#very very vague v3 spoilers

[hellohiyoko]

The Hidden Danganronpa Trope: The Red Eyed, Pig-tailed, Girl In Red and Black

I had posted this on Amino once before, I figured to repost it here.

Aside from similar color schemes, similar hair styles, and similar eye colors, these three characters have a lot more in common than one would initially realize.

Spoilers below for Trigger Happy Havoc, Super Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, and V3: Killing Harmony, you've been warned.

Celestia Ludenburg from THH

The first red eyed, pig-tailed girl to set the precedence for her successors, is Celestia Ludenburg, the Ultimate Gambler. Makoto Naegi introduces himself and he's immediately suspicious of who she really is, seeing as "Celestia Ludenburg" is a rather odd name for a girl who claims to be from Japan. Regardless, she continues to lie and insist that Celestia Ludenburg is her real name.

At first glance, Celeste is seen as a rather cold, composed, and cunning individual who's willing to adapt to the killing game to live in Hope's Peak Academy for the rest of her foreseeable future. But in Chapter 2, we catch the ever so slightest glimpse of her true nature, as she yells and berates Hifumi due to the dissatisfaction of his milk tea. Her foreign accent disappears, and the calm, collected, individual is suddenly losing her shit, loudly might I add, over milk tea. Such an uncharacteristic crash out shocks the remaining survivors, this was a completely different person from who they've come to know.

It isn't until the end of the class trial in Chapter 3 that we learn who Celeste really is. If you didn't know then, you learned now that her vague European accent is fake. Even her name, "Celestia Ludenburg", as expected, was fake. Her real name is Taeko Yasuhiro, which she believes to be a "loser's name". She hates the common lifestyle she's lived up to this point, and hid her true identity from the rest of the peers. Who could've seen this coming? 😲

Peko Pekoyama from SDR2

Next up is Peko Pekoyama, the Ultimate Swordswoman. Immediately, you can tell that Peko and Celeste are two very different characters/people (depends on who you ask, ba dum tss 😉). While Peko is reserved and composed much like the counterpart aforementioned, she's much more trustworthy. She's open to social events such as parties and willing to put herself out there for introductions with her classmates, despite being emotionless. When meeting Hajime Hinata in SDR2 on Jabberwock Island, she's blunt with her intentions, stating that while she wants to get along, she won't hesitate to kill anyone should someone step out of line, all before anyone in SDR2 realized the predicament they were in.

Other than suspiciously meeting with Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu in the mornings when he left the group, nothing else seems out of the ordinary...

Until Chapter 2...

More specifically, the trial of Mahiru Koizumi's death. Toward the end of the trial, Peko tells those who have survived up to that point that she murdered Mahiru because she was Sparkling Justice, a vigilante who targeted criminals, in hopes that she wouldn't be considered the actual blackened. But thanks to Hajime and Sonia Nevermind, her lie about her motive and identity was revealed. We learn that the Kuzuryuu Clan adopted Peko for the sole purpose of serving as Fuyuhiko's sword and shield. She's not just a bodyguard, she sees herself as a tool, to be used by Fuyuhiko, void of any human emotion, intuition, or agency; a rather negative self image, wouldn't you say?

...is it clicking yet? Have you perhaps found a few similarities in Celeste and Peko? Keep whatever thoughts you have on hold as I talk about the last character.

Maki Harukawa from V3

Ah, yes, our final girl! Kaede Akamatsu and Shuichi Saihara meets Maki Harukawa as the Ultimate Child Caregiver, in the library of the Ultimate Academy of Gifted Juveniles in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. Despite another change in location, Maki appears to be reserved, composed, and cold initially. Despite Kaede's observation that Maki doesn't look like a child caregiver (and Kaito's opinion that she looks like someone who could fight), nothing else about Maki stands out too much in the prologue and first chapter.

Maki's suddenly thrusted into the spotlight in...you guessed it, the second chapter!

As soon as more Ultimate Research Labs become available, Maki goes off on her own and finds her own behind a gold and crimson door, which doesn't give a "child caregiver" vibe at all. She's even more distant than usual and doesn't let anyone see her lab. And once Ryoma's body is found, Maki refuses to participate in the investigation.

The second trial begins. Her refusal to cooperate and her lack of an alibi makes Maki quite suspicious. But she didn't murder anyone, she just lied about who she is. Toward the end of the chapter, Kokichi reveals to the surviving students that Maki's not a child caregiver, she's the Ultimate Assassin.

Unlike her predecessors though, Maki actually manages to make it to the end of Chapter 3, and survives the killing game alongside Shuichi and Himiko Yumeno, with some interesting character development. Throughout V3 and through FTES, we learn that Maki was tortured into becoming the assassin as we know (and love) today. She had went through so much pain and anger for being forced to kill people that eventually, she became numb to it all. Maki was used, and because of this, she begun to hate herself, believing that she was nothing more than a tool for killing who didn't deserve any friends or compassion (luckily until Kaito Momota convinced her otherwise).

