful of a title for an even more elaborate article about the Dracula Daily phenomenon. This one is a full-on study that analyzes just what happened within the big bloodsucker book club surge and how its ‘wandering reading practices’ enriched the experience for participants.
“The Undying Undead: An analysis of the Dracula Daily community for a theory of online community formation and interaction” – We have a thesis on here! Look at that! @sirangelothebestest’s MA thesis used our vampiric book club as the bones for a massive brick of an academic piece that definitely deserves a look.
…And I think I’ll go ahead and cap things here.
This isn’t everything I got recommended, but if I had squashed all of it in here, I think folks’ eyes would start to fall out of their head. I hope you can find something cool to comb through here. Or, if there’s something great I overlooked, tack it onto the list! We’ve got just two weeks to go until we’re off with Mr. Harker. Let’s enjoy our respite before those castle doors close behind us.
#time for Dracula Season pre-gaming :3#thank you to everyone who sent in their suggestions!#dracula#dracula daily#re: dracula
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Creator Spotlight: @jdebbiel
Deb JJ Lee is a non-binary Korean artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They have appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, NPR, Google, Radiolab, and more. Their award-winning graphic memoir, IN LIMBO, about mental illness and difficult relationships with trauma, released in March 2023 from First Second.
Below is our interview with Deb!
Have you ever had an art block? If so, how did you overcome it?
That implies I am over my art block, but I’m still in it! I think about Kiki’s Delivery Service a lot and how she had to stop doing a thing, and that you can’t really force it, and you have to let it come back to you. It’s a pretty humbling moment, realizing there is more to life than just drawing. I’ve been trying to consume other content like reading or watching movies—anything that is not drawing-related—and to trust that it will come back to me. I think not being afraid to do the small pieces before committing to the big pieces is helpful. Because big pieces are what I am known for, I dig myself into a deeper hole, thinking that each piece has to be bigger than the last one. So yeah! Relaxing and doing the small things before overcommitting to a big piece is the best way to go about it for me.
Which 3 famous artists (dead or alive) would you invite to your dinner party?
I feel like these are all artists that I have second-degree connections with! Jillian Tamaki, Victo Ngai, and Tillie Walden would be my picks!
What are your file name conventions?
…What file name conventions? I mean, I don’t have specific file name conventions, but I actually have a public Google Drive archive! But I usually put “djjl_whatever-the-title-is_final,” and I would always know it’s the final and legit version.
What is a recent creative project that you are proud of?
I did an illustration for the whiskey brand Johnnie Walker. It’s so wild because I only had four days to finish it, and it usually takes me a week and a half if I rush. And honestly, it’s probably one of my best pieces from this year, which is funny. It was for the Mid-Autumn festival, so I made it as Korean as possible.
How has technology changed the way you approach your work?
I only use my iPad to draw everything now, and if I want to pretend that I have a steady workstation, I’ll use my Cintiq. I still am not as comfortable on the Cintiq as I am on Procreate, but it’s still pretty solid and nice. That’s the good part about technology. The bad part about technology is how AI art has been messing things up for me. I’m currently in a lawsuit about AI art as a class rep. Some of my stuff got turned into AI art late last year, so I have to give a deposition at some point.
What is a convention experience that has stuck with you?
Honestly, they’re all good! I feel like Lightbox Expo has been really nice because it’s truly been a convention for artists. I feel like that’s where most of my audience is, and they’re all around because their purpose is to be better at art. That’s where a lot of original artists do well because they’re getting art they’re inspired by, not so much fanart. I like the Lightbox Expo because it encompasses the pure love of art very well.
Top tips on setting up an Artist Alley booth?
Use a Y axis, not just your X axis! Take advantage of it! Branding is also something to think about. It is definitely something I’m getting better at. Having an assistant is also very important. I’ve also heard that 8.5x11 to 12x18 inches is usually a good size for prints, but I also provide postcard-sized prints because sometimes people don’t want to commit to a larger size.
Who on Tumblr inspires you and why?
You know this is so funny. I’ve been following @alicexz for over a decade on Tumblr and other platforms. I’ve followed her work since high school, and we’ve only recently become peers. I found her, and we met for the first time in real life, and she recognized me. And then I found all my drawings from when I was in my Alice phase, back in high school, and I was like, “Yo, this is when I was trying to be you so badly!” and she was cracking up and was like “Wow, this is so good!” It was such a sweet moment. I wanted to take a picture of her holding my drawing up. It’s really nice because now we’re peers.
Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing, Deb! Be sure to check out their Tumblr blog over at @jdebbiel.
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Since people seem to really like my vision requirements illustrations, I figured I could elaborate on my theories/headcanons!
(EDIT: Since people keep mentioning it in the tags of the illust. post, so just to be clear, I am well aware Archons don't hand out visions personally😅 it IS however heavily implied they have a subconcious effect on who gets one, even if they have no active say. It's why no electro visions where granted during Inazumas vision hunt decree, for example)
Anemo: Purpose.
Anemo users have been unsure or hesitant about how to live their lives or what to do at some point, but all ended up finding something to strive for. Venti found purpose in rebuilding Mondstadt after Decarabian fell, to make the nation a place that the nameless bard would've loved to live in.
Jean found purpose as the Dandelion Knight, Xiao found purpose in serving Morax, Wanderer found purpose in freedom etc. Everyone has something they find fullfilment in.
Geo: Determination.
Geo users have a set path and/or ideal they live by, something they will not budge on no matter what. Zhongli is solid on his contracts, the written word is law and cannot be allowed to go broken, regardless of circumstances. His path is one of mutual agreement and fairness, to ensure everyone and everything gets their due.
Ningguang walks the path of Liyue's pillar, Noelle walks the path of self-improvement, Itto walk the path of acceptance etc. They are determined in their ways and will not bend them.
Electro: Protection.
Electro users all have something/someone they hold dear, and will do anything to ensure it's safety and longevity. Ei loved her sister more than anything else, and would've done anything to keep her safe and alive. Her actions in Inazuma was her terribly misguided way of "protecting" it from erosion, to keep the nation her sister loved so much in prosperity in her place.
Sara wants to protect her people, Keqing wants to protect Liyue's prosperity, Fischl wants to protect her imagination and fantasies etc. They hold things close to their heart and will do anything to protect it.
Dendro: Understanding.
Dendro users are seekers of knowledge and wisdom, wishing to understand the world around them and all that lives in it. Nahida wants to understand people, for wisdom means nothing when it can't be put to practice. People aren't something that can easily be comprehended by textbook knowledge, they must be observed extensively first-hand to even begin to understand.
Baizhu wants to understand the secrets of immortality, Kirara wants to understand human society, Collei wants to understand how to help others etc. They earnestly search for ways to expand their world.
Hydro: Duty.
Hydro users tend to have a strong sense of responsibility and personal principles they live by. We don't know enough about Furina to say for sure what her deal is right now, but I speculate her duty is closely connected to the Heavenly Principles, and that she views herself as Celestia's "executioner" so to speak.
Ayato's duty is to the yashiro commision, Candace's duty is to the desert-dwellers, Childe's duty is to the Tsaritsa etc. They have solid loyalties and set principles they work by.
Pyro: Passion.
Pyro users are full of love and passion for what they do, dedicating themselves whole-heartedly to their chosen field. We know very little about Murata, so it's hard to say what she's like. As the God of War I assume she has a passion for battle? Who knows.
Yoimiya is passionate about fireworks, Bennett is passionate about adventuring, Diluc is passionate about defending Mondstadt etc. They have a profound love of life and what is in it.
Cryo: Contradiction.
Cryo users are at odds with themselves, rife with inner conflicts and clashing desires. The Tsaritsa is described as an archon with no love for her people, and has been noted to have grown cold post-cataclysm. Her harbingers, most notably Childe, say otherwise, though. She's not unloving, but she is disillusioned and vengeful. Her hatred for Teyvat and Celestia is at odds with her love of her people.
Rosaria is conflicted with her lifestyle(s), Ayaka is conflicted with her status and wants, Kaeya is conflicted with his loyalties etc. They are torn by irreconcilable opposites.
#some extra things of note: the requirements can range from being very literal to more abstract in characters views#for example: hydro users like ayato & kokomi have direct duties as leaders#whereas ones like nilou & mona are more personal. some are also more about 'principles' than 'duty' (like barbara & xingqiu)#also i feel the need to clarify that dilucs passion is very specifically the ACT of defending mond#not necessarily the lasting protection of it(tho he does ofc care about that too)#venti#barbatos#zhongli#morax#rex lapis#raiden shogun#raiden ei#beelzebul#nahida#kusanali#buer#furina#focalors#murata#the tsaritsa#genshin impact#xander rambles#only tagging the archons bc i ran out of tags :P
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Literary Illusions
“It’s ironic,” Palpatine said, shaking his head. “He could save others from death, but not himself.”
Anakin frowned.
“And this is something the Jedi wouldn’t have told me?” he asked.
“Of course not,” Palpatine replied. “Is it a story you’ve heard?”
“Well, yes,” Anakin said. “Just now, from you. But not before then… and that surprises me, Chancellor.”
Palpatine shrugged. “I think you’ll find, Anakin, that the Jedi have not been telling you everything.”
“Maybe not, but… honestly, that sounds like exactly the kind of thing they’d tell me,” Anakin said.
Palpatine frowned.
“...what?” he asked.
“You know,” Anakin said. “Some Sith Lord works out how to bring people back to life from the dead, but his apprentice kills him and doesn’t bring him back to life because the Sith are inherently self destructive. If the two of them had worked together and been able to trust one another, they’d have been immortal.”
He shrugged. “It’s a good illustration of the inherently self destructive nature of the Dark Side, and it’s the dichotomy of how the Dark Side leads you to seek power in order to achieve goals that you then discard as irrelevant, because they’re not directly related to gaining power… hold on a second.”
Palpatine was a little distracted by trying to avoid mentally kicking himself, so it took him somewhat more than a second to notice what Anakin was doing.
“...Anakin?” he said. “Are you getting your comlink out?”
“Yeah,” Anakin replied. “Going to text Obi-Wan, ask him what he thinks of the story. Maybe there’s some kind of detail I missed which makes it less of a good illustration of the different worldviews and mindsets of the Jedi and the Sith.”
The Knight shrugged, his thumbs tapping away at his comlink. “He probably knows it, he knows all of the old stories.”
Palpatine blinked several times.
“...don’t,” he said, then very discreetly scrambled for a reason why. “It’s the middle of a performance. We don’t want to interrupt them.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s on silent,” Anakin replied, with a shrug. “Or vibrate. Did I put it on vibrate… hang on, Chancellor, I’ll make sure it’s on silent…”
He turned the comlink over, then a loud bwing sounded.
“Oh, right, I forgot to set it to do not disturb mode,” Anakin said. “Hang on… uh… yeah, there we go, I forgot I added all these custom modes. I’ve been missing a lot of sleep lately.”
“Perhaps-” Palpatine began, but Anakin spoke over him.
“Huh,” he said. “He says he’s never heard of it either. Wants to know where I heard about it, it looks like he’s really interested… or maybe he’s trying to tell me about a death stick vendor, he’s terrible with multiglyphs and he thinks he’s good at them.”
Anakin glanced at the Chancellor, hoping for some solidarity, then visibly noticed that the Chancellor was several decades older than him and abandoned that.
“Is there a book I can get the whole story from?” he asked, instead. “Obi-Wan is better at nuances, like I say.”
“That is not the point,” Palpatine said, trying not to get visibly angry. “The point is that there is a way to save your loved ones!”
“Maybe there used to be, but not any more,” Anakin shrugged. “Like you said, this was a Sith thing and the Sith are all dead. Well, unless General Grievous is a Sith who knows how to heal people, but I doubt it given how much he got hurt, and I’m not sure Dooku knew it either… hey, if this story needs to be publicized more then maybe we could have them do a play of that instead?”
Palpatine blinked several times, as he tried to keep up with a Jedi with possible undiagnosed ADHD and found himself discovering a lack of talent for podracing.
“What?” he asked.
“You know, a play,” Anakin explained. “Dramatic betrayals, lost loved ones, it would probably do numbers. It’d be better than this, anyway.”
He waved his hand at the ongoing performance of Squid Lake.
“...what is wrong with Squid Lake?” Palpatine said, before reflecting that that had really been a stupid question for him to ask and that he should have asked a much better one.
“Well, uh,” Anakin began, looking a bit abashed. “Actually now I say it out loud this might be really culturally insensitive of me, but to me this play might as well be eighty minutes of people boasting about having enough water to swim in.”
“It’s a ballet,” Palpatine told him, now completely having lost control of the conversation.
“It’s just a less scary version of Sarlacc Pit,” Anakin went on. “Someone tried to drown me in a lake once, because they thought I couldn’t swim, but floating on sand is much harder, you barely have to do anything to escape a lake. You just float.”
Very belatedly, Anakin caught sight of Palpatine’s look of total befuddlement, and shrugged.
“Watto was a lot of things,” he said. “But he had culture.”
Palpatine’s hands twitched, as he very seriously considered the idea of abandoning literal centuries of Sith planning and decades of personal political advancement in favour of stabbing Anakin somewhere it would hurt.
It was extraordinarily tempting.
“...hold on,” Anakin said, slowly. “I guess… the thing I’d like most at the moment is for… and that means… this is literally one of those times when I could fall to the Dark Side because of it, like Darth Plagueis.”
He bestowed a grateful smile on Palpatine. “Thanks, Chancellor! I need to make a call, I guess the ballet won’t mind.”
Palpatine was so thrown by the swerve that he couldn’t think of a way to stop Anakin in the few seconds he had.
“Love?” Anakin said, into his commlink. “I… think we need to come clean, because otherwise I’ll fall to the Dark Side.”
Palpatine’s eye twitched.
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So. The Time of Fever. The story is pretty simple, but it was elevated by some choice cinematography and music... sooooo let me take two seconds to gush about the two kissing scenes.
Both scenes are shot to convey something very specific (how special the characters are to each other) and although not much is said, a lot is implied. I don't know how intentional it was, but they also end up almost a perfect "reverse" of each other.
The bare bones of the two scenes are as follows:
Kissing Scene 1: infirmary (public setting, neutral white, Dong-hee takes care of Ho-tae's wound)
tension, uncertainty/confusion, complicated feelings (shaky cam, tense dialogue)
something sets it in motion ("hyung")
music starts
slow and steady - dreamlike atmosphere (tension released)
outside interruption, music stops - back to reality, tension back up
Kissing Scene 2: bedroom/house (private setting, heavy color-coded, ends in pain for both of them)
comforting, easy-going, chill vibe (steady cam, silent book reading)
something sets it in motion (hand feeding)
no music
shakiness, quick movements - raw, not romanticized (tension goes way up)
minimal music - self-interruption - got a lil too real, tension goes down
If you watch them back to back it's even more obvious, I love iiiiiit. The contrast of it all!! YES. Sorry for my ugly GIFs, I just wanna illustrate my points lol
In the first scene, Dong-hee and Ho-tae let down their guard and enter a bubble of peacefulness, before it bursts. The scene starts off with quick, nervous dialogue, no music. The shots go from tight to even tighter, and the camera shakes a lot, reflecting the ambient tension.
The music, gentle and hopeful, starts as soon as both of them "fold". Ho-tae agrees to use the hyung honorific for the first time since ep1, and Dong-hee gently goes in for the kiss. The scene is drenched in white, the camera movements slow, to the point it's hard to notice whether they themselves are moving slowly or if there's a subtle slow-mo effect applied. It's unhurried, like they have all the time in the world.
The music swells into something very airy and dreamy as soon as their lips touch; the camera steadies, the shakiness fades—the surroundings too. Even when the camera pulls back a little, the framing is minimal—you can't even distinguish where they are anymore (in a school infirmary, behind a curtain, against a window). The only thing in focus is their faces, the rest is slightly blurry or washed out. It's not just visually that things fade out, there's also barely any background noise: no ruffle of their clothes, no school chatter, no bird chirping. it's just them, floating on a cloud, the heaviness of the moment gone, the initial anxiety soothed.
The moment, the music, the kiss—everything is interrupted abruptly by an outside element: the school bell. The bubble pops, like a dream they both wake up from—signaling the end of recess, back to harsh reality. Their eyes open, they freeze, and just like that, the camera shakes are immediately back.
The scene unfolds smoothly and clearly: it takes the characters from a moment of tension, to sweet release, steadiness, and calmness—it starts from something complicated and changes to something pure and easy, like a knot being unraveled—and then snaps them back to reality.
The contrast with the second kissing scene, happening in the same episode (!) is nothing but art tbh. Like I said, it looks like the reverse of that first scene, but it unfolds the same way. This time, it starts off quiet and gets thick with tension.
First, they're at home, not in a public space. It's not day-time. They're lying down. The private, safe atmosphere of the scene is reinforced by the warm colors. It's late autumn, it's getting cold. They set up a space-heater (it casts a reddish brown hue over them), place a comfy (red) carpet on the floor to keep the heat in and to laze around on. The camera is steady, the framing comfortable, no shakiness.
They're still facing each other, one is on his back, looking up to his book, the other one is on his stomach, looking down as his own. Everything conveys a cosy, relaxed but intimate vibe, without any agitation. Ho-tae is snacking absentmindedly on some seasonal fruit (clementine/mandarin). There's no talking. There's also absolutely no music. You hear everything, from the distant creaking of the house, to the pages rubbing together, to the crickets outside.
Then, comes what sets the scene into motion: Ho-tae feeds Dong-hee some fruit. Dong-hee takes it into his mouth easily. The mood switches. A lot of close-ups, and the camera movements become shakier, more chaotic: tension goes from 0 to 100. Where there was a lightness, softness to that first kissing scene, it's pretty much the complete opposite here. It's more intense, but there's a sort of ache, an urgency to it that was completely absent in the first scene. The breathing gets heavier, louder, no music to cut through the reality of it. It's been a while since I've seen such an erotic scene, without it being explicit.
When it does come, the music kicks in very slowly, just a few low notes of piano, not enough to cover the noises (the kisses, the breathing), the initial warmth of the scene becomes almost stifling. And just a few seconds later, everything abruptly stops once again, but this time, Dong-hee himself is the one putting an end to it. The camera very slowly tones down the shakiness, back to steady.
In this scene, the characters' comfort and peace crumble, the kiss doesn't appease, it lights a fire. Gets them inflamed and exposed. Takes them from innocence and easiness to desire and hurt, from sanity to fever. The hazy, nice moment catches fire and burns up too fast. Like Ho-tae's fingers twisting knots into Dong-hee's sweater, the feelings gets tangled up, and both end up getting hurt.
The first kissing scene was the beginnings of some clarity, they both let go of what holds them down, while that second scene is charged with angst, it weighs heavily on them. The parallel was just so good I needed to get this out.
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brownie bonding — Nanami Kento
summary: kento makes most of his quality time with his baby daughter.
warnings: pure fluff, dad!nanami, cooking.
wc: 800.
A warming melody of jazz echoes on the portable radio in the kitchen, filling the bonding moment perfectly. Nanami is just finishishing tying a cook’s apron around his waist, feeling a bit awkward to wear such a flowery print, but it was a request from his baby daughter. There’s no way he would refuse her.
“You look pretty, daddy!” His sunshine compliments him, sitting in the high chair at the counter with her head covered by her tiny cook’s hat. She isn’t a kid that plays around: if she’s going to cook, she’ll wear the proper clothes for it.
Six years old, acting that way already. Imagine when she’s sixteen.
He can’t help but send her a fondly smile. One of the good things about having a kid is that you will always receive an honest answer from them. His little girl it’s saying he looks pretty, so maybe flower prints actually suit him.
He moves his focus to the counter, checking the ingredients on display: sugar, butter, wheat flour, powdered chocolate, milk, eggs, chocolate chips. The mixer is set, the oven is heating up, and they have everything they need to start the day’s recipe:
Brownies
You’re on your way home from a business trip today, and they both came up with the idea of surprising you with some brownies. In addition to welcoming you home with a delicious gift, Kento also takes this opportunity to spend more quality time with his daughter. She’s growing up so fast that he’s been feeling guilty for missing some moments of her life because of work. He wants to make sure that as long as he has time, he’ll make the most of it alongside her.
“Alright sweetheart, what’s the first step?” He claps his hands, giving her the task of leading and guiding them through the recipe. She bows to read the children’s cookbook she got for her birthday last year, and points her little index to the first illustrated step.
“We need to mix eggs with sugar.” She says, cautiously taking the mixer’s bowl and placing it in front of them. “Can I put them in, daddy?”
“You can, but you need to be careful with the eggs. Break this way.” He demonstrates to her, tapping the tip of the fork against the eggshell until it breaks a small part. He then opens it halfway, and pours the yolk and whites into the bowl. “Your turn now.”
Eri picks up another egg, and tries to imitate exactly what her father did, but ends up hitting the shell too hard, causing the egg to break right on the table and smear the wood with white and yolk. The dirt definitely doesn’t please her father, but he isn’t going to make a big deal of it. These things happen, even to adults, and he doesn’t want to make his daughter feel guilty about something like that. So when she looks at him with those fearful little eyes waiting for a scold, he starts to chuckle at the situation, making her visibly relax as the moment passes by.
They continue with the recipe, now with Nanami directly helping her put the ingredients into the bowl, and his heart warmed to see his daughter having fun cooking, her mini apron’s all dirty from chocolate. “Now we have to add the flour.” He takes the bag from the counter, and gives it to her. “Think you can do it, sweeheart?”
She nods eagerly, and starts pouring flour into the meter. A small amount of flour escapes, but she manages most part of the process, placing the measured flour into the bowl. “I did it!” She announces as soon as she’s done, a huge one missing tooth grin on her face.
Nanami smiles at his daughter’s delight, caressing the top of her head. “Yes sweetheart, you did it.” He presses the ‘on’ button on the mixer, and it starts to churn all the mixture into the bowl. The two watch together the mixture incorporate and become a smooth brown dough, which soon after was put on a platter to bake in the oven.
Since the brownie would take about forty minutes to bake, Nanami thought it would be a good time to give his sunshine a bath and get her ready before the sweet is done.
But his daughter has other plans in mind.
“Daddy, you have flour on your face.” She points in the direction, making him run his hand over his whole cheek. “No, missed.”
