#vaguely post reveal but pre relationship setting because it gives everyone more room to fully react

[lavenoon]

funny idea/dialogue popped into my head, thought you'd enjoy:

Neon: Some guy keeps bothering me at the corner store. Can I give him your brother's number? Eclipse: ??? Why? Neon: I think it would be hilarious to see your brother's reactions, even better when they find out it's me giving it out

Been sitting here now thinking about how Sun/Moon would react/deal with some person being way too pushy.

If it has to do with Robin I can see both boys dealing with it completely differently, and both would be equally hilarious.

Sun/ Moon getting a random text that is way too flirty: This is the third this week. This is hell. This is our purgatory. Robin, unbothered: Neon's got game. Good for them

Now, Sun and Moon respectively getting unwanted advances and also reacting to someone flirting with Robin? Coming right up! <3 (With a sneeeaaky little sliding in of this ask again, too)

Sun is friendly. Promise. He might humor someone to a degree, the more subtle stages of flirting like the conversation leading up to it are totally fine by him. A little fun even! And he doesn't want to crush someone's confidence by immediately shooting them down. (Pre-Y/N, craving more contact, he may have hoped that someone would just click, but alas). But if they barrel right into it, or are tasteless about it, or once they simply hit a point where he feels like he's misleading them by continuing the conversation, he'll opt for a decisive, and more or less gentle let down. Maybe throw in how he's flattered, but simply not interested like that. If they take that badly/ continue to push? He'll lean down to eye level (going with the most likely scenario of the offender being shorter lmao), and, well. Y'all remember the face Robin got pre-ankle grabbing? Sharp teeth and predatory squint? Yup, that one. "Whatever makes you think your crude attempts could ever work? Perhaps you should direct them at someone with lower standards." and simply walk off. He'll be a bit of a bitch about it, and he's not sorry.

Now as soon as Y/N is involved? Boy pouts. On the one hand, he knows this isn't his place to intervene, on the other hand, that's his darling and someone else just... Does this? After he's been trying for ages and has gotten nowhere (yet)? They don't even compare to what he can offer Y/N - who do they think they are? Will stand on the side and death glare subtly, up until the point where Y/N may seem even the slightest bit uncomfortable. Then it's on. Pre-relationship that'll be when he pretends (whereas once they hit the official dating status, honestly anyone flirting with Y/N must really not take a hint), casually pulling them closer with an arm around their shoulder. He leans down, turning his face away from the offending party to scan Y/N's - and then decide to take further action. If they're just slightly miffed, but seem receptive to his mischief, he'll straighten again with the most innocent smile, pushing himself just slightly in front of them. He'll have a little fun with this person, and Y/N has to drag him away (he lets them) before he starts a fight or makes them cry, all while they try to keep the laughter down. If they're genuinely uncomfortable however he'll brush their cheek with the thumb of his free hand, and mumble a soft "My dear, let's go," before turning them away and putting himself directly between them and the other person. The Face(tm), again, as he gives them a clipped "We have a prior engagement. You should sign up for a course on taking hints," and something about his smile just ensures the other person doesn't even think about objecting to this turn of events. Later he'll make sure he didn't overstep, right back to fretting when it's just the two of them, and Y/N is quick to reassure him that nah, all good - they appreciate it. He gets worse then <3

Moon is. Oh my god, poor guy. He is so supremely awkward with civilians, mingling socially just... isn't for him. Add to that that he's out at night and thus has a higher chance of running into someone not quite sober trying to flirt with him? If the way he looks at them isn't hint enough, that's honestly not too unlikely, because that is the expression of a terribly awkward man who wants nothing more than to parkour away, if not for societal norms keeping him rooted to the spot. May take the more direct "No thanks" route with defensively raised hands before slinking away. If whatever fool can't take no for an answer and follows, he may just turn and snap at them. That's quite the whiplash - because suddenly the kind of awkward animatronic has red eyes and sharp teeth, the latter clicking shut hard, as he just hisses "Not. interested. Don't make me say it again." Before they can actually react he's already running away calmly and totally not faster than normal walking away, deeply mortified at what currently happened.