So, to recap:

They're all female

They all have red eyes and pig-tailed hair with pale skin

Their ensemble consists of red, white, and black

They're initially composed, somewhat cold, and reserved

In Chapter 2, a part of their identity is revealed

(I say a part because in Chapter 2 of THH, it's revealed that Celeste's accent and personality are both fabricated, which isn't exactly her whole identity like Peko's or Maki's, but it's something)

Each one of these three characters have lied about who they really are~~

(Celeste lied about being...well Celeste, Peko lied about being Sparkling Justice and went on pretending that she and Fuyuhiko had no connection outside of Hope's Peak, and Maki lied about being the Ultimate Child Caregiver)

Each one of these characters have killed at least one person

(If you believe that Tsumugi is lying and Maki Harukawa is actually an assassin)

Each one of these characters holds a negative self image about themselves due to their past/upbringing

(Celeste hates who she is due to her "commoner" life, Peko believes she isn't human and that her only purpose is to serve Fuyuhiko, while Maki hated herself after being forced into becoming an assassin)

Quite interesting, isn't it? So what it does all mean? Eh, not much, just thought this was pretty cool.

I mean, if anything, should a fourth Danganronpa Killing Game ever come to fruition, and there's yet another girl with red eyes, pig-tails, dressed in red, white, and black, at the very least we all know to be careful.

[1moreff-creator]

hii!! so idk if you saw, but i recently posted a theory abt how xander and eden were survivors from a previous killing game.

you’re super cool and smart so i was wondering what you thought of it lol

(this sounds like free promo for my theory but i promise it isn’t)

(i just want opinions on it bc i can’t tell if i did a good job or not)

Hey there! Yeah, I saw it, and I think it’s a pretty good theory! I enjoyed reading it, your writing style is fun. Below are my full thoughts on it. For anyone else, please read the original first, this is going to be incomprehensible otherwise.

Also don’t worry about looking like you’re “promoting” your theory. It’s Tumblr, no one gains anything here, we all just lose. What would you even use the promotion for lol.

Also also you people have gotta stop giving me so many compliments it’s feeding my god complex /j

CW: Violence and blood, death, Danganronpa V3 Spoilers

[Background]

Admittedly, I don’t know how literally connected V3 is supposed to be to this whole situation, given the difference in the settings and the like. Especially since Teruko’s only mentioned remembering “that other killing game”, implying she doesn’t know about the 50 others despite vaguely knowing about the THH one. However, it is perfectly valid to bring up V3 as a meta point (which I think is what you’re doing?); the idea exists, so DRDTdev could have certainly taken it for DRDT. In any case, it sure is an interesting premise!

[The Survivors]

[Xander Matthews]

“[Post]: he has the personality for self-sacrifice.” True!

[For the sake of clarity, I refer to this scene as “the pre-prologue scene”, given that we see it before the Prologue title card appears]

““Them” could be the other people in the killing game. [...]

And, most of all, he says that he has to end the killing game. How the hell would he end a killing game without having been in one? (don’t answer that)”

I mean, solid reasoning! The idea that Xander was actively in a killing game while this scene happened has been thrown around, such as in my “original killing game” theory that we don’t talk about ‘cuz it was insane, because it’s a pretty reasonable conclusion to draw from the dialogue, as you said. For a while now I’ve sorta assumed that Xander was speaking of ending the killing game before it began, but there’s both semantic arguments to argue your theory and that one. The way Xander speaks in pre-prologue seems to imply the killing game is already underway, which is a point to you, but the secret David received mentions “The killing game is all your fault,” potentially implying there’s only ever been one modern killing game (“modern” as in, after THH). I think the idea of Xander actively being in a killing game in pre-prologue is stronger, though, I’m only bringing this up to account for all possibilities.

And “them” could be whoever so :p

[Xander Picture]

“When was this?

Why would he be in the same outfit, while having both eyes?

It makes sense if he was in a previous killing game, doesn't it?”

Well I mean. It could be. It could also just be from the time the cast (or most of it at least) was in the same Hope’s Peak class. Keep in mind all the outfits the characters were using at the start of the prologue are the same as the outfits they first went to Hope’s Peak with, as otherwise they’d have pointed out that their clothes changed between the moment they “lost consciousness” (the last moment of their memories, which is going to Hope’s Peak) and their appearance in the killing game place.

So, I propose that, seeing as it originated from LGI, this image could just be the first time David actually met Xander in person, or some other notable memory between the two of them. Of course, I have no evidence for this as much as there’s no great evidence for your take either. Basically I’m just saying this isn’t a very strong point in my books, but it’s not like I know any better than you what’s going on here :v

[Eden Tobisa]

“First of all, there’s the similarities between her handwriting and the handwriting of the note that Xander received. [...]