“Where’s it?” he asked, leaning his face close to let her clean it for him.
She puts one of her flour-covered hands to his nose, laughing when she sees the art she’s made on her father’s skin. ��There.”
His first reaction is deadpan, not believing he fell for a six-year-old child’s trick. But he’s definitely not a quitter: as soon as she gets occupied laughing at his face, he places his hands on her sides and holds her, giving her a mischievous smile. “So this is how you want to play, huh? Very well, young lady… You shall be defeated.” He starts tickling her body, making her squirm and laugh even more. He releases her eventually, and the two soon start a big flour fight around the room, running and throwing flour everywhere.
Not only they’ll give you a brownie tray, but also a pretty messy kitchen to deal with afterwards. But you can’t deny that it’s worth the price.
© asunflowerana 2024 — all rights reserved.
#nanami as dad is too precious pls#w.jjk#jjk x reader#jjk#jujustu kaisen#jujustsu kaisen x reader#nanami x reader#nanami kento#nanami kento x reader#jjk nanami#nanami fluff#nanami x you#nanami x y/n#kento x reader#kento x you#jjk x you#jjk fanfic#nanami dad#domestic fluff
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Someone mentioned that main characters can get overdeveloped. I'm familiar with characters being underdeveloped, but how do you tell if they are overdeveloped?
5 Signs Your Character is Overdeveloped
#1 - You spend time illustrating personality traits that aren't important to the story. Your character's personality traits should have some bearing on how they move through the story. Don't take the time to illustrate your character's stubbornness if being stubborn won't have some impact on the story.
#2 - You excessively describe their physical appearance and what they're wearing. While it's a good idea to give the reader a sense of what the character looks like and to describe what they're wearing when it shows something important about the character, world, or situation, the reader doesn't need an in-depth physical description--or even reminders--every time the character appears on the page.
#3 - You spend a lot of time illustrating their interactions and relationships with minor characters even though they have no bearing on the story. We like our characters to feel real and three-dimensional, which means giving the reader a sense of who they are, what their normal life is like, and who is important to them. However, we don't want to spend a lot of time on characters/relationships that don't really do anything for the story. For example, it's nice that your character has a good relationship with their elderly neighbor, but if the relationship isn't necessary to show us who the character is, set up or execute a plot point, or fulfill a thematic/symbolic role, it probably shouldn't be there.
#4 - Your character is a "jack of all trades." It's great for your character to have hobbies, skills, and experience in various things, but we don't want our characters to look like a walking, talking, padded resume. For the most part, any hobby, skill, or experience highlighted should play an important role in the story. If being proficient at roller skating doesn't tell us something about the character we can't learn another way, allow for the setup or execution of a plot point, or fulfill a thematic/symbolic role, it's probably not important to highlight that hobby, skill, or experience--or any other that doesn't contribute to the story.
#5 - You spend a lot of time on unnecessary backstory - Backstory plays an important role in helping us to understand who the character is, how they got to where they are in life, what things led up to their internal conflict and emotional wound/s, etc. However, we don't want to spend time on things that aren't ultimately important to the story in some way. For example, there's no point in flashing back to your character's week at surfing camp if nothing happened that week that is important to who they are or anything else that happens in the story.
A good rule of thumb for really any detail in a story is to ask yourself, "What is lost if I remove this detail?" If the answer is "nothing," you can probably go ahead and remove it. :)
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DRDT CH2 PT2: Full Analysis
While CH2 Part 2 was releasing, I chose to make liveblog-reaction posts to the episodes to record my immediate thoughts for posterity, but that meant that actual, coherent analysis was pushed to the side in favor of me freaking out over… everything going on. But goddamn; even accounting for recency bias, this might just be my favorite trial of any DR style killing game I’ve ever seen (though admittedly I'm working with a small sample size). So I felt it merited a bit more… cohesive analysis. That’s what this post is!
WARNING: This post is around 28k words long. Do not click "read more" unless you're ready for lag, and make sure to take breaks while reading if needed.
Spoilers for DRDT CH2. CW: Murder, suicide, hanging, execution, gun violence, self-harm, blood, stabbing (fork).
(Btw you can find my immediate reactions in my post masterlist. Not linking each individually here because I hit Tumblr's 100 link limit. I know, I know)
How do I even structure this? I guess I’ll start with the actual case itself, then go character by character because WOW.
Also, I hope you forgive that I can't put images for every referenced piece of dialogue (Tumblr 30 image limit when I catch you...), so I'll save them for when they're necessary and instead add links to the referenced quote in the episode.
The Case
Although I’ve made many posts talking about this damn thing, I don’t think I’ve ever expressed just how cool the actual mystery is. The evidence is all there from the beginning bar the note and alibis, introduced in a way that doesn’t make the method obvious, but that still allowed the audience to figure out the main aspects without much issue. Everything follows logically, and while there’s a few things that ended up being less important than some expected (that glove will haunt the fandom forever I fear), everything got explained in what I consider to be a pretty satisfactory way. It wasn’t obscenely complex or crazy, but I consider the method to be just right for a chapter 2 case.
Oh and the Nico case was cool too, even if half the shit in that crime scene will haunt me forever. Why were there two weights off to the side-? not important.
If there’s one critique I can give the actual discussion of the case (and this is legitimately the only real critique I have of this entire set of episodes), I’d argue that the way the method is presented is… weird. Like, I get why, DRDT is clearly more focused on character conflict than the murder mystery aspect, but there were still a lot of moments where it felt like Teruko’s thought process wasn’t explored properly, to the point where it sometimes felt like Teruko just… magically got the answers whispered to her by the ghost of Kirigiri.
As an example, take the ball of clothes over the rafters. Ace mentions the issue of getting the rope up there, and Teruko immediately jumps to the right conclusion of the seemingly completely unrelated ball of clothes.
To illustrate why this feels weird, let me tell you what my thought process was when I came up with the theory (because again, the evidence was laid out well enough that I did manage to call this, even if I got a fair bit of other stuff wrong). Obviously it's not the only admissible thought process, but it's a good example to see how I feel the presentation of evidence should have been handled.
We know Arei was hung from high up (Veronika’s account) -> We can confirm something happened on the rafters because the lights are broken -> Brainstorming how that could have happened (screening room connection? Secret ladder?) -> Perhaps something was thrown up there with the rope attached -> Ball of clothes.
In the series, however, we get:
Arei was probably hung from high (Veronika’s account) -> Discussion continues, literally the entirety of Nico's situation gets explained -> Ace brings up the issue for the first time like three years later-> Teruko immediately points to the ball of clothes -> The lights are only mentioned after.
You get what I'm saying? The progression doesn't feel as natural, because we immediately jump to the conclusion without discussing the evidence that leads to it. This also happens with things like the pulley method, where Teruko explains everything before bringing up the tape on the spinny thing, which is the only thing implicating said spinny thing in the method. And I feel like the reason quite a few people felt there should be more to the case is because the evidence wasn't presented properly.
That said, this is an extremely minor point. Again, DRDT is more focused on character drama than murder mystery, so I don’t particularly mind if I can nitpick a few things in the writing surrounding the mystery solving.
And oh boy, was there character drama this trial! Thank the gods I’m only covering Part 2, I think I’d die if I tried to talk about the entire trial as a whole.
Character Analysis
I’ll go in order, starting with the characters I feel had the least prominence, and making my way to the ones who really stole the spotlight this part.
Mai Akasaki
No content lol. Though this is probably a good time to mention that, in this post, I'll mostly ignore theorizing related stuff and focus more on straight up character analysis, even if the two sometimes intersect. Game Theory-like speculation will mostly be saved for dedicated posts :p
Xander Matthews
He got mentioned, but he’ll come up in David’s section so. Skipping him.
Min Jeung
Well, there were a few references. Such as:
Min: I'll fix your mistake! - Teruko: But I'll fix my mistake.
Something something, David-Xander vs Teruko-Min parallels, etc. And also:
I like the visual symbolism that the images are effectively flipped (Teruko on the left-Teruko on the right and hugger on the right-hugger on the left, Teruko facing the camera-Teruko facing away), because the situations are inverted. In Min’s, the culprit hugs Teruko after she dooms them to their fate, and in Eden’s, a non-culprit hugs Teruko as she starts defending them. I did notice on first watch, but didn’t say anything because at the time it was still possible Eden was the culprit. Alas, the symbolism is consistent!
There's only one last thing to mention about Min. One tiny, itsy bitsy detail that probably has no lore relevance whatsoever.
MonoTV [2-16]: Now loading the default XF-Ture Tech personality drivers.
Min [BE1]: But one day, we were visited by the founder of that big company, XF-Ture Tech. He told my parents that he would sponsor me and pay for all of our expenses.
Oh yeah, MonoTV was created by the same company that sponsored Min as the Ultimate Student! Hey, what the fuck?
We'll get into it more later in the (I cannot believe I'm about to say this) MonoTV section (or rather the post linked to in said section), but MonoTV seems to have been created specifically for the killing game. This means there's a very real chance XF-Ture Tech is behind all this. That paints the sponsorship of Min as a strikingly shady thing (well, more than it already was), to the point there's a very real chance Min is straight up connected to the origins of the killing game, if not outright the mastermind. We'll have to see how this plays out later, since right now, we're still lacking a lot of critical context.
But hey! We might get more Min content in the future! I, for one, am very, very excited.
Charles Cuevas
Not too much character insight on this one, but he got a couple of cool moments. As always, funny, bounces well off Whit, very helpful in the trial, weirdly knowledgeable about jockeying (or maybe he just, like, thought about it, it’s not like most of what he says aren’t conclusions anyone could arrive at by simply knowing what horse racing is), and-
Charles [2-15]: I'm the only person reasonable enough to make that sort of judgement call. Everyone else who does so is being biased to the point of idiocy.
-it’s nice to see his pridefulness didn’t just go away after CH1! He’s neat :)
J Rosales/Moreno
Half of her dialogue this part is just her talking about how murder is bad. It’s fine, it’s just odd.
I guess if you want someone to point out murder’s bad, J’s one of the only real options, isn’t she? You need a confrontational character (so no Eden or Rose or Whit), who wouldn’t be a hypocrite (this eliminates Nico, Ace and Levi, arguably Hu since she defends Nico), who is mentally stable enough for their opinion to be held in high regard (this eliminates Arturo, David and Veronika, alongside half the cast), who is willing to derail the trial to talk morality (eliminating Charles and arguably Teruko), and who isn’t dead or missing (like Xander, Arei, Mai or Min).
Wait that’s the whole cast. Holy shit she actually is the only one that makes sense to be murder bashing how is this even possible.
…Regardless, you could still argue that you don’t need someone constantly pointing out murder’s bad, meaning there could very much be a deeper reason J is being so vocal about it. Apart from possibly being setup for her to be primary support moving forward, I personally think all this points to her just having a very strong set of beliefs regarding most things, which we could already kinda infer anyways.
Or maybe Mariabella killed a guy. Yeah, sure. Why not?
Veronika Grebenshchikoba
There were certainly a couple interesting Vero moments here, which is always fun. It was finally confirmed her secret was, as most theorized, the “took on your talent to distract yourself from the need to hurt yourself for fun” one. I mean, I feel like everyone called that one from the moment the curtain fell away from the screen with the motive secrets, but you get the idea.
We also learnt she had a pact with Hu regarding their secrets, which I would love to learn the details of, and definitely makes me interested in where these Recap Foils are going, as well as-
Veronika [2-13]: After all, my own so-called secret isn't even the worst thing I've done. Isn't that so utterly disappointing of this motive?
… whatever the hell that means. Why’s she gotta be so ominous? (I love this about her).
The last notable scenes to point out are all the scenes where she's... Veronika, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Her psychoanalysis of Levi will probably wait for when I talk about him, and her help during the time Teruko was figuring out the murder method is appreciated, but specifically about her:
Veronika [2-15]: Swallow your pride and say that you're too weak, too stupid, and too incompetent to perform this murder. Accept the fact that no one thinks highly of you. Or defend your dignity at the risk of admitting that you're perfectly capable of committing this murder and continue to be our number one suspect.
I just think the voice acting in this line in particular is very auditorily pleasant so I wanted to point it out :D
But Episode 15 actually has a much more insidious Vero moment, which I felt was way more noteworthy. After Ace admits to the crime, he goes on his whole speech, which includes directly calling out Veronika's words as part of the reasoning why he killed, there comes a point when Ace calls himself a "piece of shit", and no one denies it. When that happens, Veronika smiles.
Veronika: Oh my. How tragic.
She is such an awful person, just such a piece of garbage. I adore her.
Anyways, my appreciation of actually horrible women aside, we need to discuss the biggest question she leaves us. And that is "hey, why is her reaction to Ace's execution and Levi's almost death so different from her reaction to Min's death?"
Veronika [about Min, 1-12]: Min died in such a cruel manner...
Veronika [about Levi, 2-16]: If Levi dies because of this... Kehehe... I'm sure I'll miss him, but... This is quite a way to go. I can't say I wasn't entertained.
Veronika [about Ace, 2-16]: Aha... Ahaha... How incredible...
So, after considering it for a little bit, I think we're lacking a little bit too much critical information on Veronika to confidently state why the hell her reaction is so different, but I can come up with a few different possible answers. I'll list them in ascending order of likeliness in my opinion, and we'll see just how wrong I am once we get more insight on her!
+Veronika cares more about Levi than Ace, and more about Min than Levi. This is because she just said Ace's execution was "incredible," while she mentions she'll miss Levi, and obviously looks genuinely distressed over Min. I see no actual reason to believe this, though, because I... don't think Vero and Min ever even interacted beyond the trial? So unless we're pulling some very strange Veromin agenda out of nowhere (or Veronika is Mai Akasaki), this doesn't work imo.
+Veronika was acting in T1, but doesn't care by the start of T2. Possible, and it's true that Vero was more self-conscious about freaking people out in CH1, but I'm not sure if there's enough evidence to truly say she was only pretending to be distressed by Min's death.
+Veronika's reactions are based on the executions (and execution attempt) themselves, not anything else. This is consistent with her specifically reacting to the way Min died ("Min died in such a cruel manner") rather than the death itself. She specifically says she'd be entertained by Levi's death, and is clearly entertained by Ace's. So, I guess she just finds Min's execution particularly cruel/boring? Does she... have wolf related trauma? Test related trauma? I don't know, but I think this fits decently well, so.
+Veronika's slowly getting worse. A logical conclusion from the fact that she reacted one way in T1, and another literally four days later. Certainly possible given her analysis of people shattering in the killing game, so for now this is the interpretation I'm going with.
Whit Young
.... Sigh. You're not even that important to this part, how are you still gonna require so many words of analysis?
Alright, let's start with the pretty infamous scene where he talks about drop hanging. I do want to make one thing clear; just because Whit talks for a pretty long time about drop hanging, it doesn’t mean he actually says anything particularly groundbreaking. Like, everything he says is very logically sound, which means they’re conclusions anyone could have drawn.
Like me. Because even though I don’t think I wrote them down explicitly, I did more or less arrive at the same conclusions as he did, and I don’t have any experience with drop hanging. I’m clarifying this because I’m on enough lists as it is just by firefoxing shit like “can turpentine knock you out” and “how long do people pass out after being strangled” I do not need any more allegations on my person!
That said, I am also not a fictional character who exists within a story which follows narrative conventions (as far as you know, anyways). Whit is. And it’d be silly to instantly dismiss that the dev specifically chose Whit, a character who is otherwise not the most helpful in trials, to be the one to deliver this explanation, and without any interruptions no less. Even Teruko and Charles usually have one character or another finishing their explanations, like Levi when Teruko explained the slingshot or… Levi when Charles talked about jockeying. Huh, Levi kinda goated?
Thus, because the dev specifically chose Whit to give this explanation with no interruptions, we can infer that he may have a special connection to drop hanging. Given what we know, I find it likeliest that his mother committed suicide by hanging. At present, I don’t find much evidence that he would have attempted himself, though…
You know how Whit dyes his hair to look like his mom’s? And how Color Theory in LGI gives him (among other stuff) “degraded copy”, likely in reference to this? If his mother killed herself via hanging, do you think he would try to replicate that, too?
Food for thought. Again, not much reason to believe it yet.
Other than that, there are... the allegations. The part started strong with MonoTV stating it let slide a rule violation because it was funny (especially weird given what we learn in 2-16, but Whit's not the only rulebreaker in the cast so we're chilling). And then, 2-16 happened.
Whit [seven seconds before Teruko's execution, 2-16]: Charles, stop talking and cover your eyes! [...] Whit [post Levi shooting]: Ah, crap. The smell of blood is really strong. Even though I told [Charles] not to look, he still...
And, of course.
Whit: ...
Of course.
Alright, so let me start by the elephant in the room. The hand behind the back. The moment the cast learns the elevator doors won't open, we see Whit with his left hand behind his back. Many have assumed this means, understandably in my opinion, that he may be holding a remote control of some kind to close the elevator. In other words, Whit's the mastermind. But, while I consider him one of if not the best mastermind guess in the market, I don't think this is good evidence of it.
You see, there's no reason to believe such a remote would be required. By all accounts, it should be MonoTV's AI who is keeping the elevator closed with no need for outside interference, regardless of who the MM is. There is simply no reason to believe that any MM would have an "elevator manual stop" or even an universal remote (apart from J!MM for obvious reasons), because it should be MonoTV who is running this stuff.
As an aside, I will point out that, per the CH1 QnA, every character is right-handed apart from Teruko (lefty) and Arei (ambidextrous). You could use this to argue Whit shouldn't be doing anything with his left (the hand behind his back), but that's not good reasoning, as the sprite might just be drawn that way for aesthetic reasons and you're supposed to ignore handedness. Eden also used her left to rip out Xander's eye, apparently. I haven't seen anyone bring it up, but I have made this mistake before with a certain bat swinging Milgram prisoner, so I'm saying this to avoid others making the same mistake.
That clarified, however, the first point is still valid. Although I consider it perfectly possible, at present I do not believe Whit is holding anything behind his back.
Why does he pose like that, then? To answer that, perhaps it'd be better to answer what the deal with his other behavior is.
Because it's weird, right? Whit focuses on Charles even when everyone else, Charles included, are fretting over Teruko and Levi. And then, despite being able to brush off things like Levi's secret confession and Min's execution with nothing but a "that's wack," joking about rewatching said execution, etc., somehow the elevator being closed is what finally gets him to bring out the breakdown sprite?
Well, yes. And this shouldn't be all that surprising, imo. Because everything about Whit's reaction is perfectly in line with his previous behavior. Not to say it isn't weird (it is), just that it's weird in the way Whit's always been weird, and not in any new special way.
This is because every part of this reaction comes from the already established way Whit deals with tragedy; he avoids it, and moves on. You'll immediately think of Whit's mom when I say that, the way he omits her death whenever he speaks of her to the point he genuinely forgets that's a thing until a few seconds after the secret Rose received was brought into the conversation, but there's more examples that are actually closer to this situation. In particular, I want to direct your attention to the investigations in both chapters so far.
For the first trial, Whit spends literal hours hanging out with Charles while the Chemist has a breakdown, to the point he almost didn't investigate at all. This is excusable, of course; he was helping someone in need, and the culprit was thought to be obvious enough that investigation wouldn't be necessary.
The second, though, is perhaps a bit stranger. First, Whit doesn't look closely at Arei's body because he was busy comforting Eden, apparently. Alright, fine. But, hey, how did he try to comfort Eden after everyone started to filter in?
Whit [2-8]: There, there. Pat pat. Do you want to sit down somewhere else?
He immediately wants to leave the room. But, he's still trying to help Eden; maybe he's projecting? Because he'd want to leave the room if a loved one died, so he's asking Eden if she wants to do it?
Except, he does leave the room. He doesn't have any other lines in the playground past this point, and then he starts investigating with Charles, the one dude he knows won't enter the scene of the crime.
And you know when he splits off from Charles?
Whit [2-8]: If you're worried about Rose tampering with evidence, then all you need is another witness to watch over her, right? I can do that, since I'm here. I mean, unless Charles needs me for something.
My guy will genuinely do anything except investigate the playground.
And that's where the pattern starts to be noticeable. Whenever something bad happens, Whit finds any excuse he can to distance himself from the situation. And to be clear, they're usually good excuses; it makes sense for Whit to do all this in a vacuum, it's just odd that he constantly finds them. Other examples include him bringing up alibis when the note first comes up, and then, when he's pressed about it:
Whit [2-9]: Eden has [the note]. Ask her.
He doesn't even... want to have the responsibility of the note? Admittedly that could be for other reasons, but still.
With this pattern of avoidance in mind, the things he says in 2-16 are perfectly explainable. Instead of focusing on Teruko's incoming execution or Levi's injuries, he chooses to focus on Charles, because that's easier for him. He's once again finding an excuse to look away from tragedy.
By the way, I don't want to make it sound like Whit doesn't care about Charles as anything but an excuse to get out of thinking of bad stuff. It's pretty clear a big part of why Whit does the shit he does is that he genuinely cares about Charles as a friend (crush?). Whit probably does want to help Charles just for the sake of helping him, but it does come with the benefit of helping Whit avoid stuff he doesn't want to think about.
This whole avoidance thing is also why Whit is so perturbed by the elevator. When Levi gets shot, Whit probably hopes that they get to leave the trial room quickly to take care of him, at which point Whit can just avoid the situation entirely by just sticking to Charles like usual. But they can't. The elevator is shut. Not only does Whit probably realize that means they have to watch the execution, but it also means Whit is not able to get out of the room where a guy is actively dying, and sticking to Charles only lets him ignore the situation so much.
Why does he have his hand behind his back? Well, this is gonna sound like I'm on anti-Whit!MM copium (I swear I like the theory well enough), but I think he's simply balling up his fist out of stress. It's just that Whit "I don't want to talk about any problems ever and don't want anyone to ever know when I'm suffering" Young is instinctively hiding it so no one sees any sign that he might not be okay.
Does that make sense? Barely? Well, it's not like "emergency elevator shutdown button" is particularly more believable in my eyes, so that's the answer I'm going with for now.
Anyways. Jesus Christ Whit you're barely even relevant to this part how the fuck did you still force me to write so much about you.