When it's Y/N who's being flirted with? Jealousy override. Maybe they aren't a couple (yet) (please just be a yet) but that doesn't mean he doesn't absolutely have besties privileges by then. They're friends, and he knows them, and frankly, the audacity of some people to think they can just stroll up to Y/N while he's there? He's been trying to shoot his own shot for months, get in line. Will technically act sooner than Sun, simply because he immediately gravitates closer to Y/N and gets grabby. Maybe sneaks a hand to hold, or has a hand on the small of their back, while leaning forward just slightly and keeping both eyes on the other person. Y/N may not even immediately notice, but the flirter sure does. Scary dog privileges real. As long as Y/N seems fine, he'll just stand there and subtly gloat because he can stand so close and not get shooed away, not that other person. May even lean down and go "As much as I love this little improv bit, can we leave?" Y/N, their attention now on him (just the way he likes it) goes "Yes, and you're a fucking dork." He leads them away with a "language" reprimand, and it's good he doesn't have a tongue to stick out at the left behind fool. If Y/N is in any way uncomfortable, he cuts straight to the chase. Hands on their shoulders, and pushes them away from the other person, putting himself between the two much like Sun. If that person makes any move to follow, he whips around and this time it's on purpose that the eyes glow and the teeth click. Depending on how bad it is, a few claws may be on display, too (though no taser. That's for work). A low, but very very charged "Don't even think about it" before he leads Y/N away. May take them straight home after quietly shooting them a "You okay?", and will grumble a bit about people and going out, and a movie back home sounds much better anyway <3

[mugionthewater]

Tsumugi Shirogane Deepdive: Prologue

I’m in a DR mood right now, and really enjoying revisiting Tsumugi in particular, so I thought I’d do a chapter-based retrospective focusing on all the cool Tsumugi material! A reread project especially rewarding for a character like Mugi, so I’m really excited.

In this series, I’m focusing a lot on all the foreshadowing, and also what we can extrapolate about Tsumugi’s true character along the way. I’ll be doing this chapter-by chapter, including the prologue as well as an installment for her Free Time Events.

Full spoilers for V3 under the cut.

The Pre-Prologue

We first see Tsumugi in the gym by the exisals to get their uniforms and their memories. Tsumugi herself has four lines of dialogue in this scene, nothing that particularly stands out, but there are a couple of things worth noting about how she (and everyone else) is dressed.

Kaede describes how she was kidnapped on her way to school, and it sure looks like that’s the case for almost everyone in the room. We’re used to seeing DR characters in flashy outfits that vaguely resemble school uniforms but actually reflect their individuality, so when the game first shows them in an ensemble lineup like this, it’s a lot more striking.

Not so much in this CG. While there are plenty of visual details that tell us about these characters (Saihara’s already hiding under a hat in his sprites; Iruma is revealing; Kiibo and Gonta are buttoned up and orderly, but Kaito’s shirt and jacket are undone to show a bold-colored undershirt), their uniforms look like they’re doing what uniforms are supposed to do: be bland and blend in.

What about Tsumugi? Tsumugi wears a basic uniform like everyone else, but this is where we get the game’s first indication that all is not what it seems with this girl. The clue is the blue. She is the only one in the lineup whose primary color isn’t a neutral tone. What’s more, it’s the same shade of blue Tsumugi is associated with throughout the game. Visually, part of her is already in character as Tsumugi Shirogane, SHSL Cosplayer.

Of course, there’s a much bigger item foreshadowing Tsumugi as the bad guy, which is that in advance of everyone getting their “memories”, the main emphasis is their new clothes delivered by the Monokubs.

There are a couple of reasons the clothes are significant. For starters, there’s a direct line to Tsumugi’s cosplay talent. For anyone inclined to suspect her before starting the game on account of her talent (and her general don’t-look-at-me-I’m-not-suspicious vibes), this is immediate theory fodder. This also primes the audience to look at the setting of V3 with a critical eye, between the contrast of the kids’ boring outfits and their flashy new ones and the Monokubs making explicit references to starting the “story“, there is an immediate suggestion of artifice that runs all the way down to their identities. Not for nothing is Kaede’s magical girl transformation visually similar to the memory light.

Another thing: pre-memory light, the person in the room whose outfit is the least uniform-y is Amami.

At the very least, it’s a look that’s noticeably more casual than what most of the cast is wearing. After Chapter 6, we know that Amami made it to the end of the 52nd Killing Game before he and Tsumugi were condemned to execution via participating in the next killing game- which he seems to be realizing in this scene- so it’s possible they’re coming right off the heels of the last killing game. It’s an ongoing mystery what his relationship with her was like up to this point? Does he know she’s the ringleader? Is “Tsumugi Shirogane“ anything like the person she was in the last killing game, assuming she was even there?