The T’s are the same, the E’s are the same, the A’s are the same. Don’t deny that it’s a strong, and the most likely, possibility.”

Uh… I don’t agree :v

I’ll give you the i’s and maybe the capital T’s, but I think the e’s and the a’s are too different for me to really consider it a possibility. It’s hard to explain this, so I’ll try to make some Paint diagrams to exaggerate the differences to get my point across.

-The T’s are pretty similar, but Eden’s have a slight curve towards the bottom, which the other note’s T’s seem to lack. In the diagram, you’ll find the recreation of Eden’s letters to the left, and the recreation of the “kill Teruko” note’s letters on the right.

-The e’s in Eden’s handwriting have a circular head, while the other note’s is almost triangular.

-Similarly, Eden’s a’s are a bit more circular than the note’s, which are sharper and triangular.

This all leads me to believe that the dev explicitly used different fonts for the two (assuming they dev used a text writing tool and didn’t draw the notes by hand, which I feel is a reasonable assumption). When coupled with the fact that Eden could potentially have been defending Teruko in pre-prologue (unless there’s more context we’re missing, Xander wanted to kill Teruko & Eden attacked Xander -> Eden didn’t want Teruko to die), I don’t think Eden wrote that note. Sorry :v

[Eden CG]

Now this is evidence of Eden being in the same killing game as Xander (of course, assuming Xander even was in a killing game in pre-prologue in the first place, which is as of yet unconfirmed). The CG itself heavily implies Xander and Eden were in the same place when the whole eye-fork situation happened, being that Eden is the person who hurt Xander before the pre-prologue scene (pre-pre-prologue?). If that happened in a killing game, then clearly, Eden was there!

“Why would the two of them have images of their past selves wearing the exact same outfits?

Oh, wait a second.

In V3, we see Rantaro’s past self. He was wearing the same outfit that he did in the killing game. And he was a member of a past game too.

And it’s not like we haven’t seen them in other outfits. Xander has been seen in another outfit in his bonus episode.”

I mean. As I mentioned, the characters probably just frequent these outfits, given they were wearing them when they first went to Hope’s Peak. The Eden thing is a bit more notable because, unlike Xander’s which could just be from any point of Hope’s Peak time, that image has to be from the pre-prologue situation. But the idea that she was wearing that because it’s just an outfit she wears often isn’t too far fetched to me. This isn’t a point against your theory, I just don’t personally find the outfits to be the most convincing point of evidence for it.

[Eden’s secret]

“Why is this secret so mundane? (At least in comparison to the others)

Wouldn’t it make more sense to say something about what she did to Xander?

Of course, that could just be because they didn’t want her to know about something she did during the missing year.

But it could also be because it happened during the last killing game.

That one’s a stretch but I just thought I’d put it out there.”

Well, you recognize it’s a stretch, and I agree. If Eden doesn’t remember the Xander thing, then the secret which would be most effective for her would be something different, and apparently she doesn’t really have many serious secrets outside of her sexuality. Keep in mind these secrets don’t necessarily have to be the worst thing the person in question did, as stated by Veronika in 2-13.

“Why specifically these two?

Dev didn’t have to post the colored picture of Xander.

It’s clearly important.

Same for Eden.”

Also not a point for Xander imo. Dev posts a lot of stuff that isn’t necessarily important, such as the Veronico Christmas comic or the “long hair style” images. That is to say, dev posting it isn’t sufficient evidence of something’s importance, you gotta find something important in the content itself to claim that.

And even if the image is important, it could be important in a different way. There is the whole “why does someone turn their back on who they’re talking to” caption or whatever, which could for example be trying to draw a connection between David and Xander in this scene and Mai and Teruko in the 1-6 dream sequence, among other interpretations.

But that’s Xander. I will agree with you that the Eden one is important because it appears in the main series and has a clear connection to the pre-prologue, though.

“Why would he say this?

Unless he knew Teruko in the past, of course.

My guess is that Teruko was named the mastermind during his game. Whether or not she actually appeared, who knows. But she was to blame (supposedly) (to his knowledge) for the killing game. And apparently, killer her would do something important.

This ties in to the note that told Xander to kill Teruko as well!”

I would actually argue that Xander in the pre-prologue doesn’t think Teruko is the mastermind, because “ending the killing game” and “killing Teruko” are two separate goals. If you assume that killing the mastermind ends the killing game (which is a fair assumption I think), and Xander believes Teruko is the mastermind, then what he says is “I have to end the killing game. And even if I can’t do that, I have to end the killing game a different way.�� Doesn’t really track does it?