Arturo Giles
I have less to write about Arturo than Vero and Whit because he's a bit more straightforward, but I'm still putting him here because he was more directly important this part. Speaking of, what notable things did Arturo do these episodes? Ah, right.
Arturo [2-12]: You shut your whore mouth!
"I thought you were only doing necessary imag-" This one's necessary shut
I'm using this to talk about the big speech about his talent, that he started studying plastic surgery when he was 12 and that it's impressive he's a plastic surgeon this early in his life. Props to dev for addressing this, I know some people are irked when characters are in the medical field from way too early in life without good justification like this. The fact he started so young also adds to the theory that Arturo's home life sucked, because it'd be really odd for a 12 year old to already be planning to leave otherwise.
The way the cast keeps insulting his skill, even though as he's said several times over the course of the series, the shit they expect him to do is way beyond his area of expertise, is a good way to build up to the way the cast also dismisses Ace's intelligence and skills later.
Other than that, there was one more moment when Arturo took part of the spotlight. When Levi gets shot, despite everything that happened earlier, everyone still turns to Arturo to save the Stylist. This leads to one of the most human moments Arturo's given us since 2-10:
Arturo [post Levi shooting, 2-16]: I--! I'm not that kind of surgeon! I've told you, over and over, I have no experience with saving lives! Something like this! There's no way I can do it--
Apart from the stellar voice acting that cannot be pointed out enough times, Arturo's doubt over Levi's condition is certainly a good setup for CH3, I'm really interested in how he'll handle this. Especially because...
Do you think he'd think of Felicity, looking at Levi like that? Because just like Arturo ignored Felicity's feelings (to an extent) in pursuit of his dream, he also neglected to study the more standard medical knowledge in favor of becoming a plastic surgeon faster, and now he needs that standard medical knowledge to save Levi's life. Food for thought.
Arturo is definitely an interesting character to watch out for moving forward, he's certainly in for a very curious CH3. Final note:
Arturo [to Levi, 2-13]: How could you simply *forget* that you murdered your own family member?
Get it because the death of Felicity haunts him even though he didn't kill her himself- Man I love recap foils.
MonoTV
I cannot fucking believe that this hunk of metal is getting its own section, but it is. 2-16 what an episode you are.
Thankfully, I've already expressed most of my thoughts about this damn thing in this linked post, so I'll just refer you to that one instead of writing it all again. As a summary, there's quite a few lore implications to the fact that we now have a clearly stated purpose for MonoTV, a goal for the killing game, a connection to XF-Ture Tech (because MonoTV seems to have been specifically created for the game), and I'm really wondering why the hell the default XF personality seems to care so much about Teruko and where that could lead to in the future. Also, very curious where the theme of fate will be taken with it, as well as where dev is planning to take the fact that it seems to have feelings of grief and pain and maybe even cares about Teruko??? Or has compassion in general??? What is wrong with this dog-
Rose Lacroix
Btw I greatly appreciate everyone who colors her name rainbow, I see you and you're valid for it. I need to color code my highlighting though, and if I have to do rainbow for every word I highlight I will actually die. Also I would need to put in an epilepsy warning in my posts lol
Rose got a few nice lines, but when it comes to her, there's one big moment that's really on everyone's mind.
Rose [2-14]: Has it really gotten this bad? I think my brain is falling apart. I can't even recall what day it was when that happened. Levi: You can't remember? I was under the impression that your memory was the best out of everyone here. Rose: It's true that I remember everything I see. But that means that most of my memories are meaningless junk. The kind of thing a normal person would forget without a second thought. But I can't forget. My brain won't work the way I want it to. I can't draw associations so easily. Everything reminds me of something meaningless, and I get distracted. And the worst thing is that I remember it all in perfect detail. Xander's body. Min's execution. I can't even look at Teruko without seeing blood. I know I'm supposed to remember everything. I know I'm supposed to be smart. I know I'm supposed to be helpful. Yet I'm not. I... I'm sorry for being useless. Maybe if I tried harder, if I just got over myself--
Do I... need to talk about this, beyond pointing out how good the VAing is? Everything about it is heartbreaking, but pretty straightforward. It's an extension of the conversation she and Teruko had in 2-5, where we also throw in Rose's growing self-doubt and self-blame over everything that's going on around her. It adds into the theme of this cast pushing expectations on each other (like wanting Arturo to be a better doctor or Ace being too stupid to do a murder), throws in some parallels to Teruko and Hu and Eden (the self-blame sisters!!! *fire emoji* *fire emoji* *fire emoji*) and Xander (the survivor's guilt boy!!! *fire emoji* *fire emoji* fire emoji*), foils with J (J who rejects what others like Mariabella want from her VS Rose who internalizes the expectations and accepts the whole Spurling situation), there's the "a normal person would forget" wording that kinda connects her to Nico and Levi and David (the "feeling separated from other humans' experience" siblings!!! *fire emoji* *fire emoji* *fire-), obviously memory is connected with Charles and Teruko, etc.
You see why I don't always talk about parallels? I have to bring up every single character up every time because that's the shit that happens when your writing is this *fire emoji* *fire emoji* *fire emoji*.
The other thing is Nico, but maybe it's better to keep that for their section. Overall, just a fantastic feast for enjoyers of Rose angst.
Arei Nageishi
You know this trial went crazy when Arei got a whole ass character arc during it, and she's the dead one.
For this part in particular, the big Arei moment was obviously during 2-13, when we finally got to hear the end of the conversation between her and David. I'm not transcribing it, because I'm sure we all got the gist. Arei figured out one of the main themes of the chapter, that everyone is a flawed person, and that means that no one's ever too far gone. There's always a possibility of becoming a less shitty person, and that's sweet.
But beyond Themes, learning what Arei's mindset about good and bad people was really helps to understand her actions before this point, though I do find it interesting that the whole "sorting people into good and bad" mentality she had is actually pretty similar to the way she talks about people in her FTE, which is some fun consistency!
Arei [CH1 FTE]: Yup, that's right! I organize everyone I meet into categories of how I should bully them.
... Well the context's different but you get the idea.
Arei used this principle of "sorting" people into "good" and "bad" to deny herself the possibility of getting better, because trying to change is scary. Man I wonder why that rings a bell.
Teruko [to Whit, 2-2]: But if you start talking about me and saying that I could be a good person if only I make an attempt to change, then I'm going to stop you right there. Don't say that I could be a good person, because all it'll do is make me feel bad that I'm not.
Ah right because Teruko's a well written protagonist. And actually wait, isn't there someone else?
David [2-11]: "People can always change?" What complete bullshit. No one ever changes. People who are born lazy, useless and stupid will stay that way until they die. If you were able to "improve" yourself into a better person, then it only means you were a better person to begin with.
Ah right because David is a well written character. Carry on then.
I do wonder why she waited until night three after the motive handout to talk to David about it, though, instead of doing directly after the playground breakdown. Was it, like, she didn't want to confront it directly after and only got the motivation/courage/whatever after talking to Eden? And then couldn't find David until then? It's odd, but I imagine there's no, like, big reason behind it necessarily.
Eden Tobisa
Hey Eden sorry I suspected you as the killer for a year can we still be friends? :,)
There's two big Eden moments to take into consideration, one in 2-14, one in 2-16.
Eden [2-14]: Why... No one... believes in me... Why? I'm... Arei's killer? No... No way....... Hu: Eden? Please don't cry. Eden: This whole time I've been trying to hold myself together... because Arei died...... I wanted so badly for this all to be a dream, and for Arei to be alive and by my side.... But now, you all think I killer her? Why? I cared about her! Arei is... She could have been my friend! Why would I kill her?? Levi: Eden, please calm down... Eden: Why am I being accused of murdering Arei? I wanted to help her! I just wanted to be friends with her! Why would you say that I killed her? Is it because you think I hated her? That's not true! I didn't hate her! Teruko: Eden.
I'm gonna cut it off there and resume in a bit, partly so I can organize this better and partly to make absolutely sure I don't hit the Tumblr limit on characters in a single text block (because my entire blog is evidently dedicated to testing this hellsite's limits lmao).
There's honestly a surprising amount of nuance in this small breakdown. We start with re-establishing that Eden is someone who constantly tries her hardest to remain strong in the face of adversity, holding herself together as best she can when her newest friend just died and she's more or less blaming herself for it.
Then, while I always praise the voice acting (because it deserves it), I need to bring special attention to the sheer amount of emotion in that "Why? I cared about her!" Hearing Eden genuinely frustrated at the accusations on top of her sadness is heartbreaking, and just a wonderful display of humanity from a character who is at times almost inhumanly patient. Makes me feel bad for suspecting her, and she's fictional in our world!
On top of that, "she could have been my friend" is an interesting choice of words regarding Arei. This is where having hyper-analyzed all Eden lines comes in handy lol. Because taken at face value, it means that Eden recognizes that her relationship with Arei wasn't at a stage where she could genuinely called her a friend, given that as far as we know the last conversation they had was after the Arturo thing. Nice depth!
The rest is pretty standard, though again the phenomenal VAing still makes my heart ache. Continuing:
Eden: Teruko... I didn't kill Arei..... Do you believe me?! Teruko: Listen-- Eden: *sniff* I, I didn't do it! Please.... Believe me... This whole trial has been cruel to me.... Help me, Teruko... I can't stand it... I just wanted to help Arei.... I didn't kill her... Teruko: You know I can't just take your words at face value, Eden. Eden: Please, Teruko... You're my friend, aren't you? Friends help each other... So please, help me... I promise I didn't... I didn't kill her.... I'm innocent... Please trust me..... Please.....
AAAAAAAAAAA-
Okay with that basic reaction out of the way, because evidently the reactions didn't have enough "text screaming" for me to fully get it out of my system, this is just a really heart-wrenching scene. Just the combination of VAing, music and visuals, man... ouch. It's especially tragic when taking the following line into account:
Eden [2-3]: Teruko, relationships aren't transactional. It's not that I did something good for you that you should do something good for me.
The Eden hyperfocus comes in clutch again- Is it weird that being an Eden!Culprit believer for so long is making me appreciate her character more now that she's confirmed innocent? :v
Teruko has, up to this point, never outright claimed herself to be Eden's friend, at least not as far as I can recall. Hell, her lines following Eden's plea for help seem to completely disregard the idea.
Teruko [2-14]: So for now, I'm going to assume you're innocent. Eden: W-What? Really? Thank you so much, Teruko... Teruko: Don't... get me wrong. This isn't out of kindness or pity or anything else. This is only because you helped me in the last trial. I'm repaying your favor, and nothing else. That's why I'll trust you, just this once.
How much she means that is for the Teruko section. What's important is that this means that when Eden says "you're my friend, aren't you?", she is actively going against her claim that relationships aren't transactional. She expects Teruko to consider herself Eden's friend because Eden has done a lot of stuff to try to make that friendship work.
This. Is. Wonderful. Don't you love it when characters fail to uphold their beliefs when faced with a horribly stressful situation? Well, I love suffering, so I sure do! :D
To be clear, I'm not trying to paint Eden as a hypocrite or anything. She's right in saying that relationships aren't transactional, and is justified in asking Teruko to help her because she considers Teruko her friend, even if it's a slight contradiction. After all, what are humans if not a swirling well of contradictions, desperately arranging themselves like the magnetic moments of a metal to try to make the slightest bit of sense of a reality they hopelessly seek to understand-
Ehem. The point is I like Eden a lot :D
Speaking of wonderfully human moments, time to switch to the other big Eden character moment!
Eden [2-16]: This... This all could have been prevented, couldn't it? [...] Of course I know [we can't blame ourselves for Ace's murder]. Ace planned to kill Arei, and even before that, he was planning to kill me. Rose: Then how can you forgive him? Eden: I never said I forgave him. It's just that... The Ace that I met for the first time wasn't a murderer. I... I can't forgive him. He killed Arei, after all. She was innocent, and he killed her for unfair reasons. But... Those unfair reasons were unfair to him as well.
You know, we joke about how awesome it is that the entirety of the DRDT cast is mentally unstable (because it is), but it's also cool to see the one actually more or less functional member of society in the group being the voice of reason like this. Not to spoil anything, but I find her stance regarding Ace's murder as the most reasonable stance one could have, and it's always cool to see a character who has reasonable opinions every now and then. But having such an opinion is easy when you're outside the show and the characters are all pixels on a screen; the fact that Eden can still find it in herself to be charitable towards Ace's situation while not outright forgiving him for his actions is a really powerful statement about her strength and sense of morality. Eden could not stop catching Ws this part.
Anyways, here's a few more fun Eden moments this part gave us.
Eden [2-15]: Wait, but... Is Ace even capable of doing a feat of strength like that? He's injured, after all.
I just think it's sweet Eden tries to defend Ace even when she's the other prime suspect :)
Levi [2-13]: And if tomorrow it turned out you all had passed away, I'd care as much as if we had never met. Eden: But you're a good person. Why are you saying these things when it's clearly not true? You're so kind to everyone. You're always helping others out, even when it'd be easier not to. Like that time Ace almost died. You kept trying to help him, even if he always pushed you away. Isn't that what "a good person" does?
For all the Eden Ws, she had to take an Eden L. Come on, Eden, Levi doesn't need to actually care to be a good person, he just needs to do good things, you know this :(
It makes sense character-wise, though. Eden has a surprisingly strong belief system, which is heavily shaped by her emotional nature, so it makes sense that Levi's Deal of doing good things with no emotional attachment to them would throw her off.
Still cool of her to accept Levi as a good person even though she just learnt he killed four people, however. It's good characterization; despite her misunderstanding with the lack of empathy thing, she still chooses to judge Levi based on the things she's personally observed, as opposed to making assumptions over things she only has half the story for.
Man, she's just so mature and cool and awesome and not fucked up in any way! Now that the tape thing's been resolved, I can't think of a single thing that would make anyone think that she might be a little-
Ah. Right.
Well, as a first reaction, this is definitely an Eden W in the oh so prevalent... DRDT powerscaling scene? She apparently managed to slash at Xander's eye, twice, with a fork. And with her non-dominant hand no less!
So... what the hell am I even supposed to do with this? Unfortunately, we're currently missing gigantic amounts of critical information regarding this situation, meaning I can't for the life of me come to any conclusions, at least not confidently. I tried to look at the pre-prologue dialogue to see if I could find anything, but...
Ouch... I really wasn't expecting her to attack me like that. I made a massive mistake to trust them. I can't rely on anyone. All by myself... I have to end the killing game. And even if I can't do that... I have to kill Teruko Tawaki. No matter what.
Fuck am I supposed to gather from this.
Uh... someone told Xander that Eden would be down with whatever plan Xander had to end the killing game if he just showed her whatever documents we're seeing in the Bloody Hands scene??? And she got too scared and just stabbed him with a fork??? Who is the "them" who told Xander this, a group of people, or a single person and Xander's playing the pronoun game? Or was it Nico???
Nico [1-9]: Are you really using unclear pronouns for dramatic effect? That's such a cliche.
Fuck it, locking in Nico as the one who told Xander to talk to Eden, just because that's the funniest possible reason Xander could have used "they" there. I doubt it's true, but it's gonna feed my God complex if I get it right, so-
Yeah, in case it isn't obvious, I have very little idea what this scene could even be about. Very excited to see where this could go :D
Nico Hakobyan
Nico stole the show for practically half of 2-14, so it's natural we should start at the main event.
First, the soft confirmation that Nico really did attack Ace with a plan to get away with the murder and escape as the blackened, particularly framing Hu by using her wire. This... vaguely contradicts something they claimed earlier, so we gotta discuss the implications.
Veronika [to Nico, 2-9]: Is this what you were envisioning when you tried to kill Ace? That the trial would happen like this, but with Ace instead of Arei dead? Nico: I didn't... I never thought about it... I... I never should have... done that...
Were they just... lying here? Did they mean something else?
My best guess to explain this apparent contradiction is that Nico thought about the trial in a more... impersonal sense? Like, when planning to kill Ace, they figured they should try to hide that so they didn't go down with him, but sort of... ignored that winning the trial would kill everyone else? It's hard to describe, but that's what I get from that line as well as:
Nico [2-14]: I tried to kill [Ace] because I don't like [him].
When they say they "never thought about the trial," they probably mean that they never thought about the full implications of it, even though they did plan for it. They knew in some level they were supposed to hide the murder if they did it, but things like escaping the killing game and actually getting everyone else killed didn't fully register. This thought process makes sense in my mind, I hope it makes sense in yours because I don't know how to describe it any better :v
Second.
Eden [2-14]: That's- That's so cruel! Nico, why? Aren't we all friends? If something was bothering you, you could have talked it out with someone else you trusted? Nico: ... Someone I trust? What are you talking about? I don't trust anyone here.
Fantastic bit of characterization here. Nico, despite being relatively civil to anyone they're not actively planning to kill, apparently trusts no one. However, I want to explore what exactly that means. Because it's not like Nico is paranoid they're gonna get killed per say:
Hu [2-12]: Nico does have an alibi. I was having breakfast and tea with them in their room early in the morning as well. Drop it, Ace.
I can think of few better opportunities to kill someone than being alone with them, in their room, at around 7:30 AM when it's still officially nighttime. Nico, at least, trusts that Hu won't kill them, though whether that's because they're confident they could survive anything she tries or because they genuinely trust she wouldn't try at all is up in the air.
Point is, Nico is distrustful, but not as paranoid as, say, Ace. Because of that, currently, I believe Nico's claim that they don't trust anyone is an extension of things they've said before; that they prefer animals because people are unpredictable. Really, Nico's lack of trust being interpreted as "not trusting people to react to their concerns properly" is very consistent with the way they've acted in the past, particularly their reaction to getting forced into revealing their secret, so we probably shouldn't be surprised.
Nico [2-6]: I thought you would laugh at me. I was worried you would pick up rocks and start throwing them at me or pick up clumps of mud and start throwing them at me.
Next point:
Nico [2-14]: You all are right. I tried to kill Ace and pin the murder on Hu. What else should I say? Ace: W-- "What else should I say"?? You tried to murder me. You fucking tried to murder me! And after all's said and done, you can't even say something as simple as "sorry"?! Nico: ... I tried to kill you because I don't like you. Even now, there's still no use to try and pretend that I like you. If I say "sorry," you're still going to hate me.
... Yeah.
Nico [2-2]: If you're having dinner and want someone to pass the salt, you can say, "Please pass the salt," or you can say, "Give me the salt." One of those things is supposed to be more polite than the other, right? But why? They both mean the same thing. They're just slightly different mixes of words. It's like that. I don't understand why some mixes of words come off as "rude," and some don't, even if they mean the same thing.
I don't even think I need to explain this further. I think it's pretty clear why Nico wouldn't apologize to Ace. Nico's just not to into social conventions.
Except:
Veronika [2-15]: What's wrong, Ace? You seem stressed. [Your neck injuries] are only wounds. What's the issue? Could it be that almost being murdered has traumatized you a little bit~? Ace: You think?! You think that almost being killed could have maybe given me a little trauma!? Nico: ... [Whispered voice clip: "I'm sorry"]
This one's... odd. Nico doesn't say it loud enough for Ace to hear, evidently, so it's just a genuine reaction to the harm they've caused. What could have triggered this change? Uh... maybe a little extra trauma dump will help? Let's pick up after where we left off in 2-14.
Rose [continued]: D-Do you even regret what you did to [Ace]? Do you regret what you were planning to do to everyone else? Nico: O-Of course I regret doing it! I'm not Levi, of course I feel bad about something like that. I'm not heartless! Levi: Heartless? Nico: That was the worst choice I've made in my life. I wish I had never done that. But looking back, I still understand why I did. I... I just can't stand being treated like that. My teachers, my classmates, my father... I don't ever want to relive what they did to me. It's because of those kinds of people that I can't be happy with who I am. That's why I hate Ace.
Okay cut off there. First, interesting to see Nico calling Levi heartless. I've seen it brought up that it makes sense for Nico, who struggles to relate to other people on a good day, to latch onto any defense of their "normalcy" they can, including "I'm not the weirdest person here" despite how hurtful that can be to say. That's some neurodivergent on neurodivergent hostility right there! Fun to see characters being flawed in new and unique ways /gen.
Apart from that, there's some nice reveals to Nico's backstory, which are always welcome. We already knew Nico was harassed because of their identity, but now we have names (as in, identity of aggressors); teachers, classmates, and Nico's father. That obviously comes with a question; was Nico raised by a single father, or did they have other relatives who were more accepting? For now, we got no clue.
But that final line is important, because I believe it's what explains Nico's whispered apology in 2-15.
Nico [already written]: It's because of those kinds of people that I can't be happy with who I am. That's why I hate Ace.
Nico's apology comes after Ace explicitly mentions being traumatized over the murder attempt, in particular in regards to his neck wounds. This can be taken as Ace revealing he's not happy with a part of himself (scars) as a result of Nico's actions. When abstracted this way, the comparison to Nico's situation (unhappy with a part of themselves (gender identity) as a result of others' actions) is much clearer. Nico apologizes for accidentally causing Ace a comparable trauma to their own. Which... I think makes sense from their point of view? People apologize when they do something hurtful they didn't mean to; Nico meant to murder Ace, so no apology for that, but they didn't mean the trauma, so they say sorry for it. Not that Ace heard it, but you know.
... That's a weird ass thought process, but I think it makes just enough sense to explain the apology. Let's finish the 2-14 scene.
Nico [continued]: Even so... I'm not a child. I know that murder is wrong. I'm not the victim here. I know that it was dumb to resort to murder. I don't even know what I thought I would have accomplished back then. I mean, I started regretting it as soon as Eden and Teruko saw me. I don't expect you to forgive me. Very few people ever do. So I don't see the point in acting sorry. ... That's the entire truth of my murder attempt. I don't have anything else to say.
So... "I don't even know what I thought I would have accomplished back then" seems to corroborate what I said earlier about Nico not truly grasping the full implications of a trial while they planned the murder, which is nice.
Nico's attitude over this ("I'm not the victim here") is nice to see, and makes me very interested in where their arc is going to go from here. Especially since Nico maturely accepting the blame is already causing friction between them and Hu (even if Hu doesn't seem to notice), and will likely continue to do so in the future.