I’m not confident Tsumugi really switched to a new persona for the 53rd Killing Game, even though fake identities is kind of her whole deal. I’ll get more into why in this series, but I think a lot of the character we see in the game is the “real“ Tsumugi, to the extent that such a person even exists.

Introducing Tsumugi Shirogane: Professional Cosplayer, Sex God

If you go back and read the promotional blurbs for V3, Tsumugi’s mention her tendency to get so lost in thought that she’ll ignore everyone around her. This little trait isn’t super weird at first, until you realize later in the game that she doesn’t carry the shtick past the first chapter. It’s like she wrote the character blurbs herself, realized everybody has a wacky “thing“ that would come up immediately in the introductions, and came up with an act of low-grade wackiness so she’d fit in in the prologue.

This is great stuff, looking back. It gives an intro in brief to the many contradictions of Tsumugi Shirogane. On one hand, it’s overly phony and performative. But on the other hand, there’s a core of truth there about her character- she really is someone who stays in her thoughts without a care for anyone around her, albeit less in the cute way and more in the horrifying sociopath kind of way.

It also tells us something important about Tsumugi’s commitment to the Killing Game. She cares about maintaining the integrity of this world and its characters, but is pretty indifferent about maintaining a role for herself. She doesn’t give a shit about having a storyline or even much of a character. The pleasure of DR comes from what she can get as an observer/consumer. 

This is entirely consistent with what she tells Kaede and Saihara about herself and her feelings about cosplay in the actual introduction.

This is the ethos that makes me wonder how dishonest Tsumugi really is. She’s dishonest as hell, of course, but given that she later applies the entire DR LARP reality show experience as “cosplay“, what she says about her convictions largely rings true. She clearly cares about making her tribute an authentic one (lol), which extends to her being the primary creative director inside her fiction bubble.

It partly explains why she spends the next five chapters being little more than furniture. In her mind, her job as a producer precludes her from being a character in her own right, because doing anything to pull focus is tantamount to self-promotion, and, well, that’s an abuse of power that gets in the way of the story!

(sidebar: there are some fascinating things we could speculate about what she says about cosplay relates to her relationship with the rest of Team Danganronpa and the outside world, but this post is getting long, so I’ll save it for another day)

Like everything else about Tsumugi, it’s not until the end that you can fully contextualize how sinister she’s being here. What she passes off as a cute passion for cosplay is actually a bone-deep sense of consumer entitlement taken to a logical extreme. Tsumugi is a more vicious indictment of terrible nerds and a selfish fandom than anything Hifumi Yamada could embody. She loves DR so much, and feels so strongly that nobody should be participating in DR with any corrupt motives, that anything less than the real deal is unacceptable. To this end, she will happily transplant entirely new emotional realities on the others so that even the emotional torture of the Killing Game is authentic. In Tsumugi’s selfish nerd brain, this is the important part of the drama of Killing Games, and anyone who disagrees with her approach is a fake fan who doesn’t deserve any kind of creative control.

Anyways, there’s more to say about Tsumugi’s introduction, so moving on

Some pretty overt foreshadowing here. In the Japanese script, her reference is ep. 53 of Kiteretsu Daihyakka instead of Doraemon. I like the change for the dub, even though it’s pretty obvious. Someone who knows DR primarily through the dub is less likely to know about the franchise’s connection to Doraemon, anyway.

Tsumugi also points out the weird dragon statue in the hallway that will lead into a new part of the school down the line. It’s a neat little metatextual trick on the audience, because it’s the kind of thing that’s not suspicious at all on a first playthrough. She’s an NPC in a DR game, of course her dialogue is gonna point out plot devices that will be relevant shortly, but on a reread you know she’s being deliberate about it. This is far from the last time this kind of thing happens with Tsumugi.

Lastly, this charming observation from Kaede about why she’s maybe not so plain afterall.

Kaede puts it in the worst way possible, but it’s interesting that she, a person with a generally good read on people, decides immediately that there’s more to Mugi than meets the eye. Not only that, she relates it specifically to an audience spending a lot of time looking at her. If she were any less gross about it, Kaede making this kind of observation would land like a big clue.

This leaves us with the biggest question from the prologue: if Kaede wasn’t too busy being horny and gay, could she have put two and two together and thwarted the ringleader?

There is SO much more to say about Tsumugi, so I’m really excited to dig deep into other chapters!