But “ending the killing game” and “killing Teruko” do seem to be aligned goals, at least, so it makes sense to think that Xander believed she had some sort of involvement in it, which is sufficient for your theory I think. Of course, this is very speculative, we don’t know a lot about why exactly Xander wanted to kill the girl.

Btw, what is Teruko’s deal in your theory? Is she another “sacrifice”, a recycled mastermind or traitor of some kind, or someone who was known to the participants of the previous killing game but didn’t participate until the one seen in DRDT? I feel like that ended up a bit unclear lol.

“Who do we think were the survivors of their game?

My first guess was maybe a couple of the AltDRDT characters, but I’m not sure.”

I mean yeah, there’s kinda no one else we can really point to lol. As you said, it’s a guess, so I’m not gonna bother you about the lack of evidence, but yeah. That is a lot of survivors, though, so I’m gonna guess that if this theory is right, the survivors of the old killing game are other people who are probably unknown as of yet.

Overall, a really neat read, and a fun theory! Pretty plausible, too, at least the idea of the pre-prologue killing game and Xander and Eden (and Teruko?) being in it. I disagreed on some points, but that’s only natural with highly speculative things like this. I thought the post itself was well written with a pretty unique style, easy to understand (even if I feel some points could have used a bit more elaboration, but that might just be me), so there’s that. Hope this was enough, thanks for the ask!

[maspers]

Weather Update: The First Danganronpa Game secretly had TWO rivals the entire time.

Lemme explain (spoilers, obviously, and this is gonna be a bit a rant whoops):

Usual Danganronpa Format as the fandom usually sees it: Students trapped in an unfamiliar location with no idea what's going on, plot driven partially by the mystery but mostly by the character interactions.

Trigger Happy Havoc: Students trapped in an altered but still familiar location with no idea what's going on, plot driven partially by the character interactions but mostly by the mystery.

In a setting like DR2, V3, or a vast majority of fangans, the participants in the killing game are given very little information about their circumstances aside from what Monokuma gives them, which is deliberately vague and designed to direct them towards killing each other. Additionally, the students are given very little ability to react to and retaliate against the Killing Game system in ways Monokuma won't expect. Weirdness aside DR2 basically went all according to plan until the final trial due to Monokuma's nigh-omniscience, and V3 was similar with the only debatable exception being Kokichi's elaborate scheme in Chapter 5. Since the students are dealing with such restricted conditions, the plot can't be fully driven by the students figuring out the setting, so instead the plot focuses on the conflict that derives from the various characters reacting to the game. In a story like this, it makes sense that the most antagonistic characters aside from the mastermind would be the ones with EXTREME personalities that shake things up a lot. Nagito, Kokichi and that character archetype that everyone expects to be in a fangan are necessary to make the plot more INTERESTING.

But THH is different. The students KNOW where they are (or at least they think they do, and turn out to be right). While they don't have any recollection of the Academy itself, they at least know what to EXPECT from Hope's Peak, and can from there point out nooks and crannies for delicious little clues that reveal more about the situation, putting together a narrative without Monokuma's handholding. Additionally, despite his blustering Monokuma is explicitly NOT omniscient here, or even practically omniscient, as methods to hide things from him are figured out early on. The students are able to DO something about their situation as the story progresses, and have figured out some aspects of the overarching mystery as it pertains to them long before the final trial (and NOT because the Mastermind deliberately put the info in their path). This greater information access and greater character agency in general means that while the character conflicts are still very much a part of the plot, the overarching theme is solving the mystery while adapting to the circumstances to avoid dying.

In a setting like this, extreme/bizarre personalities aren't really a boon to the plot. While the character reveals add layers and information in other settings, here it's a distraction. The students HAVE resources, and at least SOME of the tools they need. Engaging in over-the-top schemes and traps is a DETRIMENT to their current course of action even more than in later games, which is probably why Monokuma tries to encourage them to do such. Other characters in THH fit the bill of "stereotypical DR Rival" probably better than the supposed-rival Byakuya and THH's other Rival character actually do. Celestia Ludenberg comes to mind, in another DR setting she could be exactly the sort of mysterious and interesting rival the series is known for (and that she clearly wants to be), but in THH she's just another annoyance. Toko Fukawa and Genocider have the extreme personality down, but they only advance the plot in the students' favor when they approach things logically and in a less crazy manner. If Rivals in this game are supposed to fit the bill of "causes unexpected occurrences and advances the plot but still clashes with the rest of the cast in intense ways while doing so" like the other Rival characters in the series do, they have to play the role under a different ruleset. Rather than representing a philosophical extreme through their personality, these rivals have to represent a different extreme: their methods and rationale when it comes to SOLVING THE MYSTERY / ESCAPING THE GAME.