Hu [2-14]: You all are too cruel! None of you understand how much stress Nico was under! And yet you continue to insist on bringing this up. Can't you see that you're traumatizing them? Nico: Hu, I-- Hu: Don't worry, Nico, I'm on your side. I'll always defend you. I can be reliable for you. You trust me, right? Nico: ... I never asked you to defend me--
... We're gonna have to talk about this in the Hu section.
Finally, "I don't expect you to forgive me. Very few people ever do."
Nico, what the hell does this mean? What have you done in the past that requires so much forgiving? What in the [DR2 CH3 killer]-?
Unfortunately, this is one of those "we're missing critical information" situations when we can't even begin to speculate what, if anything, this is supposed to mean. We'll move on and patiently yet eagerly await elaboration.
There's one more big thing to bring up in respects to Nico, and that's... Rose. For who knows what reason, Nico never gives an explicit answer to whether they actually were interested in learning to paint or not.
Rose [2-14]: Did [Nico] even want to learn to paint? Or to be my friend at all? Or were they only using me as a tool for murder? Nico: ...
Regardless of what the answer is, that's kinda weird. I'm leaning "no, they didn't want to learn to paint," because it sure would be a hell of a coincidence that they just happened to gain an interest in painting just when they're planning a murder that happens to require a painting supply.
That said, Nico does still seem to somewhat care about Rose, and probably would like to be her friend. At least enough to eventually apologize to her out loud.
Rose [2-16]: [Ace]'s right. Only Nico took [the turpentine] from me, and I really doubt they gave it to Ace afterwards. Hu: You're always attacking Nico like this! Nico: It's the truth, though. And Rose is right. I kept it. I still have the turpentine in my room. I'm sorry.
And it's not like anything this chapter erased the FTE:
Nico [FTE]: I was going to thank [Rose] for hanging out with me. I really enjoyed her presence.
So, while I can't know for sure, I hope Nicorose can make a comeback, at least in time for Nico to die so dev can inflict extra psychological pain on Rose! :D
Final highlight:
Nico [to Levi, 2-13]: If you said you killed [your father] because you just didn't like him, I could understand that. But you're saying you forgot about taking a life...
Apart from Nico obviously projecting their own murder motives on other people, do we think Nico ever considered killing their own father? I doubt they actually did, else that would probably be their motive secret (provided it's not a Veronika situation where their secret isn't the worst thing they've done), but I could see them considering it given how they talked about him and Ace in the same breath, and... yeah Nico sure did want to kill Ace alright.
Hu Jing
Hu was quite fascinating this part, wasn't she? For someone that actually ended up having zero relation to the murder, she sure had a lot of important character scenes. Let's start with the confirmation of a particular theory that really helps understand her character better.
Hu [2-13]: I've been quite selfish this whole time, keeping my secret because I didn't want you all to think less of me. Most of all, I wanted to lie to myself and pretend that I had no ties to the person that I used to be. I wanted to believe that the past never happened. But that's just self-centered. I've always been a selfish person, haven't I? I should put those feelings aside and do what is right. No, I should have done this from the start. I will share my secret as long as you all promise to immediately move on. I have Veronika's secret, and she has mine.
Well that's just sad.
I don't think I particularly need to analyze this, it's all pretty explicit. Hu wants to be relied on because she feels useless if she doesn't provide guidance:
Hu [2-11]: I have to be the one to give everyone guidance. That's the only thing I can do. If no one relies on me, then I won't be useful anymore.
And if it comes out that she's attempted suicide, then in her eyes, that makes her less reliable.
(Obvious disclaimer is obvious, the character's views don't reflect my own, there's no shame in having attempted suicide or needing help to keep fighting it, etc.)
As a result, she dislikes the memory of that "hopeless child" who attempted three times, and wishes to avoid talking about it if possible. Metamorphosis (butterfly) and rebirth (water by her name being "still lake") symbolism pulling through.
Also, while there's many reasons someone could attempt suicide, that little "I've always been a selfish person, haven't I?", especially combined with other statements she's made in the past, heavily implies her attempts were a result of self-loathing :( . Thus why she so desperately seeks value in herself by helping others, which is sorta crumbling as everyone she put her faith on (David, Nico especially) starts to reveal themselves as not-that-great-people.
Hence why I'm worried we might see a fourth attempt in the killing game. Her secret quote seems to go against the idea, which combined with some of her statements in the series proper make me doubt it, but y'know... The precedent's there.
Anyways, I'm bringing this up first because, again, it helps understand her other actions this chapter.
Hu [to David, 2-12]: Unacceptable! What on earth [sic] is your problem? I have had it up to here with you! Because this killing game requires us to live, you think you should just reject that notion and kill us all? You lied to me, manipulated everyone, and tried to make us all commit mass suicide! You really are the lowest of human beings. You have no right to decide whether I, whether any of us, live or die, all because *you* feel like you have no chance! If you're so bent on dying here, then die! But don't you dare try and make everyone else die with you. If we decide to continue living, then we will. It is not and never will be your decision as to what happens with our lives. David: ... Rose: Wow. Hu can be scary. Hu: ... I'm sorry to everyone else. But I've lost my patience. I won't apologize to David.
(Obligatory props to VAing ofc)
I mean, yeah, it makes sense for someone who used to be suicidal to be mad at David's bullshit. Especially considering that, in regards to "you lied to me, manipulated everyone here," the line I mentioned before about providing guidance continues like this:
Hu [to David, continued from before, 2-11]: I have to be the one to give everyone guidance. That's the only thing I can do. If no one relies on me, then I won't be useful anymore. You knew how I felt, and yet you... You... You toyed with my heart! All that time you acted like you were encouraging us to reveal our secrets to "prevent conflict." That was all a lie!
Assuming the whole "You toyed with my heart!" thing isn't referring to a conversation we don't have information on (which, to be clear, is 100% possible), it's possible that at this point in the trial Hu felt bad for going along with David's plan, especially since she might have believed it directly led to Arei's death. I think it's worth noting that she's one of the two first person to speak after Ace confesses, and she asks if he did it because of the motive.
Ace [2-15]: I killed Arei. That's exactly right. Shit, it sounds really bad when I say it out loud. Eden: Why? Why did you kill her? Why would you do such a horrible thing? Hu: Did you kill Arei because of MonoTV's motive? Because you wanted to keep your "secret" hidden--
Which could be read as her trying to confirm whether or not going along with David's plan was a good or bad idea, maybe?
Admittedly, "going along with David's plan" in her case literally just means "she told David, Nico and Teruko that people used to call her Julia," which you could argue is too small for her to genuinely feel like she contributed, but keep in mind the "you toyed with my heart" line is directly before a line referencing the "reveal the secrets" plan. At the very least, she didn't go against it, not in a significant way anyways.
If I'm right to be reading these lines the way I'm reading them (which, again to be clear, might be wrong), then David purposefully used Hu's desire to help and be relied on to get her to agree with his plan, or at least not go against it, or at least Hu feels he did. Whether he intentionally targeted her, or if his methods to convince the others to convince the cast of revealing their secrets just happened to strike a cord (zither pun not intended) with Hu, is still unclear, but both are possible.
So she's already incredibly pissed at him for that, then he says he wants everyone dead, yeah my girl's got the right to go off.
Though, speaking of Hu blaming herself for what happened to an extent:
Hu [2-16]: Arei wasn't killed because of an accident. Bad luck or not, Ace had made up his mind to go through with this murder! So we can't possibly blame ourselves for failing to prevent something like that.
This is after Ace confirms that the motive and David's BS had nothing to do with the murder, so Hu can fully deny blame for what happened. Which is relatively fair, it's not like being mean to someone makes you guilty if they then choose to kill someone, but it's also presumably really important for her mental stability.
Did any of that make absolutely any sense? Maybe. Hopefully.
And that's just all the Hu-only stuff. Because a big part of her character this chapter was defending Nico far beyond what anyone could possibly see as reasonable. I'll bring back the example I gave before, because I think it's by far the most extreme.
Nico [2-14]: Someone I trust? What are you talking about? I don't trust anyone here. Hu: Stop! Just stop it! You all are too cruel! None of you understand how much stress Nico was under! And yet you continue to insist on bringing this up. Can't you see that you're traumatizing them? Nico: Hu, I-- Hu: Don't worry, Nico, I'm on your side. I'll always defend you. I can be reliable for you. You trust me, right? Nico: ... I never asked you to defend me--
Like, this goes beyond unreasonable. Nico literally says they don't trust anyone in the killing game, but Hu still thinks they trust her for... some reason. And even though Nico says they never asked her to defend them, Hu continues doing it past this point.
The thing is, though... why? Like, I get the basics here, it's what we talked about earlier. Hu only finds worth in herself by being reliable, and she sees Nico as someone who needs her reliability, so she tries to defend them no matter what. Hell, she even specifically says "I can be reliable for you" in the quote.
But... is there a reason she's so adamant towards them in particular? She doesn't get like this when Eden starts being accused, even though they have a good relationship with each other. Apart from reciting Rule 10 when it first comes up, once that gets thrown into question, the only thing Hu says when Levi and Arturo talk about Eden possibly being the killer is:
Hu [2-14]: Eden? Please don't cry.
She never pushes back against David's claim that he saw the corpse, even though that would practically exonerate Eden via BDA; that's Nico who does that. And Hu never claims Eden is being traumatized by being accused even though she clearly takes the accusations a lot worse than Nico was taking them in 2-14.
So, like, what the hell? Is there a deeper reason she's so defensive towards Nico and not Eden, or am I just going insane?
Well, at this point, if such a deeper reason exists, I have no clue what it could be. I could speculate about Nico reminding her of someone in the past, be it herself or someone else, or maybe Hu just sees Eden as less "in need" because she's generally more stable and happier than Nico, but really, I have no way of knowing.
The thing I can talk about in regards to the Hu-Nico thing is its parallels to Veronika-Arturo and Levi-Ace.
Veronika-Arturo is funny because, well.
Veronika [2-10]: Arturo, you're... You're so... Fascinating. You're really entertaining. So I'll take your side. I don't care about morals. I don't care about whether people get hurt or whether they die. I just need to be entertained. If you become more and more irredeemable, then I'll only love you more~ I want to hear all about those terrible things you did with no justification. Arturo: For someone who's taking my side, you sure are making me look a lot worse!
I really love how a big part of the Vero-Hu recap foil so far can be reduced to the "I can fix them" vs "I can make him worse" meme :p There are their secrets as well, but that analysis will have to wait for further elaboration on them, presumably in CH3.
Meanwhile, Levi-Ace... will have to wait for the Levi section, because this is already getting quite long for Hu, and it requires a bit more context on his character.
Miscellaneous highlights!
Hu [2-14]: Hang on! Eden isn't the killer! Don't accuse her! Charles: Not this again. You can't keep blindly defending the people you hope to be innocent if you don't have evidence, Hu.
Hu: I do have evidence! Why are you writing me off? All because I-- ... *sigh* Rule 10...
Damn she really gets defensive when you question her reliability huh?
Well, moving on. That was a pretty long section, hopefully the next one will be easier to write.
...
Oh. Oh no.
David Chiem
YOU
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!
Genuinely what is this motherfucker's problem? Everything he does seems to contradict something he did before, for reasons unknown. The only way I can even begin to try to analyze this son of a bitch is to go through everything he does in the series in chronological order, because trying to figure out his thought process in any other way would drive me in circles harder than anything in LGI ever did.
The first thing David truly does that informs us on his later actions is forming a genuine and positive relationship with Xander. In case the LGI MV didn't make it clear that David genuinely cared about the Rebel, we finally got near 100% confirmation of why exactly David liked him so much.
David [2-12]: You, and everyone else listening. I do so kindly request that pretty please stop talking about Xander at all if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. It pisses me off to no end. After all, it's still unbelievable to me... ...That I'm the only person here who remembered him. Even if you all lost a year of memories for this killing game, there's no reason you shouldn't have recognized who he was.
While we unfortunately don't get much more clarification, it seems David knew what Xander did to earn the title of Ultimate Rebel, and likely admired him as a result. As per Xander's numeral I in LGI, "I have always looked up to you."
This admiration is presumably why David was so adamant in the first trial that there was no way Xander really tried to murder Teruko.
David [Debate Scrum, 1-8]: Are you saying that Xander is a killer? I find that difficult to believe.
You might argue that maybe he was just trying to throw the first trial, the same way he tried to throw the second. But that's not possible.
This is where we get to Weird Point #1. David didn't want to lose the first trial.
Nico [1-11]: Ah, right. Min was going from the laundry room to the kitchen. That path crosses the computer lab. She would have seen Teruko's body if the door was open. Min: ... Ace: And why exactly would the fucking door be open? Nico: U-Um... David: I suppose Min may have arrived near the computer lab's entrance just as Charles left. If she was curious, she would have even gone out of her way to see what was happening in there.
If David was trying to throw, he wouldn't be the first to explain how it would be possible for Min to be involved in the murder. And this is only one example, there's other lines where he specifically suspects Min. Apparently, he simply cannot handle a bad bitch winning (committing murder and trying to sacrifice 14 lives for her own benefit).
However, something in David shifts upon seeing Min's execution.
David [1-12]: I... I've seen enough. There's no point in keeping my hopes up anymore. We are all certainly going to die here.
This line is said pretty somberly.
Which is weird. Because not four days later, David will be trying to throw a class trial, which will kill everyone and him. Interesting detail about that, David doesn't seem to believe that the blackened will escape if they actually voted wrong, based on this line.
David [2-12]: 15 lives. Some of them are very dear to you. And your own life as well. Is there anything at all that could be more important to you than those 16 human lives?
Where he seems to imply a wrongful vote will cause 16 deaths.
But the thing is, it's not just the trial, is it? David also tried to instigate a murder through his "reveal all motive secrets" idea. That's what he does during the majority of CH2, starting in 2-4, just two days after Min's execution. Now, it's fully possible that at this point, he wasn't yet planning to throw the next trial, but rather, he was just doing this to hide his own secret. He certainly considers losing his "speaker persona" a genuine sacrifice, so it isn't unbelievable that he'd hope for a murder even if he was planning to win the trial if it happened.
David [2-12]: Even so... Lying about all that wasn't easy. Even I like to have good relations with others, however fake they might be. And I had to throw that all away. I know that no one will ever trust me, believe in me, or look up to me again after this. But doing "good" things requires sacrifice. Sometimes that sacrifice is being seen as "a good person." That's what I learned from Xander. Even if doing something will make you hated, if that action is for a greater good, then it's an action that you have to take.
(By the way, his views of goodness as martyrdom are quite interesting and I'm curious to see where it will go, but currently we don't have much more than this line for insight on it)
However, I don't quite think that he just wanted to keep the others' goodwill; I think he was already hoping to throw from the moment he started instigating the murder. And this is where we need to ask; what was it that made David switch up? What happened between the first trial and the second that made his goals change from surviving to... whatever he's cooking now? Because in case it wasn't clear from how I'm talking about it, I don't believe David gave the real reason for his throwing to the class. Let's look at the "confession."
David [2-12]: Ugh, fucking fine. You want an answer so badly? Any answer? ... I...
Ah... We're... in a television show, after all. That's... what MonoTV said, right? "Entertainment" is an ongoing show. If Min successfully got away with the very first murder and escaped while we all died, then isn't that way less interesting for a TV show? What's the point of roping 14 other people into one murder, only to kill them all off immediately? The killer is supposed to fail and be executed. We're all supposed to catch the killer, again and again, and participate in trial after trial. You're *supposed* to try to survive. All of you who are trying to solve these class trials to continue living on are playing straight into MonoTV's hands. [Confident] As if I'll accept that. I don't care how low I'll sink, or how despicable I'll have to become. I'll do anything to carry on Xander's ideals by ending this killing game, even if it means that I have to dirty my hands.
Although I wrote it all out, I want you to focus on the start: ".... - I... - Ah... We're... in a television show, after all." Even beyond the meta argument that it's unlikely we'd actually get the answer to why Xander wanted to win the class trial this early in the series (which is a valid argument, but I prefer to theorize without meta reasoning), that hesitation should tell you everything. The way it's written, it makes it seem like David is hesitating because he's making everything up on the spot, up to the "Ah..." potentially being the exact moment David figured out what angle he wanted to take. Given he's already admitted to both being manipulative and wanting to get everyone killed, this is the only reason I can see for why he'd hesitate to give such a relatively simple and "reasonable" (as in, it logically follows even if it's still insane) answer.
So, now we have two questions. What does he actually want to achieve by throwing, and why did he only start pursuing it after the first trial ended?
Well, let me say first that I don't think we're supposed to be able to answer these questions yet. Obviously; we're dealing with shit very closely connected to some pretty large, overarching mysteries of the series, which we probably won't get full answers for until much later than CH2. But we can try to speculate the general direction of what the answer will be. Let's look at another one of his lines to try to do just that.
David [2-13]: Achoo! Ah--Bless me! Also, excuse me! Wow, thank you for your support, everyone!
(I only included that line because it's fucking hilarious and I didn't want that to go unappreciated :p)
I have another interruption~ Hu: ... David: Teruko. Own up your [sic] goddamn secret already. You are the last person to do so. [...] Teruko: ... My family. David: ...
So, just like everyone who is somewhat deep in the DRDT theorizing community, I don't think this is true. I am pretty sure David has Teruko's secret, that secret being "How could I even select what secret to be your motive? Just about everything you've done in your life is worth killing for. The killing game is all your fault." There's many reasons beyond the weird ass David sprite pictured above, which many have already covered, but as a quick overview: the family secret ("you're constantly blaming yourself for the death of your parents and siblings. It doesn't matter that it's not your fault, just that you didn't go with them") fits Xander better (see: Bonus Episode 2, Xander's secret quote being the definition of survivor's guilt), the family secret mentions "siblings" plural when Teruko's only claimed to have one brother, we don't know what happened to Teruko's parents and brother when we know Xander's family is dead, Teruko didn't believe David when he said he got Xander's secret so she probably suspects the killing game one is hers, "this killing game is all your fault" is consistent with the second anniversary art code ("It's all your fault" in a picture which only features Teruko reaching out to presumably-Mai's hands, which disappear), etc.
So now we have four questions, because evidently I'm quite bad at this. Apart from the two mentioned before, we need to ask why David lied about the secret he received, and why he was happy when Teruko answered with the family thing.
But sometimes, one question can answer others. The reason I'm bringing this up is because I believe David's heel turn was likely motivated in some way by receiving Teruko's secret. Take a look at his immediate reaction when the secrets are first handed out.
Pretty frowny, huh? Yeah understandable given the secret he received is "hey the killing game is all the girl that Xander tried to kill's fault." Unfortunately this is the only reaction David has to any of the secrets, as the rest of his dialogue after this is just explaining J's secret. Well, and this:
Eden [2-1]: Then let's end the killing game before [the motive secret reveal]! Nico: Eh?! David: Optimistic as ever, Eden. I'll do my best.
Which is kinda funny in retrospect. Yeah, he sure did do his best to end the killing game before the secret reveals.
Tangent aside, the important thing is that David wasn't necessarily surprised by Teruko's secret, but rather, uh... Well it's hard to read him on expression alone. Frustrated, maybe? Possibly mad that Xander didn't succeed in killing her? It's also worth noting that this is shortly before Teruko goes into her whole "I don't plan on leaving" shtick, which includes the following tidbit (and yes David is in the room to hear this).
Teruko [2-1]: And I'd recommend that you drop that foolish optimism for making it out of here alive. With 100% confidence, I can say that... You will all die down here without ever seeing the outside world again. Ace: This bitch is totally out of her mind. Teruko: I'm not saying this out of ill-will. It's simply how this story works. You all have the misfortune of being "characters" in a story where I'm the "protagonist." Because of that, you're all doomed.
What's so important about this? Because I believe that, in David's mind, this proves Xander right. It proves that there is something off about Teruko, that he probably did have a good reason to attack her, that the note he received wasn't complete bullshit. If there is any single thing that would get David to follow Xander's footsteps, regardless of whether he has the full story or he's just doing what Xander was trying to do even without knowing the reasons the Rebel made the moves he made, it would be getting confirmation that the person he tried to kill specifically has something suspicious going on.
Especially because David does, in fact, seem to have a very weird fixation on Teruko.
David [2-14]: As long as there's a possibility that the evidence is false, as long as there's even the slightest reason to distrust others, then Teruko cannot trust Eden. Isn't that right, Teruko? Teruko: ... David: It's in your nature to distrust people. Everyone you know has already betrayed you. There's no one in this world who won't hurt you. Even the people you love will turn their backs on you in the end. You know that well enough, don't you? So distrust in others. Because that's the only way you know how to live. Teruko: ...
(Obligatory props to VAing ofc)
... Alright so it's five questions. Because how does he know all that?
Let me knock that one out quickly, though. Right now, I don't think this is solid enough reason to suspect that David knows more about Teruko than he's letting on. I could be wrong about that and David could just be aware of her entire backstory, but I currently don't believe that.
Instead, I think this might actually be an extension of his talent, in a way. The joke that he gave Teruko a "demotivational speech" is funny, but I also think it's actually on the right track. David knows the right things to say to someone to inspire them, to push back against their insecurities, as he did with Arei in the playground breakdown. Thus, it logically follows that if he's able to identify emotional weakness to push against it, he would also be able to exploit it.
Or, try, at least. He actually fails pretty spectacularly, since Teruko ends up trusting Eden anyways, and I don't think there were any reverse psychology 5D chess moves on David's part given his immediate reaction to Teruko's 2-14 speech to Eden.
Like, that's the face of a man who tried to be slick and failed miserably.
(And in case it isn't clear, I don't think his lie of seeing the body had anything to do with the trial, he did it just to fuck with Teruko)
In any case, what happened here is that he figured out the (relatively obvious, it doesn't take an Ultimate to see this) trust issues that plague Teruko, and is trying to make them worse in order to... uh... fill in the blank I guess. One option I've considered is that he knows something about how her luck works, that it hurts people she likes, so if she doesn't trust anyone then her luck's effects will be concentrated entirely on Teruko. However, that requires a pretty deep understanding of something he shouldn't have that much info on, so I don't find it that likely. Also I'm not 100% sure if this is how her luck actually works so there's that.
Yeah, unfortunately, at this point I struggle to see exactly what David's angle is here, which is probably intentional given, again, CH2. However, it does somewhat tie back into what we were talking about. Along with everything else I've mentioned, this fixation on Teruko's trust makes me believe that David's heel turn is at least partially motivated by receiving her secret.