And in this regard, Byakuya Togami plays the role wonderfully. The vast majority of the students in the game are very passive when it comes to solving the mystery. Sure, they get very active when trying to escape by killing someone, but that's just dancing to Monokuma's tune. Rather than wondering what to do, Byakuya makes his actions clear from the start, and everything he does in the game that's antagonistic fits that same M.O., while not doing anything that would put him in an uncertain position. He learns how the trial system functions, then during Chapter 2 he performs an experiment to analyze the other students further. His antagonism largely stems from viewing the other students as opponents, so his pragmatic approach makes sense, but he doesn't JUST analyze the players. He also analyzes the metaphorical board, and it's clear he's trying to get every scrap of info he can on his situation before fully committing to action (exhibit A: him spending so much freaking time in the library). The only stereotypically "nuts" thing he really does is down that bottle of poison/protein in Chapter 4. He's proving a point. He'll do anything it takes to win, and knowledge is power. Hence his active role in acquiring info about the game, the setting, and the other students' behaviors.

But Byakuya can't be the only Rival here. While he might be solving some mysteries in the background, we don't get to see much of it because the whole point of his character early on is conflict: his active versus the other's passive. He won't share his findings or really work with others, which is not good when our precious baby protag Makoto is trying to solve the mystery himself. Byakuya can't move the plot forward like that until after Chapter 4. Chapter 5 onward, Byakuya's method to his madness is revealed, and he contributes a lot to solving the mystery and directing the other students to getting more of the info he needs (exhibit A, dismantling Monokuma). And... that doesn't really fit with the formula later games set. Chapter 5 is when conflicts with the rival comes to head, and shenanigans abound. Nagito does it. Kokichi does it. But Byakuya isn't particularly inclined. Shenanigans with his own life at stake aren't his methods, they're just complications. But... the stuff still comes to a head with THH's other rival. The other character that's been progressing the plot in active ways that contrast with the other students, and clashing with the rest of the cast AND the player. The character whose life IS on the line in Chapter 5.

You've probably guessed by now that I'm talking about Kyoko Kirigiri.

When we look at her in retrospect, Kyoko doesn't raise any alarms compared to the craziness of the rest of the franchise. She helps with the investigations and moves the trials forward, she's nowhere near the craziness brought by Nagito and Kokichi, and generally just really competent. We categorize her in the "Assistant" role, similar to Chiaki and Shuichi/Kaede/Kaito/Maki/whoever (hey wait a second where did we even come up with this archetype anyway, if V3 doesn't even really seem to have one character who properly fits it?) She definitely fits the Assistant bill in DR3, but this ain't DR3. She doesn't fit the bill for stereotypical Danganronpa Trial Rival... but as previously established, Byakuya doesn't either. So let's go deeper and look at things in context. Because from the start of the game, Kyoko is weird. Really weird.

We're introduced not knowing anything about her, and she keeps it that way for a LONG time. "Ultimate ???" just screams she's going to be important later but you just don't know how (remember, this was BEFORE Rantaro). She's really helpful during the trials and is three steps ahead of everyone, but... aside from that a lot of her actions are really, REALLY conflict inducing. She is happy to get info from other students, but it's clear there's a lot she isn't sharing. She says ominous things to Monokuma that make no sense ("What did you do to my body?" anyone?) and seems VERY focused on the mystery. Just like Byakuya, she's taking an active role in analyzing every detail about the circumstances. And interestingly enough, she's just as paranoid as he is, just in different ways. As Makoto spends more time around her she manipulates him (and others) in some really unnerving ways, and her dynamics with other characters outside of trials are always either generically placating to keep things calm or downright low-key hostile when things don't go according to plan. Just like with Byakuya, for the vast majority of the game she doesn't trust anybody. And in chapter 5, these aspects of her character are brought into full view. She spends the entire chapter hiding away, she mysteriously appears in Makoto's room (side note: Nagito and Kokichi both have "looking over the protag in an unnerving fashion" pics. Byakuya doesn't. Kyoko DOES). It becomes clear in the trial how much she's hiding and how much she's been manipulating things. Chapter 5 is an impossible trial designed as a trap for HER. Her seemingly innocuous actions have come in full domino effect. And only Makoto and the power of being a Man Literally To Unpredictable To Die can save her.

(Makoto obviously isn't a rival character, but it's interesting to see how by THH's requirements he very well could have fit the bill. Think of him from Hina's or Hiro's perspective: he's seemingly innocuous, yet survived way longer than anyone would expect him to, often figures out just the right thing to say, both Byakuya and Kyoko interact with him a lot when neither of them seem to care about anyone else, and ultimately seems to become a lot more actively involved in mystery solving despite not having any right too. Couple that with the fact that he spent a couple days "bedridden" when from an outsider's perspective he could have been doing anything, and ngl Makoto sus. He even survives an execution!)

Both Byakuya and Kyoko take turns providing conflict to the story in ways that develop the plot but COMPLETELY clash with the passive methods of everyone else. They practically take turns being the one doing whatever crazy crap needs to get done. Their character arcs parallel each other too. Byakuya has to learn about the value of human life and emotional connection. Kyoko knows perfectly well how important life and emotions are, but she needs to learn that it's a two-way street, that trust needs to be established and that she doesn't have to do everything important herself. Byakuya, while lacking in empathy, is fully willing to work with others and outsource important tasks. He just views it as a business transaction. BOTH of them are prideful frickers who think they're the only one with a brain cell, and it's up to Makoto to undergo his own character arc, become their friend, and prove them wrong. And then once Makoto DOES finally take control and prove he's the one with the audacity required to actually get everything working, he's able to redirect both Byakuya and Kyoko into finally teaming up with everyone and stopping chaos so much chaos. Without either of them, Makoto couldn't have made it to the final trial (we can see when Kyoko dies in the Bad Ending that it's basically game over, the mystery CAN'T be solved, and I fully believe that the circumstances would have ended similarly if Byakuya had died and they'd lost his pragmatic logical reasoning). But without Makoto, Kyoko and Byakuya couldn't have made it THROUGH the final trial. All three of them are literary foils of each other.

(This is another reason why seeing all three of them in the final trial of DR2 is so fun, because the Trial Point Getters are a well-oiled machine by that point and you get to see them play off each other as 100% allies, while once again getting to see through Hajime's eyes how 100% sus all three of them really are once they get going.)

So that's why I think THH has some really good Rivals, despite neither Byakuya nor Kyoko fitting what we've come to expect from the formula. They aren't insane or representing a philosophical extreme, they're representing clashing viewpoints in solving a mystery and escaping the killing game. In other entries in the series, Byakuya and Kyoko would be killing game fodder for twisty midgame chapters and otherwise not being able to contribute much of interest. But in Trigger Happy Havoc? They're exactly what the game needs to elevate it from simple mystery-solving to full-blown ART.

TL;DR Byakuya and Kyoko are awesome and I love them and a lot of people sleep on their status as Danganronpa Rivals because they grade them on a standard that I think is unfair and ignores their strengths as characters. Also Makoto suddenly becomes way more interesting when viewed through a perspective other than his own. The first Danganronpa game is a materpiece and more fangans need to realize that they don't have to play by the supposed "series formula". After all, this game didn't.

[accirax]

Literature Girl Insane and the Color Connection Theory

(Spoilers for DRDT’s Literature Girl Insane MV, as well as through Chapter 2 Episode 11. Vague spoilers for Super Danganronpa 2 and New Danganronpa V3. Because the images in this post are mainly designed to showcase the colors presented in the MV, there will be no image IDs in this post.)

Wow! Literature Girl Insane is… so much!! There is literally so much to look at that I don’t know how we’re supposed to handle it!!!

I mean that all in a glowingly positive way, to be clear. The DRDT creator has granted us an exciting puzzle that may take months to fully solve/analyze (or maybe we’ll never finish it), with so many facets that there are still things that I haven’t seen much of anybody talking about.

Speaking of, I’d like to take a look at the colorization of some of the lyrics! As per my eye, there are 15 distinct colors that appear in the lyrics of the MV. I distinguish the lyrics as “the words that are outlined in black (or white, when the color is black),” so any of the colored text in the background, such as the literary passages, will not be included in my analysis.

An important piece of information that I’ll reference a lot is the official colors that have been assigned to the students. That being, the color that the first letter of each of their first names gains when the students enter the Class Trial.

Because Xander never attends a Class Trial, he has no confirmed color, unless I’m forgetting something. However, based on his bright hair, I would have to assume that the color of that letter would have been a fiery red. It’s even on the opposite side of Teruko on the color wheel.

David has two colors; one for his inspirational speaker persona (yellow) and one for his depressed theater kid persona (gray). I don’t think J’s color changes between being listed as J Rosales and J Moreno. Although I didn’t put it on the chart, MonoTV appears to have no color, with all of the letters in its name remaining white. Some of my personal assignments will go against these color choices, but I think it’s still important to keep in mind.

Since Tumblr doesn’t want to let me use as many colors as I want, I will put in an image of what each color looks like the first time it appears. I’m going to analyze each color in order of how many times it appears in the MV, from most to least. That means the first color is…

Red

are all just idiots (final verdict); Bye; whatever; Goodbye.; go mad; together; are all just idiots!; Bye; broken; go insane?; ignorant; God; go mad; great applause!!!; Aa; won’t change; original; you’ve killed so many; and disappear!; 1; medicine; [untranslated characters]; [untranslated characters]; [untranslated characters]; go mad; self delusion; isn’t it!?; ah,

(If you want time stamps and pictures of the characters, I wrote them down in the document Venus and I compiled together)

Red appears 28 times throughout the MV, and as you can tell, they’re very… edgy. It’s a very interesting color, given that there are multiple characters I think it could apply to.