And if we once again combine questions 3, 4 and 5, we can actually arrive at a new conclusion. We know David's hiding Teruko's secret, we know he's happy that she's not calling him out on it, and we know that he has a vested interest in getting her to distrust others. With all these combined, I believe that David is trying to look for a way to manipulate Teruko specifically as a backup plan if the cast managed to win the trial, which they did.
By getting her to distrust others, she'd isolate, making her an easier target for manipulation as she wouldn't have anyone to fall back on if David starts getting to her. And the secret is good blackmail, pretty straightforward why he he hasn't revealed it yet. That's also why he's happy she helped him keep it hidden; he can pull it as a card to make her seem less trustworthy and isolate her further. "She lied about her secret, she was trying to hide it." If she had been honest and said that neither the family nor the poison secret fit her and that someone lied about their secret, it would make her look comparatively better once the secret came out. In other words, it makes the blackmail even better, especially because now David knows for a fact that she wants to keep it hidden.
That brings up to question 6: why does David want to manipulate Teruko in the first place? And this is where we finally reach a dead end, because again, CH2, we're not gonna get all the answers yet. I have less than zero idea what David will try to manipulate Teruko into doing, when he will make his move, what his end goal is, or any other question you can imagine. I have my doubts that he'll succeed, obviously, but of course that depends a lot on what his final angle ends up being.
So, let's recap.
David knew of Xander before the killing game, admiring him because of his work as the Ultimate Rebel. As a result, David tried to establish a good relationship with Xander once the killing game started.
David originally rejected the idea of Xander attacking Teruko out of denial and nothing else. He had genuine faith his friend wouldn't do that. David wanted to catch the correct blackened in the first trial.
Upon receiving Teruko's secret and hearing her speech about everyone dying as a result of misfortune, David begins to believe Xander was in the right, and chooses to pursue what he thinks Xander was trying to accomplish. This includes trying to instigate a murder and admitting to killing Arei.
David lied about his motivation to throw the trial. I don't know if he's specifically trying to kill Teruko, or if he thinks everyone in the cast needs to die for some reason, or if he genuinely has no idea what Xander was trying to do and he's just following his actions blindly, or if it's something else entirely; whatever motivation he actually has, it's not what he said.
As a backup plan if the cast manages to win the trial, he hides Teruko's secret and plans to manipulate her via blackmail, for reasons yet unknown. This is why he's happy that she also keeps it hidden, and why he tries to build her distrust in others.
And that's the basics of what I believe regarding his actions... related to throwing the trial and Teruko. We still have one more David Moment TM to deal with.
David [about the Arei conversation, 2-13]: ... Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I didn't say anything to her, and she didn't have much to say to me either. Arei simply got annoyed with me and left without saying anything else. Nothing else happened between us, I promise. Eden: You promise? You absolutely promise, you didn't say anything to her? David: One hundred and one percent, I promise. Ace overheard everything, and what he told you all was the entire truth. Does that satisfy you? Eden: ... That's... a relief. That you didn't make her feel bad, I guess.
So, question 7, why does he hide the truth from Eden? I doubt he suddenly gained an interest in progressing the trial without further interruption. He's also not doing this for Eden's sake; what Eden wanted to hear was that Arei walked out of that conversation still hoping to change for the better, which she did. Hearing that Arei still wanted to "be less shitty together" even after knowing David's a manipulative asshole would have made Eden very happy.
But David doesn't want to hurt Eden, either. If he did, he'd lie and tell Eden that he said something that made Arei run out crying and having lost all hope, or something. I also can't really think of anyone else who would have much of a reaction either way, since as bad as it sounds to say it, Eden's more or less the only person who was genuinely invested in Arei's progress. Maybe "the blackened," but if David doesn't know who the blackened is, there's no way he'd know how they'd react, so it's likely not because of that.
So, if David doesn't hide the truth for the sake of the trial, and he doesn't lie because of Eden, and he doesn't lie because of anyone else, then he's lying for his own sake. I believe that David is trying to hide how much he genuinely cared about Arei, and probably doesn't trust himself to be able to tell the story without giving the game away.
And to be clear, he did genuinely care about Arei. If his immediate reaction to her death doesn't convince you, his breakdown after hearing the Arturo-Eden-Arei story should.
David [2-8]: Of course. Of course this would happen.
David [2-10]: If Eden and Arei really had that conversation, then it explains a lot. I had my doubts. A clearly suspicious note, asking her to meet alone and with no explanation as to why. During a *killing game* of all times. What kind of person would fall for such an obvious trap? You'd have to be shortsighted, naive, foolish, senseless, downright idiotic. ... Unless, of course, you were Arei. That girl wanted desperately to prove herself as a "friend" to Eden. And yet she completely lacked any experience with what "friends" were actually like. Of course it never occurred to her that handing out suspicious notes was not something that normal people did. What could she know about "friendship," after all? Someone like her, who had not once experienced kindness in her entire life up until now? Even if she had her misgivings about something so suspicious, she must have pushed it aside due to her unwavering faith in her blossoming friendship. A friendship that she didn't understand in the slightest. It's... It's so... Ahaha. It's just so foolish. For someone to take advantage of Arei like that. It's absolutely unforgivable. All she wanted was to change. What a reprehensible person this killer is. I look forward to seeing their painful execution.
(Do you think all this talk about "suspicious notes" is making him think of Xander with the suspicious note he received? Don't know, maybe :p)
Between David hiding the end of the conversation and the whole "Arei was a temporary weather spell" line, it seems he's really committing to the role of someone who doesn't care about Arei.
There are many reasons he could be doing this, but I believe he's just pulling a Teruko: Showing no vulnerability, because if he did, then maybe people would actually try to reach out to him. And then they'd get hurt like Xander and Arei; quote one of the Hamlet quotes in LGI (one of the eight lol): "I did love you once. You shouldn't have believed me." And/or David would need to confront how awful he is to try to change and better these new relationships.
Because it's a lot easier to be an irredeemable asshole who will never get better, than to confront the reality that he can, just that it's hard. Cue parallels with Arei and Teruko and Ace and you get the idea.
Final note, completely unrelated.
Whit [2-12]: Hey, hey, you could say those fish were a... red herring? David: Ugh! Goddamn it, Whit, does everything you say have to be made into some shitty dumb joke?! You're actually really fucking annoying! Shut the fuck up!!
Question 8: Why is David so pressed about Whit's jokes? At the moment, my only guess is that Whit's attitude of always remaining positive enough to crack jokes reminds David a bit too much of his "cheery" persona, which also is supposed to always remain optimistic in the face of adversity, and David either hates that because he hates himself, or because he's envious that Whit can hold that optimism without trouble (as far as David can see). I lean on it being a combination, where he does hate his "cheery" persona, but also wishes he could genuinely be like that, but it's very hard to tell atm.
Alright that took way too long. Can't wait for this all to be proven horribly wrong the next time we get any solid info on David!!!
Levi Fontana
Hey Levi sorry for calling you an accomplice for like a year are we still cool? :,D
Although Levi had a lower amount of Big Moments than David, I consider them more impactful to the chapter. And when you're talking Levi, you're talking 2-13 and 2-16. Let's start with the former.
Levi [2-13]: The secret that Arei received, "You're a murderer, and you hold no remorse...." That's my secret. [Cast reactions] If you were wondering, it's not in my legal records. The court struck it from the records. Ace: No shit! There's no way Hope's Peak would have scouted a murderer! Levi: Don't make the mistake of switching cause and effect.
Let's take our time with this one, it's a long speech. First, nice to see we called this secret, it's nice. Also, I'm not the first to point this out, but it's a neat bit of characterization for Levi to first talk about the legal side of his secret instead of anything more related to emotions; he only really cares about the effects things have in the present (that'll become explicit in a bit), so the first concern he thinks of are the legal repercussions.
Then, Hope's Peak... Hope's Peak why are you this shady. Between Rose's situation, the Ultimate Contest for Eminent Students, and now this, it's now three times they've specifically targeted people in vulnerable positions. Four if you count Teruko, but that would imply they rigged the lottery for the Lucky Student, which I would believe but we currently don't have evidence for. No wonder Xander has issues with them, they're cooking something weird.
Rose [1-4]: I'm sure Hope's Peak wants me to become some sort of appraiser or forgery detective with the skills that I have. Taking some offending youth and turning them into a productive member of society would be a pretty good look for them.
Unnamed Classmate [BE1]: Why would Hope's Peak announce [the UCES] 12 years before it would actually take place, when all the would-be contestants are just children? Min: Because they wanted the contest to hang over the heads of kids like me for 12 years, from childhood all the way into high school. They wanted to single out those who were obsessive enough to spend their entire lives preparing for this one test from childhood.
Unnamed Classmate [BE2]: If you set out to do something, then never give up on that, no matter what obstacles may stand in your way. Even if it's risky or against the rules, as long as it's for a good cause... I'll trust that you know to do the right thing. Xander: Yeah. Of course. That's why I've come to Hope's Peak, isn't it?
We currently have no clue where this is going, but I'm noting it for further reference. Let's pick off from where we left.
Charles [continued]: Care to explain yourself? Levi: At the time, I was confronted by three guys who tried to start a fight with me. I believe they were some old enemies. I killed their leader first, which may have been justifiable as self-defense, but then I tracked down his two remaining friends several days later and beat them to death. J: "Old enemies?" "Leader"?? Were you in the freakin' mafia or something? Levi: No. J: ... Levi: ... J: Are you not going to elaborate?? Levi: I don't particularly think I need to elaborate. After all, that happened in the past and has nothing to do with Arei.
One question this speech leaves us with is "why did Levi track down the other two after killing the leader?" We don't have enough info to tell for sure, but I assume it's a matter of safety? Like, Levi thought those two would try to attack him again if he left them alone, so he needed to make sure that didn't happen. I think that makes enough sense for me not to lose sleep at night over it, but of course I'm open to being wrong.
Also, this is the point where Levi's pure pragmatism becomes apparent. "It's not important right now, so why would I elaborate?" A philosophy which is born from his lack of empathy which will be discussed later. This pragmatism is probably why he's the one to argue that Eden was in an advantageous position to kill Arei; the logistics of murder come before emotional aspects in his mind, which is understandable.
Eden [continued]: Who... Who did you even kill? Levi: They were three guys... a few years older than me... Uh... I don't remember their names or who they were.
Do we think Levi knew their names at one point and forgot, or did he somehow track down two people without learning their names? I find the former more likely, just wanted to point that out.
Levi [continued]: I was a bit of a delinquent when I was younger, so they could have held a grudge against me for any reason. Maybe I smashed their windows and robbed them? Or, wait, maybe something to do with that car I blew up once? Rose: That's... kind of a lot to admit all of a sudden.
One thing I always enjoy is when the character who reacts to cut off a monologue has some kind of connection to the thing being discussed. Like, of course Rose is surprised at everything Levi is saying. She's out here being haunted by the crimes she committed, to the point where the debt she put her family in is her motive secret, and then this other guy has broken All the Laws and is just admitting it openly lol.
Levi [continued]: I've forgotten most of the details, as I haven't though much about it since I was cleared of my charges. Sorry, I can't really remember why that happened. Arturo: How could you forget something so important? You can't even be bothered to remember their names? Did you not care that you killed three people?
Speaking of matching reactions to character, Arturo "I feel unending guilt over the death of my sister who I did not even directly kill" Giles cannot conceive how someone else isn't haunted by the lives he took, more recap foiling at eleven.
Veronika [continued]: You say that your backstory and secret aren't relevant to this trial, but they are. That second part of your secret, that you "felt no remorse" for killing people... If you don't care about murder, then you'd have a much easier time killing than anyone else here. You may even be unbothered by the fact that passing the trial would mean everyone else's execution. After all, you seem completely detached while admitting not only to murdering 3 people, but to several other crimes as well. Almost as if you didn't care about any of this. At least not from a moral standpoint, that is. Levi: I won't deny it. That is indeed how I feel. Ace: You are one sick bastard. What could you possibly say in your defense.
This is the first big hint of Levi's low to non-existent empathy, but I'll wait until it's fully elaborated on to discuss it in depth. Also this hints to Ace business that will be discussed in his section. Why am I even writing here.
Levi [continued]: That incident happened when I was in my junior year of high school. My junior year was also the year that Hope's Peak scouted me as the Ultimate Personal Stylist. To my understanding, it would have reflected poorly on Hope's Peak to recruit a murderer, so they pressured the court into not pressing charges.
I do wonder now why Levi even started styling in the first place. By his own admission he's pretty new to it, though he's got at least a year or two of experience if he was scouted in junior year (I think? USA why can't you fucking number your grades like sensible people I don't know what "junior" means without firefoxing that shit). Maybe a job he picked up after disownment? Though that heavily depends on when and why he got disowned in the first place; was it because of his father's murder, the murder of the three dudes and the court case just took a while, or was it something else? Questions to mull over, but can't answer without further info.
Levi [continued]: Err... Hang on. Now that I've thought about it a little more, my motive secret may not be referring to those guys. It could also be referring to the time I murdered my father. J: Wait, you-- YOU WHAT?! Levi: It's quite difficult yo tell what these motive secrets truly mean because they're all phrased so vaguely... It's a bit of a bother. J: No, fuck that noise! Go back! The hell you mean, you fucking killed your dad? Levi: Correct. I simply forgot about it up until now. That would make four people in total that I've killed, not three, I think...? Arturo: How could you simply *forget* that you murdered your own family member? Nico: If you said you killed him because you just didn't like him, I could understand that. But you're saying you forgot about taking a life... Levi: It wasn't that important. Not even the police cared about a man like him, so nothing came out of it. I truly just forgot.
(why is everyone blue you're fucking up my color schemes-)
Back to the whole "appropriate reactors" thing, while I've already mentioned the Nico thing, I think it's cool J (the anti-murder spokesperson with a bad relationship with her mother) specifically says 'dad,' while Arturo generalizes to 'family member.' Someone's being reminded of his past~
I find this admission pretty funny for a few reasons, and very interesting for many others. Funny because my guy is complaining about the vagueness of the motives while admitting he killed his dad and not elaborating in the slightest. Interesting because... why did that happen? Levi doesn't respond to Nico's comment, so it seems like he didn't particularly dislike his father or anything? Especially in the context of the way he's talked about his family in the past.
Levi [responding to Eden, 2-1]: No, not at all. It's for the best that neither I nor my family see each other ever again. Eden: Eh? If you don't mind me asking, why? Levi: Why? My father, my mother, my brothers... We were all bad influences on each other. That's all that needs to be said.
I mean, Levi's father probably wasn't a shining beacon of hope or anything, given the police didn't even investigate his death, but like... lumping him in with the mother and the brothers, and just saying they were "bad influences" instead of, like, genuinely shitty people, it all makes it sound like there's no specific grudge against the father. Which makes sense, right? Even his father would feel like a stranger, as Levi will describe later. I really wish we get some elaboration on this, because I'm pretty curious about what kind of situation would lead Levi to this. I did try to check what's caused Levi to snap before, see if I could figure out what could have prompted it:
Ace [1-9]: What's the damn point of this whole trial if we're going to make choices based on dumb crap like that?? You useless shit-for-brains! Are you even taking any of this seriously?! Whit: Huh? Am I taking this seriously? Nah, not really. Ace: YOU--! Levi: Ace, calm down. You are not helping at all with this argument-- Ace: You shut your damn trap too, Levi!! I'm done with you trying to play the moral high ground by pretending to be some peacemaker! "Oh dear, oh my, calm down, everyone. Let's not fight, alright? Aren't I such a level-minded pacifist?" Stay the hell out of this if you know what's good for you. Levi: ... Ace: That's right. Shut your damn mouth, you coward-- Levi: Fuck. Off. Ace. How far do you want to push it? Do you think that I don't have a limit to my patience? I would gladly strangle you right here and now to shut you up if I were allowed. But if you're the coward I know you to be, then you should back up before you dig your own grave. So shut. Your mouth. Before I shut it for you.
Uh... Personal attacks against Levi? Yeah I have no idea what the hell his father could have done to prompt the murder. As usual, we're missing too much critical information to make a call on it. I'm gonna wager a guess that Levi didn't plan the murder, but rather it was an in the moment decision, but again I have no actual way to be sure.
Levi [continued]: Frankly speaking, I see no reason to remain hung up over some incident that is long past, especially as it ultimately had no impact on my life. Eden: You forgot about all of the things you did simply because you didn't face any consequences? That's incredibly selfish! Shouldn't you feel even a little bit bad? Those were human lives you took! I don't know what happened within your own family, so I can't pretend to understand why you killed. But even then, I'm sure those other people had families and friends who cried over their deaths!
Again the responders; remember how Eden feels guilty over both Min and Arei's death even though she never "faced any consequences" for them (mainly because she didn't actually do anything wrong but you get the idea)? Yeah that.
Levi [continued]: *sigh* I wonder if I should really tell you the truth, or if it's best to keep it to myself. I don't know how you all will see me after this. Teruko: You've already admitted to murdering 4 people. If you insist on not being completely honest with a secret this bad, then you're going to be the next one on the chopping block. Out with it.
Considering the stuff he says later, it's interesting to me that Levi seems to be more worried about revealing his lack of empathy than admitting to murder, especially with the knowledge that he's only doing this because he thinks being honest will make him "a good person."
However, I think it makes sense. Amongst the cast, there's already several people who either killed or tried to: Xander, Min, and Nico. But a lot of the others still speak of them in good terms; David talked about how good of a person Xander was for several minutes, Eden has made it clear she still misses Min, and Hu still defends Nico. Not to mention that Levi himself already threatened to kill Ace, and got called "a good person" by Eden just a few hours later. That means that, although admitting to murder will probably make the others more wary of him, there's precedent that Levi will still have people who stick by him after all's said and done.
Meanwhile, as far as Levi can tell, he's the only one who doesn't understand empathy in the slightest. And that means he has no way of telling how the others will feel about him if he reveals it, which is why he's more nervous about it than the murders. It plays on the themes of feeling disconnected from the rest of humanity that characters like Nico (via gender identity) and David-
Tally 5 Page: "... I wasn't capable of ever becoming human in the first place."
-have going on, which is definitely something that's cool to mull over. I hope these three get some kind of interaction about this in the future.
By the way, as always I'm just kinda guessing why Levi does the things he does and says the things he says, I could always be wrong.
Levi [continued]: It's not really that I don't care about killing people. Rather, it's more accurate to say that I don't care about people at all. No matter how much I hear about such things like empathy or compassion or love, none of those concepts resonate with me. Are those emotions really universal? The idea that people naturally "care" about others is a completely foreign concept to me. Nico: Eh? What are you saying? Levi: Judging by your reaction, I suppose that's a bad thing. But I wouldn't understand why. On the other side of this planet, there's a person who's suffering. Maybe they're even drawing their last breath. But none of you care, do you? Why would you? They're a stranger, after all. You don't know them. Their life holds no consequence for you. For me, everyone I've ever known is that distant stranger. It doesn't matter how long I've known you, how much we've done for each other, or even if you were my own father... You're still a stranger to me. And if tomorrow it turned out you all had passed away, I'd care as much as if we had never met.
So here's the big reveal, bolded text and all. Levi has extremely low empathy. I'm not gonna try to assign any specific disorder because I'd have no idea what I'd be talking about, but the empathy thing is pretty clear. I'm also no authority on whether this would be good representation for that or not, but for what it's worth, I think it's done pretty well. Levi's perspective is presented neutrally, in a way that shows his lack of empathy doesn't inherently make him a bad person, but not shying away from some of the real effects that can come from it (combined with other factors of course), such as the whole 4 murders situation.
I also like the way Levi describes it. It does a good job of getting the audience to understand his feelings, while still holding quite a bit of characterization in there. For example, the reason he gives for why the cast wouldn't care about the stranger on the other side of the world is because "their life holds no consequence to you." Even when trying to speak from the others' perspective, his understanding of why someone would care about someone else is still shaped entirely by what tangible effect that person has in the other's life, in a way sorting people by "holds consequence/holds no consequence."
Eden [continued]: But you're a good person. Why are you saying these things when it's clearly not true? You're so kind to everyone. You're always helping others out, even when it'd be easier not to. Like that time Ace almost died. You kept trying to help him, even if he always pushed you away. Isn't that what "a good person" does? Levi: In all honesty... I don't personally care what happens to Ace. Whether he lives or dies is none of my concern in the end. Ace: ...?! Levi: But it is a "good" thing to make sure someone else doesn't die, even if I personally do not care about the outcome. I truly believe that. But I adhere to that principle out of duty, not sentimentality. Does that make any sense?
So I'm gonna do a funny here and skip Ace's reaction to this, because that's more for the Ace section than this one. I also already talked about Eden's reaction to this.
Instead, I'll focus on Levi, particularly the question of "does Levi actually care about Ace?" To answer that, it'll be helpful to get the full Veronika Breakdown TM.
Veronika [continued]: Hm hm... I understand now. You're quite the interesting person, Levi. From what I've seen of you so far, your personality has been awfully inconsistent. It's like you don't know how to act. Trying to act like "a good person" without any intuitive sense of what's good or bad is hard, right? For someone like you, who lacks compassion, it must be quite difficult to pretend to be nice. You're always guessing as to what a normal human would do in your situation. You're so awkward in social settings because you can't tell what other people want. You act like a big pushover because if you go the other direction and stand up for yourself, you won't know where to stop. You offer to do things for others because you've observed that "good people" help others, and you parrot noble assurances without understanding why. Such things like that. Not only are you trying to act without a script, but you don't even understand the story. And you slip up constantly. Levi: You explained it better than I could. You really have an intuitive understanding of other people, Veronika. That's a trait I envy. The way I see it, it would be beneficial if I was "a good person." Then other people would trust me and not pick fights with me anymore, and they'd do things for me because they "liked" me. If I was a good person, then I wouldn't have to live a life full of violence anymore. I did everything so that I could have a better life.
Okay hold on there's a bunch to talk about here. Let me do that before circling back to the Ace Question.
Veronika is thankfully good enough at describing the stuff she said that I don't feel the need to elaborate on that. It's basically just a perfect read of Levi's actions so far under this new frame of someone who lacks empathy yet still is a good person. His awkwardness, his outbursts towards Ace, him being sort of a pushover, everything. I also like the little comment of Levi envying Vero's understanding of people, it's neat characterization.