The first option is Veronika. Her color is a bright red, and she’s no stranger to creepiness. Things like “go mad” and “you’ve killed so many” could definitely be words she’s spoken to her problematic faves like Arturo or David. The selection of “broken” could apply to her hidden quote: “once something is broken, it can never be pieced together in quite the same way again. The same goes for people.” If Veronika herself is something that is/was “broken,” going insane could apply to her as well. Some people have already called her delusional, which could fit right in with “self delusion.” With her chaotic attitude, I can also easily imagine her using the intense punctuation (!!! and !?) seen on some of the lines.

The biggest problem with this interpretation is that, frankly, I don’t think Veronika merits this level of importance in this MV. Now, that’s not to say that I don’t like Veronika, or don’t think she’s important– I love Veronika! I just don’t think she’s that important to David, who this MV is about. 

They could have more of a connection in the future, given that Veronika has started simping for his dark side, but thus far they’ve barely interacted at all. The most damning rebuttal is the cast list at the end.

Would the color that appears the most in the MV really go to a character that doesn’t even make the supporting cast list?

The main way that I can imagine that Veronika actually is red is if she is the mastermind. That would explain how she could claim such a prolific color in general, yet why she wouldn’t yet be listed as a Main Role– because David (presumably) wouldn’t know that she’s the mastermind. If David survives for a while alongside mastermind Veronika, it would also give more of a chance for their relationship to develop down the road.

Still, it would make more sense to me if red did belong to a listed character; even better if one of the main roles. Someone like…

Option two: Xander Matthews.

Xander is obviously a key player in this MV, and like I said, I would guess that his character color would be red. Even if it was, say, yellow (for his eyes) instead, I don’t really think anybody could complain if he showed up as red in the MV.

The focus on the word “bye” would also fit Xander. He’s dead now, and David has clearly been thinking about him, so he could constantly be saying “bye” to Xander after the rebel “and disappear!”-ed from life. Xander had to treat his eye in the infirmary, so “medicine” could make sense for his character. “You’ve killed so many” could be something that David could imagine Xander saying to him in his guilt-ridden spirals. Although, as far as is confirmed, David has never actually killed anybody, including in his secret. Venus adds that “You’ve killed so many” could be Xander speaking to himself, stewing in his survivor’s guilt about the death of his family. She also says that “go mad” sounds like something a British person would say. You never know what she’ll have to contribute /lh.

Speaking of things Xander could say, though… I have a hard time imagining that he would say some of these things. I’m sure Teruko would tell me that I’m naive to have any trust left in the guy, but some lines just seem out of character for him, to me? Like, calling everyone idiots and telling people to “go insane” feels very different from how he acted in Chapter 1. Maybe if Xander was reflecting on his own “going insane” after he stabbed Teruko, it could work?

The line that stood out to me the most for not fitting Xander was actually “won’t change,” though. Man’s the Ultimate Rebel. He’s all about inciting change in people. Whatever this thing is that won’t change– David’s attitude, the mastermind’s wickedness, the continuation of the killing game– would he really be chiming in to say that it’s immutable? But, if I don’t really think that it’s Xander or Veronika, then what red person could be left?

Ah, right… the classic copout option, #3, Mai Akasaki.

I say “copout” because, overall, we know very little about her personality. Therefore, it’s easy to put words like “idiot” and “insane” into her mouth because there can’t be too much of a counterargument. It does seem like a pretty big contrast to her characterization as Unnamed Student (assuming that’s her), but given this series’ penchant for moral bankruptcy, I wouldn’t be surprised if her nice exterior hides a more sinister slant.

However, there are some genuine points in Mai’s favor here. First is the red color– Mai’s hair is red, and Teruko even notes that Xander’s red hair reminded her of Mai’s. Thus, if I speculated that Xander’s color could be red, Mai’s could be too. She’s at least in the Supporting Cast, unlike Veronika. “Bye” and particularly “and disappear!” would also fit Mai well, given her absence in the killing game. “God” is also of particular note, as it’s the first word in Mai’s roman numeral quote, “God is dead.” Mai also seems to be worshiped like a god among those who remember her (Teruko potentially excluded), and the MV notes her as “someone dearly loved.”

Those three aspects of God could be leading us to the conclusion that red represents Mai in this MV, and it’s that interpretation that I’ve decided to roll with. I promise I’ll pick up the pace for the next colors, okay?

Yellow

game; Bye; cat; is what you’re told; ambition; the falling slanted sun; Bye; “happiness”?; dead; make noise; The acclamation is; live; original; 2; Let’s do that! [translated]; shout; ah,; miserable

While Eden is the only holder of the color yellow as of Chapter 2 Episode 11, I think this color has to go to the man, the myth, the now-starless star himself, David Chiem. I mean, c’mon. It’s his MV. He has to have one of the most prominent colors.