Aside from that, there's also cool contrast between the way Levi sees being a good person as a sort of purely pragmatic social contract (being good leads to a peaceful life and ensures others help you) and Eden, which as referenced earlier sees friendship in a purely emotional and non-transactional way. Not exactly fully comparable, but close enough, and still worth mentioning given the chapter starts with a conversation between the two of them about how they're good people. Both of these have their merit, the point is that, in the end, no matter the reason you have for doing good things, regardless if it's out of sentimentality or just duty, doing good is enough to be a good person. While still of course keeping in mind Arei's message that no one is effortlessly good 100% of the time, and simply trying to be as good as you can be and improve on your flaws is enough.
Also, "I did everything so I could have a better life," huh?
Arturo [referring to Felicity's suicide, 2-10]: How is it possibly my fault that I wanted to live my own life!?
Get paralleled, idiot >:D
Wanting better things for yourself can end up having good effects on others (Levi being good to the cast), or negative (Felicity dying), fun contrast.
But I'm beating around the bush. The question I asked earlier, does Levi actually care about Ace?
Well, there's definitely room for interpretation, but my read is... well, not in the usual way. I mean, Levi explicitly says he doesn't particularly care if Ace lives or dies, so that's kind of a giveaway that he still very much does not feel empathy towards him. To better understand Levi's perspective, it might be helpful to analyze the previously mentioned Hu-Nico and Levi-Ace parallels.
Fandom has long since grouped together Hu and Levi as the "parental figures" of the group, and while I don't particularly enjoy applying familial relations to friendships, there's some basis for the interpretation. They both (to varying effect) commonly act as peacemakers and moderators in the context of the group, but have had this position compromised by emotional outbursts (Hu's defense of Nico and Levi's threats to Ace). Hell, there's even parallels in the way people react to some of these outbursts.
Levi [after the previously linked outburst, 1-9]: I'm terribly sorry for that, everyone. Please continue discussing as you were earlier. Ace: So scary!!
Rose [reacting to Hu's "fuck David" outburst, 2-12]: Wow. Hu can be scary.
To be fair the 2-12 outburst is far more justified than a lot of Hu's others, but you get the point.
They both act this way for similar reasons; to control the cast's perception of them. Hu wishes to be seen as reliable in order to feel useful as a way to counteract her suicidal tendencies and self-loathing, while Levi wishes to be seen as a good person for the reasons he states (to live a peaceful life where others do things for him). And in order to do this, they've both chosen to focus on one person in particular to "protect" or help in some way; Nico for Hu, Ace for Levi. The reasons for this are different mind you, but the effect is similar enough.
However, while it's still unclear why exactly Hu is so adamant about Nico in particular, we kind of know why Levi is focused on Ace. Simply put, before the second trial, Ace was sort of the only person who had legitimate reasons to dislike Levi, at least in Levi's mind. Because of the death threat in trial one of course. Most people haven't really expressed an opinion on Levi either way, but they're civil and at least neutral towards him. Hell, Eden even specifically says Levi's a good person after the death threat, and since she's a pretty rational person, it follows most of the cast would see him that way as well, given how quickly they all moved on from the death threat.
Ace was the exception, however. Ace was very explicitly (and understandably) pissed at Levi for the death threat, so he stood as somewhat of a threat to Levi's goal of being seen as a "good person." Levi trying to fix things with Ace is an extension of this goal, and I don't think there's much else to it. Even to the very end, Levi's frustration at Ace doesn't come from a sense of betrayal or sadness or remorse for not being able to stop the murder, or anything like that. Levi only gets frustrated at his inability to understand Ace, which we already knew from his envy of Veronika's psychoanalysis abilities is a point of insecurity for him.
Ace [2-16]: I just needed a reason to stay mad at you, any reason at all, goddamnit! [sic] Levi: Why? Why do you have to force yourself to be angry at me? You just said you know that you're in the wrong, so why do you still do it?! I don't understand. I can't understand you, no matter how hard I try.
Levi, under this reading, still doesn't "care" that Ace is about to die, not in the way Eden felt bad about Min's death for example. He's frustrated that he's trying to be a good person towards Ace, and it isn't working for reasons he can't grasp. More on those reasons in the Ace section.
I am very curious as to how he'll react to Ace wanting to speed up his execution to try and save his life, and I predict Levi will probably try his best to honor Ace's memory and his sacrifice, but as always, out of duty and not sentimentality. Sorry Acevi fans, hope you still find a way to make it work :/
Since we're on the topic (and Ace's section is gonna be long enough as is), I'll talk about the other side of the Hu-Nico and Levi-Ace parallels, the way the "protected" act in respects to the "protectors." The main point of contrast is that, originally, Ace specifically sought out Levi for protection, while Nico never asked Hu for it.
Teruko [1-2]: Since when were you two so friendly? I distinctly recall yesterday a certain someone being terrified whenever Levi came near him. Ace: Whaaaat? Me, scared? Are you just making things up? Teruko: ... Ace: Okay, fine. Yeah, Levi's scary as hell! But I realized that MonoTV is even scarier than Levi! At least Levi is sorta safe to be around. And I like to be safe, you know?
Nico [to Hu, 2-14]: I never asked you to defend me--
Then comes the aspect of "betrayal" in both these relationships, where the roles are flipped. It's Levi who originally "betrays" Ace by threatening him, while it's Nico who "betrays" Hu by trying to frame her with the wire. However, Ace takes this betrayal much more personally than Hu, getting mad at Levi while Hu continues to defend Nico. As a result, Ace gets a bit of a victim complex, while Nico fully acknowledges blame for the murder attempt. Etc.
Okay time to continue with 2-13 because no we're not done with it.
Levi [continued]: After listening to David, I concluded that a good person would also be honest, even if the truth makes them look bad. Ace: You're taking advice from David of all people? Look at this asshole! David: Try looking in a mirror before you talk, Ace. Levi: I thought David was a prime example of a good person. Is he not? David: Wow, you really don't understand people at all, do you. Levi: I don't want to distract you all from this case any further. So, I apologize for this tangent.
Another really cool bit of characterization here. Levi struggles so much with understanding most people's sense of morality that he still thinks David "I actively tried to kill everyone here by pretending to be the blackened" Chiem is a good person. There's also the quick implication that David doesn't see himself as a good person, but I feel we're well past the point where that's news.
We also get the reason why Levi even said all this; he thinks being honest will help him be a good person, and presumably only brought it up after the whole David thing got resolved because "good person" David was (eventually) honest with both his motive secret and the reason he tried to get voted out. Or, rather, Levi thinks David was honest on the latter. Fair ig.
Levi has a few other lines in this part, but the next most striking thing to talk about is, fittingly, not a set of words, but an image.
Levi's protective streak has always been a big part of his character, and now he's literally taken a bullet (or 5) for Teruko. Just for the record, I imagine he'll survive, because there'd be no real point to most of the end of 2-16 if he didn't.
The big question around this is, naturally, why did Levi jump in? Obviously, it's not that he particularly cares if Teruko lives or dies, not from an emotional standpoint anyways. It could also just be Teruko's luck somehow manipulating him the way it seems to have influenced Min somewhat, but I can't see that as the only reason this happened. So, like most people, I believe he feels he owes Teruko.
Teruko [1-2]: No... I should be the one apologizing. It's my fault you got hurt. Levi: What do you mean? Without your warning, I could have gotten fatally injured. I should thank you that my wound is not more severe.
Teruko warning him in the prologue is the most obvious case where Teruko saved Levi, especially since it parallels this scene. Teruko saves Levi from execution, so he returns the favor. However, we also need to keep in mind that, without Teruko carrying, these people would not have made it through the trials, so Levi might feel he owes her for that too. And "good people" repay their debts, don't they?
Very interested in seeing where Levi's character goes from here!
Teruko Tawaki
You know a series is doing something right when the protag has so much shit going on in a trial where she didn't even have strong relationships with either the victim or the killer. Now, a big chunk of her screen time was devoted to crime solving, so her section might end up smaller than Levi's even though I consider her more important, but the order of this analysis is kinda all over the place anyways :v
I'll go in the order of Teruko moments as they appeared, though I'll skip the whole "fix my mistake" thing since I already mentioned it in the Min section.
David [2-12]: Xander is a good person. He's the only good person I've ever known. I swear, I'll follow in his footsteps and-- Teruko: And get everyone killed in the class trial? Xander is a good person? Are you hearing yourself right now? What virtuous reason could he possibly have for trying to kill me and everyone else here? David: I'm sure he had a good reason. I believe that he did. Xander is not the kind of person to do anything for frivolous purposes. Teruko: You *believe* that he had a good reason!? Hah! Based on what? The 3 days you spent with a fan who was too infatuated with the ideal of you to treat you like an actual human-- David: SHUT UP!
She says all this like she wasn't play-acting her Xanruko fix-it AU with cacti, like, two days ago lol.
Teruko Cactus [2-3]: That's right. Give up now, and surrender. Then I'll consider letting you live. Xander Plant: Teruko... I've changed my mind. I promise, I will turn my back on whoever made me do this and stay by your side from now on. Do you forgive me?
I don't actually have much to say about this. Teruko's complicated feelings about Xander aren't exactly news; genuinely angry at him for attempting to murder her, also genuinely upset that things didn't go better. No wonder David's uncritical view of the guy ticked her off.
2-13 had a lot of murder solving from Teruko, which is cool but not crucial for character analysis. Meanwhile, 2-14 had quite a bit more going on.
Rose [2-14]: I... I'm sorry for being useless. Maybe if I tried harder, if I just got over myself-- Teruko: Rose. Don't blame yourself anymore. You are helpful. It's because of you that I can solve this murder. Besides... I'm as much to blame as you. Maybe more, even. If only I listened to you when you said the tape was missing, then maybe I would have realized the truth of this case much earlier. Once again, I've made a stupid mistake. I simply wanted to believe that I could make it through this killing game without relying on anyone else. That I could be dismissive of everyone around me without consequences. So I refused to listen to anyone other than myself. I thought that if I did that, then I could avoid a repeat of the last trial, where I had made the mistake of trusting people too much. But now I'm making different mistakes instead. Again and again, I keep messing up this class trial with hasty assumptions and overlooked evidence. So... Rose: ... Teruko: ... Thank you, Rose.
Yuri stays winning.
Again, it's hard for me to add any commentary when Teruko's just... explaining all the themes out loud. We go back to the idea of Teruko fixing mistakes that she seems to have taken to heart from Min's CH1 breakdown (YURI STAYS WINNING), which ties into the idea of self-betterment that Arei's scene conveyed; and we basically have Teruko stating a reworded version of her secret quote, "It is an equal failing to trust everybody, and to trust no one at all." It makes me wonder how Teruko will behave moving forward. Will she trust a few select people? Will she continue to keep other's at arm's length, but being slightly more open? Well, based on what she does with Eden, it seems Teruko is willing to trust select people until the situation merits distrust, which is a pretty solid way of looking at things.
Speaking of that.
Eden [2-14]: I just wanted to help Arei... I didn't kill her... Teruko: You know I can't just take your words at face value, Eden. Eden: Please, Teruko... You're my friend, aren't you? Friends help each other... So please, help me... [...] Teruko: Eden. Eden: *sniffing* Teruko: Eden. Pick up your head. Look at me. At this point in the trial, since I've narrowed Arei's killer down to just two suspects, I'm going to pursue each suspect individually under the assumption that they're the killer. That way, I can see if any evidence matches up to them only. [...] So for now, I'm going to assume you're innocent. Eden: W-What? Really? Thank you so much, Teruko... Teruko: Don't... get me wrong. This isn't out of kindness or pity or anything else. This is only because you helped me in the last trial. I'm repaying your favor, and nothing else. That's why I'll trust you, just this once. Eden: Teruko... T... Thank you, Teruko... Teruko: ... Let go of me.
YURI STAYS WINNING!!!
That's what I was talking about. Choosing to trust Eden over Ace, but being willing to turn suspicion on the Clockmaker if Ace turns out innocent. A very reasonable approach! We love character development in this house.
That said, Teruko is still being a bit of a tsundere, with the whole "repaying a favor" thing. Levi parallels anyone? Well, not exactly, since Teruko does feel empathy towards Eden, but close enough. What's more interesting is that Teruko is using the exact transactional logic that Eden warned her against, which is intriguing setup for the future when it becomes more undeniable that Teruko is definitely not doing this just to repay a favor.
Also, the Trauma remains. Teruko telling Eden to let go fully completes the parallel to the Min scene, where she says the same thing (among others). I imagine our girl won't be too receptive of hugs for a while.
Before we get to the next big moment, real quick, we gotta fulfill our "Teruko's life is miserable" quota.
Teruko [to Ace, 2-15]: And three. You took the tape for first aid. Arturo: That's ridiculous. Who uses non-medical tape for first aid? That's sickening. Teruko: It's not that weird. I do it all the time.
Alright quota fulfilled. Let's move on. In this case, I'll skip to when Teruko gives up on the "show me your injuries Ace" line of reasoning.
Teruko [2-15]: No. It's fine. That's not a very fair line of logic, so forget it. You were almost murdered, after all. I should have understood that.
I don't know why Teruko really thought this line of logic was even worth following in the first place, but it makes sense for her character to ignore Ace's possible emotions in favor of the trial. But it's also cool to see her backing down when she realizes the harm she may be causing, especially as someone who has very notably hid how much her own murder attempt affected her, and in particular the wound that came from it.
Teruko [2-15]: The point of this trial is to determine who the killer is, not to determine every single little detail of what happened. It doesn't matter that you're not convinced. It's not going to help you, nor change your fate. No matter how you feel or what you think, nothing will change. [...] I've been fighting this entire trial to find the truth using real evidence. And when I make mistakes, I own up to them. What have you contributed? Show me some concrete proof of your innocence. Otherwise, shut up and stop wasting everyone's time. Ace: ... Teruko: Are you silent now? What happened to all those things you were shouting earlier? Don't you have anything to say for yourself? Ace: ... Teruko: Any evidence, any deductions to show that you're innocent? Come on, Ace! Don't you want to live?! Defend yourself!
So, a few things. First, regarding that second paragraph. "It's not going to change your fate"? "Nothing will change"? We'll circle back to it, but it seems Teruko is projecting how she feels about her own fate (before the Levi incident at least) on Ace. You could even say-
Literature Girl Insane: Even if we cry make noise shout go mad - this world won't change!
The foils ever.
Anyways, I assume that's why Teruko gets so worked up over Ace remaining silent. She sees a bit of her situation in trial 1 (almost murdered, suspected as the killer) in Ace, so her emotions run high with both the frustration of a long trial and the bad memories this is probably bringing up. At least, that's how I interpret it.
Also another mention of correcting mistakes, which shows up one more time before the episode ends, which I already mentioned as being tied back to Min and Arei; alongside with another "fate" drop. "Fate" is becoming the new "good person" isn't it :p
Teruko [2-15]: Confront the mistakes you've made. Then accept death. That's the fate of everyone who choose [sic] to participate in this killing game.
Also I find it endlessly funny that Teruko's reasoning for the Closing Argument being necessary reads a lot like "this is a DR trial we gotta do this, it's in the contract." Consider me amused.
But I've beaten around the fate bush enough. Let's get all of that over with in one fell swoop.
Teruko [2-16]: It's just... misfortune. That's why Ace killed. That's all.
Teruko [regarding her execution, 2-16]: What's the point [of running]? I should have known this would happen. [...] Even if I shield myself behind others, even if I search for an escape, it always comes down to this. I have to face the consequences of my actions. There's no escaping that. [...] Arturo: What are you talking about?? You're going to be killed!! Teruko: Killed? I doubt it. As if something so kind could happen to me. [...] I won't die, even if MonoTV puts a hundred bullets in my body. I'll only be badly injured. Possibly lose a body part. Maybe I'll even end up in a coma for months. [...] But I won't die. I never will. There's nothing I can do but accept my fate. It's what I deserve, after all. [...] I was perfectly willing to get shot. I thought I didn't have to care about what happened to other people, and especially not about what happened to me. I thought that if I lived alone and died alone, nothing would stain my conscience. Even if that was a selfish way to live. But even so...
Teruko [to MonoTV, 2-16]: Can you really say it's fate's fault for everything you've done, and pretend that you hold no blame in the matter? I have always said that my misfortune, my personality, the choices I make, everything was all a product of a bad luck that I can't control. That I grew up in such terrible circumstances, so I was destined to grow up to be a terrible person. That everyone else abandoned me, so it's not my fault that I'm alone. I want to say it's fate's fault, and that I had no choice in the matter. But, even so... Even so... Everyone. Xander, Min, Arei, Ace. Maybe even Levi. Is it my fault that they died? [...] MonoTV: You have to decide the answer for yourself. Teruko: Whether it was the fault of fate, or my fault... I already knew the answer. I had known what the answer was since a long, long time ago.
Alright I made myself sad, so something's been achieved, I guess. Poor Teruko :(
Just to start somewhere, we get confirmation of Teruko's suicidal tendencies in the present, which was already implied strongly enough, but now she straight up says she considers death something "kind to her." Just sad in general, but I wonder if there will be some discussions of it with the fellow suicidal characters like Hu. In fact, I wonder if that's the reason that Hu was the one to see the scar on Teruko's back during 2-2; so she'd have a vague idea of Teruko's backstory for some interaction in the future.
But the main point of these scenes is Teruko's relationship with the concept of fate. She basically goes through an entire character arc from the moment she says Ace's murder was just misfortune to right after Levi jumps in to save her. Basically, she used to blame fate (or "bad luck") for everything she did and what happened to her, thinking that just accepting this fate would allow her to live more easily. Especially noticeable because part of her "bad luck" is being betrayed, which gives way to her trust issues.
Teruko [2-2]: If I get in a car, it'll crash. If I stand in a construction site, it'll crumble to dust. If I trust others, they'll turn their back on me.
Hence her internal monologue about "living so nothing stains my conscience." If everything that happens to her is fate's fault, then she doesn't have to change, she doesn't have to confront her faults. Even when she talked about accepting the consequences for her actions, it was always in the context of accepting her fate. If she just accepts whatever consequences her actions bring, then she can excuse herself from fighting back against that, which is an easier way to live, but as she says, could be considered selfish. What's easier for Teruko is not always best for others, exemplified perfectly by Levi protecting her; Teruko chose not to fight her fate, and it got Levi hurt. Funnily enough, this somewhat parallels Hu feeling selfish for not sharing her secret, which is fun contrast. Hu is more justified in not sharing her secret, so it shows that feeling selfish for doing things that are good for you can be pretty bad. Meanwhile, Teruko shows that not taking others into account can also end up hurting people.
Of course, the whole "not fighting fate" thing also obviously parallels Mr Literature Boy Insane's feelings on the whole thing, to the point where they have practically the same character flaw. Believing themselves and others unable to change as a result of fate is the way they try living with themselves, because of the whole self-loathing thing, but that means they're resistant to changing their flaws. MonoTV says similar things, but it's a machine so it's not so much a flaw as just the nature of its character. It was a flaw Arei had, though, but she grew out of it through Character Development, similarly to the way it's implied Teruko is growing out of the "all fate's fault" mindset in the last inner monologue. You might also notice that tying fate into self-betterment allows you to draw a connection to the theme of admitting mistakes and fixing them, tying to Min who is also connected to the concept of fate through her entire backstory of being "destined" to be the Ultimate Student from the moment her family accepted XF-Ture's Tech contract, and obviously Min contrasts Xander who is all about fighting fate as the Ultimate Rebel, and that's without mentioning all the other "fate" bullshit going on and-
Yeah you get the idea. Too much peak for me to write it all out.
Very excited to see where Teruko's character goes now that she's not going to blame her bad luck for everything now. I worry she'll swing too hard the other way and end up blaming herself for things she shouldn't, but oh well, that's just more character development to be had.
That was the biggest Teruko thing, but there's still more to cover.
Teruko [to Ace, 2-16]: If you can't [attack MonoTV]... If you can't do that, then tell me, why did Arei have to die?! Ace: ... Teruko: It's because unlike Arei, *you* couldn't make amends with the people you made enemies out of. *You* were too scared to confront the people you hurt, say you're sorry, and promise to be a better person. So instead you took out your own personal problems on other people by murdering someone who had nothing to do with you! Arei died because you're a coward, Ace!
Uh... someone's projecting~
Teruko [already linked, 2-2]: But if you start talking about me and saying that I could be a good person if only I make an attempt to change, then I'm going to stop you right there. Don't say that I could be a good person, because all it'll do is make me feel bad that I'm not.
Damn it's almost like she hates herself because she already knows deep down that her mindset is flawed and so when she sees someone else behaving like she does/did she gets upset at them that's crazy :O
(I mean it's not 1:1 because Teruko never did anything as bad as Ace, but the point stands :v)
Final note, as always, voice acting was peak, just that there's too many good examples to point them all out one by one. Same with Levi btw, I think I forgot to mention it in his section.
Teruko continues to be probably my favorite protag of any DR or DR inspired story, though as always I'm working on a small sample size. Really excited to see her development in the future!
Ace Markey
Well if it isn't the man of the hour! It's only natural the blackened gets to close things out. Let's do the same thing as we did with Teruko and go by (mostly) chronological order.
That includes the quick, retrospective observation that a lot of Ace's behavior in the trial and investigation now needs to be re-analyzed with the understanding he's the blackened. It mostly just adds an extra layer to Ace's constant accusations towards Nico, though, since Ace didn't really do much most of the trial. The only other notable thing he did was revealing David's secret, and even then, nothing too big. I know it's a bit silly to go so hard on Nico when David is almost easier to frame, but this is Ace we're talking about. He's emotional and not quite the most strategic, so nothing weird there.
Although, speaking of Ace knowing about David's secret, why did he not hear the end of the Arei-David conversation? I doubt he's hiding it, because he doesn't really have a reason to, so apparently he just, like, left. I guess he just didn't care enough :p
Finally getting to PT 2 itself, we have a 2-13 speech we skipped earlier, don't we?
Levi [2-13]: I don't personally care what happens to Ace. Whether he lives or dies is none of my concern in the end. Ace: ...?! Levi: But it is a "good" thing to make sure someone else doesn't die, even if I personally do not care about the outcome. I truly believe that. But I adhere to that principle out of duty, not sentimentality. Does that make any sense? Ace: You... Hah. Hahaha. You-- You fucking piece of shit. Levi: ... Ace: I was right all along. That you felt bad for me... That you actually wanted to help me... That even if everyone here treated me like shit, there was at least one person who still cared about me... That shit's too good to be true, isn't it? Yeah, good thing I didn't fall for that in the slightest. Not one bit. I was totally right all along to burn our friendship-- No, I can't even call it "friendship." There's only one person in my whole life who I've ever been able to call my friend. That I ever thought, even for just a short time, that you and I were "friends" is an insult to his memory. I probably sound real pathetic admitting that. But I'm not nearly as pathetic as you. After all, you're a piece of trash who probably has never had a single friend in your life. Levi: ... Ace: Got nothing to say to me now? That's fine. Hey, Levi. I really hope you fucking die.
Okay there is... so much to unpack there. Let's... start by the smaller thing, which is the Taylor Riley drop in "there's only one person in my whole life who I've ever been able to call my friend." This guy's name was revealed in a now deleted CH2 PT1 QnA answer, alongside with the name of a friend of Veronika's who gave her her green triangle earring, Alyssa Belyaeva. We got main series confirmation of the name in one of the graves of Thanatophobia, alongside the names of Elliot Cuevas and Felicity Giles.
We know... zero about Taylor, apart from the fact that he was Ace's friend and is now very evidently dead. Thankfully, we get a bit more context on his death by one of Ace's comments:
Ace [2-16]: Execute me right now, you hear me, MonoTV? MonoTV: ... Ace: Because... Because Levi is gonna fucking die, and I'm going to have a third goddamn death on my hands!
Third, huh? Arei, the hypothetical Levi death, and presumably Taylor. Sure, the third could be Ace himself, but I feel the line makes a bit more sense with Taylor.
So, Ace blames himself for the death of Taylor. Given he liked the guy, probably not intentional murder, but who knows what the hell he did. At this point, we really have no way to deduce the way Taylor died or how Ace could have caused it somehow, though. Maybe we'll get some answers in the Bonus Episode? Hopefully :p
But that's the easy part. The hard part is Ace's feelings towards Levi. Immediately, we can tell the whole "I never thought you cared about me, not one bit" thing is a complete lie, not just because the line itself is extremely unconvincing, but because of something Ace says later in this episode.
Ace [to Levi, 2-13]: You piece of shit. I can't believe there used to be a time I actually liked you.
So, yeah. Similarly, based on the fact that Ace wanted MonoTV to speed up the execution to try and save Levi's life despite his fear of death, we can infer that Ace is also lying when he tells Levi "I really hope you fucking die."
No, Ace really does care about Levi. For the reason stated at... some point in this analysis; Ace feels safer around Levi. And that creates a bit of a problem for him, because if he wants to escape the killing game, he's gonna have to kill Levi to do it. It's unclear if that's the reason he originally pushed Levi away, "burning their friendship to the ground" in his words, or if he just didn't want to trust him after the death threat in trial 1. However, guilt over trying to get Levi killed is definitely part of why he says this:
Ace [2-16]: I knew... I knew that I wasn't allowed to call [Levi] a murderer. I had no right to act betrayed, because I was the one who betrayed everyone. But still, I...! Levi: Why-- Ace: But still, I--! I don't care what it was! I don't care if it made me a hypocrite! Even if I was completely in the wrong, and even if it made my life worse! I just needed a reason to stay mad at you, any reason at all, goddamnit! Levi: Why? Why do you have to force yourself to be angry at me? You just said you know that you're in the wrong, so why do you still do it?! I don't understand. I can't understand you, no matter how hard I try. Ace: Good! Stay that way! I hope you never understand me, even after I'm buried a billion miles deep in the ground and you're weeping at my grave, you piece of shit!
Ace tries very hard to find reasons to hate Levi because he's afraid of growing close to anyone in the killing game, mostly because he thinks he'll be betrayed, but by the point he starts plotting murder, also because he's trying to kill them all. Being close to them is a good way to feel more horrible about himself than he already does.
To be clear, the reason I say the first reason is more important is because I think I can more or less pinpoint the moment Ace starts thinking about murder, and by that point he's already trying to cut Levi off.
Ace [2-2]: In this killing game, everyone is out to get me. Especially people who love picking fights with me, people like you [Teruko] and Levi. I can't believe I wasted my time with all that dumb shit like arm wrestling and running around screaming at meaningless stuff. I was fucking stupid to not take this killing game seriously from the start. I'm done with being everyone's kickable scaredy cat. The only thing I should do is look out for myself and myself alone.
Well he sure did take the killing game seriously after this point now didn't he?
Obviously, this is a pretty direct parallel to the way Teruko tried pushing everyone away in this chapter, and the way David pretends not to care about Arei after the magical girl transformation. More on this whole thing in a bit.
The relationship between Levi and Ace is one of contrast. Levi, who doesn't actually care about Ace the "usual way", chooses to try to get closer to him. Meanwhile, Ace cares about Levi maybe too much, and his fear of this attachment drives him to push Levi away. The yaoi truly is doomed with this one. Moving on.
Ace [to Nico and Hu, 2-14]: You two are a real fucking joke. It would have been one thing if Nico gets away scot-free with trying to kill me, but now they apparently also have a fucking defense brigade to shield them from even having to think about the fact that they're a murderer. Who's gonna stick up for me, huh? No one. Because I have a spine and I don't need other people to lie to me constantly to keep me happy.
Ace [to Nico, 2-14]: You tried to murder me. You fucking tried to murder me! And after all's said and done, you can't even say something as simple as "sorry"?!
Ace [to Teruko, 2-15]: Were you convinced by Eden because she had a little sob story ready? Should I start crying and wailing too to change your mind? Teruko-- No, everyone here. You're always attacking me for stupid reasons. Everyone always has it out for me. That pisses me off. All of you piss me off.
Ace [2-15]: You all actually think I'm too goddamn stupid to accomplish anything? Do you really think I'm 2 seconds away from choking on my own spit and passing out?
This is where we start to see Ace's persecution complex on this part, which was already alluded to in the previously linked 2-2 Ace quote. He thinks everyone is out to get him, and to an extent, he's not horribly wrong. Very few people in the cast have favorable opinions on Ace, and he knows that if he gets revealed as a murderer, that "few people" will likely turn to "no one." I mean, not even Levi wants to defend him.
Ace [2-15]: Hah... I expected everyone else to get on my ass, but for you of all people to think I'm the murderer... What happened to ever wanting to make things up, huh? Besides, between you and me, we both know who's really a murderer.
And hell, Nico's already tried to kill him! Ace is the victim in that situation, even if he did "start it."
Which gets us to one of the most interesting moral quandaries this trial presents us with, Milgram style. Because the thing is, Ace has given the cast reasons to dislike him. Ever since the start, he's been confrontational, insulting, and just generally not the most delightful person to be around. Especially to Nico, who he specifically targeted to bully. Obviously it doesn't justify being horrible to him back, including things like Hu's slap and Levi's death threat, and especially Nico's murder attempt, but... well, if people don't feel about Ace the same way they feel about some of the calmer cast members, there's a reason for it.
How justified is the cast in the things they say about Ace? How much of it is Ace's responsibility, and how much is it the cast's? How much responsibility do they hold for creating the hostile environment that pushed Ace into murder? How does the mastermind and the killing game itself factor into this valuation? These are all interesting questions the series asks us to ponder on, and by their nature don't have any one right answer. Especially because "blame for a thing that happened" isn't a number that can be evenly divided by percentage, it's a very complicated and subjective thing. J puts it pretty well in her speech to Ace in 2-15, giving her perspective as well.
J [2-15]: Maybe I was too harsh on you. Me and everyone else here, I don't think a single one of us stopped to think where the breaking point is. ...But. Murder is unacceptable, no matter what. Your problems might be awful, and they might be the worst in the world, but they're still not so bad that killing 13 people is acceptable. You can't be forgiven as a murderer just because your life sucks.
My personal opinions on this are probably best saved for when we get the full picture in just a moment.
And speaking of the full picture, since Ace's persecution complex feeds into his fear of death, why don't we skip right into the big speech?
Ace [already linked in the Hu section, 2-15]: ...... God damn it. I'm such a piece of shit. [...] You're right. I'm screwed. There's no way I'm making it out of this trial alive. I just... wanted to stall for time. I'm scared of dying, I really am. [...] I killed Arei. That's exactly right. Shit, it sounds really bad when I say it out loud. [...] Hu: Did you kill Arei because of MonoTV's motive? Because you wanted to keep your 'secret' hidden-- Ace: Hell no! I don't give a damn about that motive, or my dumb little secret, you idiot fuckwad! Who do you think I am, you?! *sigh* That wasn't why I killed her. I was scared of dying, that's all. [...]
Quick thing, but I think it's cool that the motive really had jack shit to do with the murder. Hate to bring the guy up so much, but it helps make David's "plan" of revealing all the secrets unequivocally wrong, which I feel is important for some of the themes of the chapter. In particular, the idea that gets pushed that everyone should be allowed to reveal their secrets at their own time, aka privacy is important. Nico's public secret reveal happened before they were ready to share, and that was a bad thing, after all. And a lot of the conflict in this chapter came from MonoTV giving the motives in general.
Ace [continued]: I'm definitely going to die in this killing game if I don't escape. Everyone hates me, right? Because I'm a volatile asshole who can't help but pick fights and make people mad at me. Veronika was right. If pushed to kill, everyone would feel the least guilt if they killed me. They might even have some sort of grudge. I wouldn't be surprised. When Nico tried to kill me, that just confirmed it. There's a part of me that's a little pissed that Nico didn't succeed back then, because that would have saved me the trouble of having to go through this stupid-ass farce. Although I'd be real fuckin' pissed if they *did* successfully kill me. I'm kind of pissed at Nico for trying to kill me, either way. Nico: ...
Interesting to hear part of Ace wanted Nico to succeed. It certainly speaks to a great level of defeatism, where everything is horrible and death would be preferable, which parallels Teruko nicely. That defeatism for Ace comes partly from the persecution complex discussed earlier, and some other stuff we'll talk about in a moment.
Ace [continued]: But still! If I didn't kill someone and escape... then I was going to die. I'm fucking terrified of dying! I can't sleep at night because I keep thinking about how I'm going to die young in this goddamn killing game! I didn't want to die! I want to live. Just like everyone else. Live, and escape this killing game, and go back to my shitty life where I can't do anything on my own because I can't control myself. Back to that life where I can't do anything but a sport that I hate because I suck shit at everything else. I was forced into that fate, to kill someone because I'm scared. It was either that, or I would be killed first. There were no other options for me, because I'm a coward who can't fight my own fate. [...]
I think an underrated part of Ace's character is just how much damn symbolism is hidden in his talent.
The first connection is the more or less obvious "if I didn't kill someone, I would be killed first" mentality, where Ace literally views the killing game as a race to be the first blackened to get away with it. But that's almost an extension of the other connection.
You hear it from him here; he feels he completely lacks control of his life, that it's all decided by a fate he can't control, the same way that a jockey doesn't walk on their own, but rather is carried by a horse to their destination. And it's no wonder that this feeling of lacking control is referenced in his secret quote, "I don’t know what to do with myself anymore." After all, it's this feeling of lacking control of himself and his situation that causes him to seek control of anything he can, be it bullying Nico because he sees them as an easy target, distancing himself from others because it's easier to control his feelings that way, killing someone because it's the only way he can control his place in the killing game, or anything else I might be forgetting.
And this fear of lacking control is probably part of his fear of death, isn't it? Because no one can control what happens after death. Maybe yes, maybe not, but regardless, Ace's thanatophobia is pretty evident. I mean, it's the name of his execution, and it's a fitting one. Ultimately, Ace's fear of death is what gets him killed, both metaphorically because it's the reason he became a blackened, and literally because he dies of a fear-induced cardiac arrest. That, alongside with the incredible art and banger music, is why I consider Thanatophobia one of, if not the single best DR style execution I've ever seen. Simply peak.
Ace [continued]: Do you think I give a crap about you all? Why would that matter to me? No one gives a crap about me either! None of you even respect me enough to think I was capable of killing Arei! In fact, that made me feel way less guilty about killing-- [J makes her anti-murder speech] Ace: ... I know that [I can't be forgiven]. I'm the one who murdered Arei, so of course I know that. Arei... She was a piece of shit too. Just like me. Even if she said all that nice bullshit to Eden, there was no guarantee that she really was going to change and become a good person. Maybe if she lived, then by tomorrow she'd be right back to her annoying bitchy self. ... But at least she was trying. And I can't even change one thing about myself. Not my shitty job, not my shitty personality, nor my shitty life. I really am a piece of shit, huh?
At the end of the day, Ace is his own worst enemy. What really gets Ace killed (apart from the already mentioned fear of death) is the inability to change, to see the flaws in the way he behaves himself and try to better himself. Or, rather, he does see the flaws, he knows he's a target of the killing game because of his aggressiveness and that he drove himself into a corner out of fear, but he considers himself incapable of changing that. Changing is difficult, and Ace is scared to even try. Like he says, maybe Arei couldn't have managed it either, but she was trying. And that's what ultimately separates the two.
In case it isn't obvious, my take on who's to blame for everything that happened is pretty much squarely on Ace. Sure, there were things the others did to Ace which aren't justified, but you can't blame people for disliking someone that knows he's unlikable and cannot find it in himself to try to change that. Arei tried to change; she died a good person. Levi tried to make amends for trial 1; he's a good person too. The tragedy of the situation is that Ace himself could have been a good person too, because everyone can be, but it's a decision that must be made, as Eden put it earlier in the chapter. And it's a difficult one, too difficult for Ace.
Teruko, David, all these people... they can also be "good people," in the sense of always trying to be "less shitty together" in Arei's words. Ace is a cautionary tale of how not doing so can end up really, really badly.
Which is the setup for Teruko and David's continued foiling, isn't it? Teruko will presumably look at all of Ace's flaws (lack of trust, unwillingness to change, accepting fate without fighting it) as pitfalls to avoid, because of how similar the two of them acted in CH2. Meanwhile, David, since he heard Arei's speech and knows just how hard she tried to change, will see those same flaws as strengths. In his eyes, Arei died because she trusted the note, because she tried to change, because she tried to defy her nature. At least, that's my prediction. Where all of that will go is anyone's guess.
But, how do we know that Ace could have been a good person? How do we know that it isn't David who is right, that neither Ace nor Arei could have ever gotten better, had they simply tried? Well, simply put, because in the end, Ace does start changing. As a final, tragic note, Ace's ability to confront fate and try to correct his flaws only surfaces when it's far too late. And not only when he punches MonoTV, though that also is a good example of it, but also when he chooses to face execution quicker in an attempt to save Levi.
Ace [already linked, 2-16]: Execute me right now, you hear me, MonoTV? MonoTV: ... Ace: Because... Because Levi is gonna fucking die, and I'm going to have a third goddamn death on my hands! Arturo: E-Even then, there's no guarantee that he'll live--- Ace: Shut up! What the hell are you talking about? Aren't you a surgeon? Can't you fix him? Arturo: I--! I'm not that kind of surgeon! I've told you, over and over, I have no experience with saving lives! Something like this! There's no way I can do it-- Ah! Ace: SHUT UP! Shut up, Arturo! You *can* save his life! Shut the fuck up! Stop saying you can't do it, because you can! Don't you understand? I'm going to die right now, and you're going to live! So decide whether you want to at least *try* and put in some fucking effort for once, or keep making excuses for yourself like a sniveling coward for the rest of your life. I don't even get to make that decision anymore! Stop complaining, you whiny little shit! Grow some fucking balls and save someone's goddamn life, asshole! Because you can!
There's layers to Ace's shouting barrage at Arturo. Obviously part of it is just Ace trying to convince himself that Arturo can save Levi so he can die with a relatively clearer conscience, but there's also a sort of self-awareness of Ace's faults in the things he says. Try swapping "save Levi's life" for "be a better person," and pretend it's being said to Ace by someone else who is about to die.
You *can* [be a good person]! Shut the fuck up! Stop saying you can't do it, because you can! Don't you understand? I'm going to die right now, and you're going to live! So decide whether you want to at least *try* and put in some fucking effort for once, or keep making excuses for yourself like a sniveling coward for the rest of your life. I don't even get to make that decision anymore! Stop complaining, you whiny little shit! Grow some fucking balls and [be a better person], asshole! Because you can!
Because moments ago, it was Ace who was making excuses like a coward for why he felt he would never be a good person, and why he had no control over his shitty personality that made everyone hate him and made him a target of the killing game, etc. He never put in the effort to change because he thought it was pointless, that he was unable to, and didn't realize the falseness of that preconception until he was faced with death. Seems I was on the right track when I connected his thanatophobia to his issues with control; death robs him of the decision to try and be a good person ("I don't even get to make that decision anymore!"), which he hadn't even realized he had until that moment.
It's no wonder Ace was a popular survivor guess; he could have changed, could have been a good person. And despite the harm he's caused, the way he robbed Arei of the opportunity to do what he couldn't and attempt to change, the intention he had of killing everyone in the trial, his death remains a tragedy for the hypothetical of what could have been. Maybe if Levi had managed to properly reach him the way Eden reached Arei, this could have all been avoided. But alas, Ace didn't accept the hand strectched out to him, and now it's too late to fix things.
I said during my reactions that I felt just as emotional during Ace's execution as I did with Min's, which was certainly true and very impressive given my massive bias towards the Ultimate Student. And while I can't say that I'll miss Ace as much as I miss Min (because come on), I'll certainly hold him close to my heart for as long as I live regardless.
As a final note, holy shit the voice acting. If I pointed out every line where the acting for Ace was spectacular, I would be here all day. I doubt I need to elaborate on this; the sheer perfection of the performance should be obvious to anyone who can hear it. Godspeed Seth Raffield, you truly were incredible. Can't wait to hear what you do in the Bonus Episode, provided there is one.
---
I am free! Holy shit that took way too fucking long. I need to figure out a better way to do this shit for later chapters, because geez. You have no idea how much Tumblr's drafts lagged because of this shit, I had to write the final sections in different drafts and copy paste them over because it was unbearable. Not to mention hitting the goddamn link limit which is just clinically insane from me. Anyways, if you somehow managed to read all of that, I feel genuinely sorry for you. You know you can be a good person if you try, right? There's no need to punish yourself like this.
I'm being silly, of course. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!
#drdt#danganronpa despair time#drdt spoilers#david chiem#teruko tawaki#eden tobisa#ace markey#levi fontana#min jeung#arturo giles#veronika grebenshchikova#j rosales#nico hakobyan#whit young#charles cuevas#monotv#drdt analysis#arei nageishi#rose lacroix#hu jing
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As someone who only recently got properly into Magic this year my stance on the recent UB Standard legality is that so long as the mechanics are good, fun to play, and work well with the other Standard legal sets then I don't particularly care if Final Fantasy is legal.
But.
There is something about the Marvel Universe being Standard Legal that feels off. Final Fantasy shares many aesthetic and gameplay similarities to Magic that make it slide into the general ecosystem better from a Look/Feel perspective. Meanwhile, as much of a Spider-Man fan as I am, it is going to be incredibly weird seeing Peter Parker or Miles Morales face off against the critters of Bloomburrow, even more than Thunder Junction or Duskmourn do.
I will attend the Final Fantasy and Spider-Man prereleases because I love playing Magic and I am interested in both sets, but I cannot shake the feeling that this decision makes the overall play experience strange, especially since SIX Standard sets of a year is way overdoing it (maybe 3 In-Universe sets and 1 UB set would be a better balance?)
I understand the decision from a logical standpoint but the emotional reaction to Magic losing some of its Qualia is something that I can't ignore
I have read many of the responses to my request for emotional responses yesterday (I will continue reading - there are just a lot of people sharing). A common through line is the feeling of loss, that the decisions we’ve been making are taking things away from them.
So, I wanted to take a moment to talk about something that I believe Universes Beyond is adding to the game. I’m not talking about value to other people that aren’t you, but something that is upside to the enfranchised players that are the backbone of the game.
As I’m head designer, my focus is on mechanics and the core gameplay experience of playing the game. Universes Beyond has been a bolt of energy for the design of the game.
Because so many of you are sharing personal stories, I’ll use my own experiences as a way to illustrate my point.
One day, when I was seven or eight, I woke up and went downstairs to see that my Dad had bought me a comic book and left it out on the counter for me as a surprise. It was Spider-Man.
I must have read that comic ten times. It was the start of a life long love of comic books. I’m not quite sure why the superhero genre, in particular, spoke to me so strongly, but it did.
As a teenager I was a bit of an outcast, and when I stumbled upon the X-Men, it felt like a story that was core to my lived experience. I too was an outsider, but out there were people like me and if I could find those people, we could bond over our similarities.
I enjoy designing Magic. I mean really, really enjoy designing Magic. I don’t throw around the term “dream job” lightly. It is truly a lifelong passion. I spend so much time writing about it because it is something that brings me so much joy, and there is a desire to share that joy with others, my found family that shares my similarities.
Designing Marvel cards has been electrifying. I have spent years mastering the art of Magic design. Getting to combine that with my love of Marvel characters has been inspirational. It has inspired to make designs I would have never thought of.
It has pushed me in directions I couldn’t have predicted and resulted in designs that tickle both my inner Mel and Vorthoses.
And it hasn’t just affected my own designs. I have given more notes on card designs than I have in my twenty nine years at Wizards.
For example, the amount of back and forth with Aaron who designed the five Secret Lair cards we recently revealed at New York ComicCon was exhaustive. He and I have long bonded over our shared love of Marvel, so getting to translate that into Magic with him has been amazing.
And each Universes Beyond product we’re making has people as equally passionate about that property.
My point is from purely a design perspective, Universes Beyond has had huge dividends. It has inspired us to make fresh new designs. It has sparked creativity. We are making awesome card designs, mechanics, themes, and sets, things that most likely wouldn’t have come into existence otherwise.
The passion that beloved characters and worlds has inspired in us is translated into amazing Magic design, something that will make the act of playing Magic better for anyone who enjoys the nuts and bolts of the raw gameplay of Magic.
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Hello! After having some time to get over my loss for the Pokemon TCG Illustration contest, I decided to write up a small blog entry about the process and include some WIP pictures. Feel free to look below if you want to read my ramblings on the process.
Idea Generarion-
So coming into this contest, I knew I wanted to make a mixed media piece. In terms of theming I chose something that not only reflected a “magical moment” for a Pokemon (in this case meeting a legendary Pokemon), but also a moment when playing the games myself. In fact this piece was inspired by my awe when I first encountered a box legendary in game, as before I thought my teacher was lying to me when he said you can catch the legendary on the box!
This is the concept sketch that started it all! At the time my main concern was getting ideas down and seeing how they looked. Thinking about things like how would the composition would look, how would the colours look. So on and so forth.
I didn’t want to focus too much on the sketch and wanted to start making the physical object, so out of some cheap paper I started making a set up testing out size, scale, composition. I didn’t want to get too attached to the original sketches only to realise I couldn’t make it in real life… I went though a few drafts trying to get things right, slowly adding in aspects such as background objects and higher quality drawings.
After completing the draft I bought the images back into procreate to experiment with colours. This is the point where I made the mistake of thinking I had plenty of colours to choose from, not realising I would be limited by what I could buy from various yarn shops. That or hope I could find the right colour online, but that was always a gamble. If I don’t stop talking about this now I’ll get sidetracked talking about how much I miss yarn shops…
Anyways, I cut out the individual pieces that I would make within the background and used them as a guide for crochet assets. For this part I wanted to use different stitches to create textures such as the ripple stitch, bobble stich and some cable stitches, I feel bad as I never took any work in progress photo so of them. Let’s pretend you’re looking at a photo of a half finished crochet abstract shape.
Finally onto the main event, the Pikachu (and Suicune). The decision to make Pikachu a plush was based on what I would have liked to make for the 2022 illustration contest (if I wasn’t geographically challenged!!) Despite being British I decided it would be fun to make anyways, so I could experiment. I never got around to that but decided it would be fun to try for this edition.
Making the pattern was HARD! As I wanted Pikachu to have a unique pose, I had to work out different methods to plush i’ve made in the past which have been somewhat relaxed in their posing. I ultimately ended up making each part individually, pinning it together and then making adjustments as needed. It didn’t start out great however I ended up with this weird Pikachu shaped thing that did the job. Throughout this process I would regularly photograph it in the background to try and catch any issues early on. For example if the ground needed to be a different shape.
Photographing the final price was interesting. I felt bad for my partner as I essentially turned my dining table into a mini photography studio! I spent several days waiting for different lighting opportunities and experimenting with different light. Marking down different camera angles to ensure I have all of my bases covered. I easily took over 100 photos to get the perfect shot! In the below photo you can see washi tape being used to rest out different positions for the sculptures.
And that leads me to the peice! Even though i’m sad I didn’t make the top 300, I am pleased with the work I did for this piece (and my flygon entry too!). I’m glad I decided to experiment with ts peice and look forward to refining my methods in the near future!
#pikachu#ptcgic2024#ptcg contest#Plush#Pokemon#pokemon plushie#pokemon plush#pokemon illustration#crochet#electric type#Gen 1#creative#pokemon art#katart#katblog#katplush
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have some of my 911 Once Upon a Time AU
* * *
"Uncle Buck-" Jee says and Buck looks down at her lap, but she wasn't looking up at him, instead her finger was pointed to the page of her storybook where a beautiful woman was laying amongst a field of flowers.
"I don't know bunny," Buck says amused. "I don't think I can fit in that dress."
"No that's you," Jee insists and she looks up at Buck then. "You but diff- differ-"
"Different?" Buck prompts and Jee nods her head smiling.
"You think I'm Beauty? And not the Beast?" Buck asks, curious now and Jee nods her head and she turns the page.
The beast in this storybook is massive. A tall creature that stands on it's hind legs. His paws are large, ending in wicked looking claws and his teeth are just as sharp. He's terrifying at first glance, but Buck has read this book with Jee before and he knows that the terrifying expression on the Beast's face softens as he finds love with Beauty.
His blue eyes, the same color as twilight, seem to shine when he looks at Beauty.
He should have wings. Buck thinks as his finger traces the illustration. It's wrong somehow, but Buck has never thought that before. The features are different, the color of his fur should be darker-
Buck shakes away the suddenly strange thoughts and Jee turns the page again.
"I've never been Beauty before?" Buck asks. In the dozens of times they've read this fairytale, Buck has been many things in their world of pretend. Dragons and Princes and Knights. He's even been Alice and everytime Jee-Yun has laughed and gone with their make believe.
She sounds so serious now.
Buck wants to ask know, he wants to know who the Beast could be - when Chimney comes in, a grim look on his face.
"Sorry Buck," Chim says as he comes into the room, wiping the grease from his forehead with a frown. "You need more than just my knowledge for the jeep. You need a proffesional."
Buck sighs, letting his head fall ontop of Jee's which makes her giggle and tell Buck that he had a heavy head. It was a little bit of a balm to the dissapointment he had in Chim not being able to get her to start.
"Is there even a mechanic in Storybrooke?" Buck asks. He's had his Jeep for years, and he's never needed help with it before, Buck can't even think of the last time he needed an oil change.
"There's one on the outskirts of town, right next to the lake. It's called Harbor," Chimney says. "Guy who runs it, he doesn't really come into town that much."
"You know him?" Buck asks and Chimney's brows furrow his gaze going distant for a moment-
"I've seen him in town," Chimney says finally, his voice more monotone then before, almost rehearsed.
Buck has a moment of thinking it strange-
"I think your jeep has enough life in her to make it out that way," Chimney explains as he goes to the kitchen to clean up. Buck kisses Jee's head before setting her down on the couch by herself and goes to follow his brother in law.
"Do you want us to come with?" Chimney asks and Buck shakes his head.
"Nah," He smiles. "Jee missed her Dad, you to should snuggle up with her," Buck suggests with a grin. "Maybe watch a movie with her."
"Yeah," Chimney says and his eyes glance over to where Jee was arranging her stuffed animals carefully by her tea set. She was quietly singing to herself in one of the many songs she would make up on the spot.
Chimney's smile turns sad and Buck follows his eyes to the picture of Maddie that hung on the wall.
Buck feels something tighten in his chest, and he reaches out and puts an arm around Chimney, hugging him close.
They don't talk about Maddie outside of telling Jee about her memory.
"Get out of here before Jee asks you to stay," Chimney jokes, pushing playfully at Buck. "I don't want to lose my snuggle bunny for the night."
Buck goes to say his goodbyes, giving Jee an extra big hug and promising to see her soon.
The drive there is miserable. The jeep sputters and groans on the way there and Buck repeatedly pets the dashboard and begs it to make it just a little bit further.
It's not a long drive, Storybrooke is a small town, but it's the furthest he had to drive in -
He can't remember how long.
The shop itself is unassuming, more of a large garage connected to a small house than anything else. Next to it is a small junkyard, filled with rusting cars, broken appliances and a small biplane that surprises Buck to see. He doesn't remember ever seeing a plane fly over Storybrooke.
Shaking his head away from the strange thought, Buck moves to go into the shop.
There's a thick metal door up front, and Buck would think it looked unwelcoming if it werent for the crooked open sign. He pushes at it, and the hinges move smoothly despite the weight. It's well taken care of.
Despite how the outside looks, the inside feels more welcoming. There's a small couch next to a desk that sits at the corner of the garage. The couch is well loved but clean, and Buck can imagine sitting comfortably in it, maybe even reading from one of the many books that are crammed into the book case next to the couch.
A sign says to ring the bell for service and Buck does so, tapping it three times.
He rocks on his heels, turning to look at the shelf with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, pulling the fabric in front of him.
Buck reaches out again and taps the bell.
"I heard you," A gruff voice says and Buck turns to look at the owner of the voice.
He's a tall man, as tall as Buck is himself and broad.
The man steps from the shadows, and Buck's eyes widen.
There are scars on the man's face that span further down, hidden by the collar of the man's jumper. One of them pulls at his mouth, making it look like he was frowning.
Beyond the scars though are a pair of blue eyes.
The same color as twilight.
part two here
#bucktommy#kayla.txt#kayla writes#911 abc#911 au#evan buckley#tommy kinard#chimney han#remember the curse is made so no one has a happy ending#so maddie and chim were separated#maddie is in the enchanted forest and she's alive but buck and chimney don't know that#beauty and the beast but make it gay#I'll tag more people later
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which one’s toshiro and whys he autistic?
[ID: full body colored illustration of toshiro from the dungeon meshi manga. /End ID]
THIS FREAKIN GUY!!!! anyway
[ID: anonymous tumblr ask: "would def love to hear ur autistic shuro thoughts". /End ID]
awesome. rant under the cut because it will be long
So before we understand why Toshiro is the way he is we must first understand two things abt him:
1. his household situation is a very traditional clan of warriors type situation. his father is very strict and he left his homeland to go to the Island and explore the dungeon to train and become a warrior to be someone suited as the family head
2. Eastern and Western cultures of respect/propriety are different, and Ryoko Kui highlights it well even in her fantasy world.
With that in mind, heres some bullet point rapid fire thoughts that consume my current state of dunmeshi brain:
Toshiro has an avoidant personality. He fears upsetting others due to his upbringing, and rarely tells others how he feels not because he thinks they would simply understand him but because he doesn't want to seem rude and imposing / cause offense to others especially since he's not in his own homeland / hes a foreigner that should respect the land's customs, not his own wishes.
Setting boundaries is hard for everyone, but especially autistic (and some other ND, like those with Avoidant Personality Disorder) people. Those with ASD, at least in my experience, don't want to be isolated from others. So they mask.
They mask what? their desires. their true selves. their opinions. their discomfort. all for the sake of pleasing others (who are often neurotypical)
With that in mind, suddenly, what Maizuru said abt him as a child makes sense. Due to his strict upbringing, Toshiro had to more or less hide his preferences and force himself to adapt to the rigid constraints of his culture and the pressure to be the next family head, this responsibility is his burden to bear and he cannot be someone who expresses his selfish desires instead of focusing on being a strong warrior and leader
"Why did he say he hate Laios and that it should've been obvious that he disliked/found Laios' treatment of him uncomfortable??" BECAUSE IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS. I'm not going to write off Laios' autism/autistic coding, but its baffling (note: definitely racism and bias for white autistic ppl) to me that a lot of ppl don't see Toshiro's perspective and straight up ignores it. This is a lack of wanting to be rude by speaking up that is based on culture difference on Toshiro's part, and straight up ignorant of his microagressions/racism and lack of self awareness on Laios' end. They were both right, they were both wrong too. This is a complicated conflict that cannot be boiled down to simple ableist/the NT vs ND divide. There's something called . intersectionality. Which brings me to the next point
Toshiro never actually hated Laios. He found him uncomfortable, yes. But he didn't /hate/ him, he was speaking out because he's had enough!!! he's done tolerating Laios' racist bullshit, and he's done following the arbitrary Eastern rules of respecting others and not being rude!!! He. Wants. Laios. To Understand. What. He. Was. Feeling. Because he just had enough!!!!! alright!!! he's at his limit hes at his breaking point, the one he loves is now probably beyond saving, and this is a good time as any to break the news to Laios that he thinks that Laios is impulsive and doesn't fully understand how his actions have consequences!!! Hes right abt this. His feelings on this is valid, just as valid as Laios'
General autistic traits I find from Toshiro: his admiration of Falin's indifference towards insects ("woah shes so brave and gentle!! just like me, fr!!!"), His lack of regard for his own needs and wants (needing to sleep and eat and drink) because he was super focused on saving Falin, His lack of like drastic expression changes, his discomfort with physical touch when it's initiated without consent (see: Laios hugging ppl extra bonus art by Ryoko Kui), his manner of like speaking short and concise, people pleasing tendencies, his like quick way of combat, rule upholder/routine following enjoyer, he seems distant from others even those he consider family not cuz of like any terrible reason but hes just. someone who enjoys his own time alone like. yeah
aannnnndd. thats abt it? i think.
Big part of this is definitely me relating to Shiro as an Asian (specifically chinese indonesian) person who is probably Autistic lmao. I hope this brings more insight on why Toshiro is actually one of the silliest and epiccest dunmeshi characters ever I love him
#asks#dungeon meshi#toshiro nakamoto#dunmeshi#L 👁️🗨️🌫️ !#shuro dunmeshi#(help)#idk if he has tags. does he have fans here. pls say he does
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The Libraries
Helion x reader
a/n: I haven’t written for him in a long time so I hope he isn’t insanely ooc! 🧡💛
word count: 1,287
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“What may I find for you today, High Lord?” You ask, peering over the bright red rim of your pointed glasses.
“So cold to me,” Helion drawls, bracing his forearms on the lip of your desk, the golden snake that bands around his bicep digging into the dark skin as the powerful muscles shift. “Didn’t you miss me while I was gone, peaches?”
“It was certainly emptier,” you reply neutrally. “Now, what may I find for you?”
“Can I not visit simply for the pleasure of your company?” The High Lord inquires, faux hurt showing in his sturdy features. “Pleasure certainly seems to be the main motive for your scholarly trips,” you reply, returning you gaze to the charts spread out on your desk, marking which books are due to be switched out and moved, and which sections are due to have new additions to their already full shelves.
“Anything new?” The High Lord asks, and you can hear the wicked grin on his mouth without having to glance up. “A few things, since your last visit,” you reply, reaching over to the short list you’d scribbled down, now pulling it over and handing it to him to look through. Helion raises a brow as he scans through the short compilation. “Fully illustrated?” He repeats, clearly reading the note you’d added beside one of the titles. “Fully illustrated,” you repeat back in confirmation, ink pen scratching as you make an annotation for some sections to be swapped around. “And you verified that personally?” Helion asks, his deep voice taking on a low, suggestive drawl.
“Personally,” you repeat back, again in conformation, still not paying him the attention he’s seeking.
“Will you show me to it?” He asks, trying to pry you away from your desk.
“You know the section,” you reply, a hint of amusement in your tone, but still annotating.
“I don’t see anyone else requiring your attention,” Helion drawls, “and I didn’t come just for the book…”
“To.” You correct, without looking up.
“…to?” Helion repeats, blinking.
“And I didn’t come just to the book, is what you meant to say,” you answer, a faint upward tilt at the corners of your normally straight-pressed lips. “Your humour is as sharp as your tongue, I see,” Helion says, huffing a low laugh that has the hairs on your forearms raising.
At last you look up, and Helion resists the urge to stand upright, keeping his positioning casual as he looks into your eyes, partially warped by those red-pointed glasses. “Have you returned the last one you borrowed?” You inquire, reaching for a blank piece of parchment. Helion raises a brow, “you’ve let me borrow tens at a time, why does this book require an urgent return?”
“It’s on the list to be shipped out to the continent. I take it you haven’t yet returned it?” You ask, and Helion shakes his head. You nod, scribbling something down before handing it to him. “A reminder,” you say when he takes it from your fingers, “to please return it at your earliest convenience. I understand you have a lot on your plate.”
“Like a troublesome librarian who looks at me with a particularly…” —you shoot him a sharp glare over the red rims— “…bloodcurdling, expression,” he finishes. You hum, the doubt clear in the sound. You both know he wasn’t going to say bloodcurdling.
“Now, will you do me the honour of showing me where this particular book is being kept?” He requests, a faint grin on his lips.
“I suppose it is part of my job,” you reply, “even if you are taking advantage of that.” A distinctly satisfied expression appears on the High Lord of Day’s features as you stand from your desk, the knee-length robes that sit over your clothes swishing with the motion, and you set off down one of the long aisles, knowing Helion is keeping close behind. Able to feel the direction of his attention, too, despite the coverage of the robes. You shoot him a look over your shoulder, and he offers a questioning smile that has you rolling your eyes.
It takes some minutes to reach the darkened corner of the library this particular book has been stored, and a while longer for you to climb the ladder that will carry you to the shelf it sits on, but at last you find it, handing it over to the High Lord who opens the first page with slight interest.
“And to think you’ve looked through all of this already,” he remarks, eyes scanning across the few lines of writing beside the illustration. “I’m surprised you could tolerate such lewd imagery,” he muses, glancing at you with a faint grin, “did it bother you, much?”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” you reply blandly, waving your hand dismissively. Helion hums, flipping the page over, eyes passing over the parchment with surprising restraint, then raises his brows. “You’ve seen things like this before?” He asks, half teasing, half serious.
“Are you surprised?” You reply, brow slightly furrowed, “I’ve been working in these libraries for centuries now, I’ve seen all sorts of things. I doubt anything could shock me anymore.”
“So if I got to put you in some of these positions…”
“How very inappropriate of you, High Lord,” you reply, shooting him a look from over top your glasses, before making to move past him.
You’re vaguely surprised when his large palm wraps carefully around your upper arm, prompting you to pause but not tight enough you couldn’t continue walking if you’d like to.
You glance back up at him, listening.
“Do my advances bother you?” He asks, sincerely. “I assume you don’t mind them from your occasional jokes, but I don’t wish to bring discomfort to where you’re required to work.”
“I had no idea you were attempting advances, High Lord,” you reply, lightly shifting your arm, and he releases you without complaint. “I find that hard to believe,” the High Lord replies questioningly. “You’re flirtatious with most people you encounter, I wasn’t under the impression I was receiving any special treatment.”
“Would you like special treatment?” He asks, his voice lowered a little, and you narrow your eyes on him.
“I like genuine interest,” you reply, “I like commitment, and certainty—things I don’t believe you’re yet interested in.” Something shifts behind his eyes, but you wave your hand again, “which is fine. We seek different things.”
“You aren’t interested in finding out what might happen?” He asks, lips curved with a gleam in his eyes. “I would have thought that by nature you’d want to satisfy your curiosity.”
“I have lived a long life, and I have seen a lot of things, as I’ve said. There are very few topics I’m still curious about, High Lord,” you reply.
“Not even how it might feel to lay with me for one night?” He asks, that mischievous look on his features.
But, “no. I’m afraid not.”
Your lips twitch faintly at the slight surprise in his features before its swiftly concealed. “You��re free to continue as you like, though, so long as you don’t cause any trouble for my coworkers,” you say. “We had a new one in a few days ago and I don’t want you traumatising him with your literature tastes.”
Helion grins, mischievous look returning, more promising than it was before. “Very well,” he replies, eyes glinting, “I’ll return the book as soon as I can. And I’ll remember to make my advances more clear, next time.”
You turn to head back to your desk, but not swiftly enough that Helion doesn’t catch the upward tug of your mouth. “I look forward to it, High Lord.”
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general taglist: @myheartfollower @tcris2020 @mali22 @slut4acotar @sfhsgrad-blog @needylilgal022 @hannzoaks @hnyclover @skyesayshi @nyotamalfoy @decomposing-writer @soph1644 @lilah-asteria @nighttimemoonlover
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I finally thought of a question! What does your Astarion think of all that's happened to him, now that it's all Over, and what does Drow think about what he knows about Astarion? Does he ever contemplate and compare, does he have passing thoughts like "Oh yeah, he told me this" brought on by nothing in particular? If Drow or Shadowheart were to bring it up either when drinking, or after a heated moment, what would happen?
Thank you so much for your art and your words! Your handle on Drow made me really crack open my Tav like a nut
AND WHAT A GOOD QUESTION IT IS.
(I use some dialogue excerpts from for A Novel Experience here to illustrate my points that some might consider to be spoilery, I don't think it's stuff that would affect one's reading enjoyment too much. Still, just figured I would mention it for anyone who minds it.)
In regards to Astarion, it is understandably complicated. I think the way he's found to get by so far is by not dwelling at all in what has happened. He's tried to turn the symbolic new leaf that night in the cemetery and likes to think of himself as not only freed, but a new man open to what life has to offer him and unburdened by his past - when memories rush back, he pushes them away. When something bothers him for reasons that relate to his past experience, he tries to push past the discomfort because he doesn't want to be defined by it. He is fairly self-conscious of being seen as a weakling or a victim, especially when he's constantly confronted by DU drow's utter indifference to his own past.
He has, by all intends and purposes, done well. He understands that he's a grown man who's been given a second chance at un-life by an exceptionally lucky turn of events, he absolutely does not want to waste a second more of his own time by being sullen, broken, or guilt-striken. He thrives for as long as his past doesn't directly confront him - but when it does, the avoidance catches up and he very easily loses his cool.
His feelings regarding the decisions he made underneath Cazador's palace are mostly rigid. He's happy to not have Ascended and content that the spawn were set free, but he does not like to dwell on what their lives may be like moving forward and, if ever discussing it, does so with callousness and indifference, shutting down the conversation before it can begin. While he doesn't bask in the feeling, he does take the smallest bit of pride in the fact that he has sacrificed eternal power for the freedom of thousands - when doubt arises and he's haunted with the could-have-beens, he soothes himself with the fact that his sacrifice had a purpose.
DU drow has no moral quandries with what Astarion did while under Cazador's control or regard for the people he victimized at all, but he dwells constantly on the suffering he's endured. He flip-flops between thinking of Astarion as a perfectly capable individual and someone who is overly sensitive and finicky the moment something upsets him - someone who needs protection. He has a grand hero's complex about him and at times difficulty trusting Astarion's capacity to make his own choices - since he didn't have the opportunity for such a long time. He isn't controlling, but Astarion knows him well enough to read the doubt in his face even when he's quiet about it.
Interestingly enough, this seems to mostly apply to when Astarion's ideas go against his own, or make him feel powerless or unneeded in some way or another. He's perfectly happy to go along with his impulses otherwise - even when they seem to be made in bad judgement.
It also applies to intimacy for a while, with DU drow proceeding to avoid sex even after he's rid of his urge - not only because he's still afraid of his own desires, but also because he doesn't trust Astarion to express his agency during the act.
But that's an issue that they solve fairly quickly (well, ten-chapters-in quickly. sixteen if you only count when they first have sex since the events of the game) , especially as Astarion asserts himself as the more dominant half of the relationship.
I don't think either DU drow or Shadowheart have the nerve to use Astarion's actions while enthralled against him. DU drow because he doesn't care or thinks he's held accountable in any way, and Shadowheart because she knows better. That said, things do come up between him and other characters and then - well. He doesn't deal well with it at all:
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