But even beyond the yellow, there’s a lot that points to David here. Since I just mentioned the fading of the stars in David’s eyes, let’s start with “the falling slanted sun”. As the sun itself is a star, this line could represent both how the stars have fallen out of David’s eyes and how he, a star, is falling in the public’s perception. Given his determination to save his career, “ambition” certainly fits David’s character, and he “make[s] noise” every time he gives a speech, making people believe “what [they’re] told”. But despite his stage persona, he’s always felt “dead” and “miserable” on the inside.

Perhaps the most interesting line here is the “Let’s do that!”, which can be seen here.

(It’s the only line in Japanese we were able to translate ourselves T-T)

Even if it’s a “let’s do that!” instead of a “no, that’s wrong!”, which means that David is arguably only agreeing with himself, the protagonist imagery here is exceptionally clear. Not to mention, every canonical protagonist post-Makoto has been able to access consent points as well.

I’ve definitely seen people out there theorize that David may become Despair Time’s protagonist one day, and while I found the concept merely amusing at first, the more evidence piles up, the more I’m forced to believe it may be true. So, if David is represented by the color yellow, this could be further evidence/foreshadowing towards his future role. If so, I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that yellow has both “dead” and “live”. It seems like David’s alignments and beliefs are still up in the air.

Green

this guy ��; Bye; a life full of much shame; make noise; this guy; anonymous; Bye!; substance of the arts; this guy; original; 4; make noise; clown

Similar to yellow, there are two primary candidates for the color of green. And while Hu has a better argument than Eden did on yellow due to being listed in the supporting cast, her greatest competitor, Teruko, is also in the supporting cast.

Did you know that green appears thirteen times throughout the MV? Of course it’s fucking Teruko.

There’s a good argument to be made that, with her tragic backstory, Teruko is one who’s lived “a life full of much shame.” Doubly so if you believe that she has the “the killing game is all your fault” secret, which I personally do. Because she’s moved around so much and doesn’t seem to have many attachments to people, you could say that she’s “anonymous” in a lot of her actions.

Teruko “make[s] noise” frequently in both Daily Life, when she refuses to avoid the subject of murder and thrusts knives at people, and Deadly Life, where she maniacally laughs her way through solving the entire trial for those idiots twice in a row. However, due to her over-the-top lack of trust in anybody, I could still believe that David would see her as a “clown”. A smart clown, but a clown nonetheless. (She also had her sillier moments as well, especially when Xander was alive.)

The line that makes the least sense to me is honestly “substance of the arts,” especially given that it’s part of Veronika’s roman numeral phrase. Teruko doesn’t seem particularly artistic to me. Maybe it’s just meant to imply that she’s a girl with a lot of substance? If “the arts” were theater, it could be saying that her life is very tragic and dramatic? And if Teruko is a substantial, dramatic character, maybe Veronika would appreciate that? I’m obviously reaching, but I still do believe that green represents Teruko here.

Cyan

dog; No Longer Human; game!; I; isn’t that; original; LET’S LAUGH; just like that; 3; cry; foolish; “kapukapu”

While it might seem like this color should belong to J, given that it’s quite similar to her character color, I actually believe that this color represents someone else. Namely, MonoTV.

MonoTV’s official character color is white, but its face is obviously a bright cyan. It even tells Teruko that its favorite color is blue in Chapter 2 Episode 3, so I don’t think that calling MonoTV cyan is a stretch at all.

The most obvious clue that MonoTV could be cyan is “dog,” which is pasted over “cat” (in yellow) at 0:37. The replacement of “cat” isn’t written in the original lyrics of the song, so the creator definitely intended for this to relate back to MonoTV. Why not give the mascot itself the line correcting the species? “No Longer Human” fits along with this creature angle as well.

“game!” is another obvious one, as MonoTV is the excitable host of this killing game. While “LET’S LAUGH” seems sweet out of context, in the killing game, it could seem much more heartless and robotic. The all-caps approach also makes it feel threatening. “cry” could also be a command to the students, like when MonoTV encourages them to create more drama in Chapter 1. I don’t remember a specific instance of MonoTV calling the students “foolish”, but it doesn’t seem out of character at all.

I couldn’t figure out exactly what a kapukapu was, unfortunately. It’s a reference to Yamanashi, a children’s book by Kenji Miyazawa, but they don’t actually describe what a kapukapu is in that book. When I googled “kapukapu,” it came up with a Sega character described as an antagonistic “orange cat creature with yellow eyes, a zigzag shaped tail, and big sharp fangs.” The creator definitely knows more Japanese than I do, but if they were similarly struggling on this one, they may have also googled kapukapu, seen “evil cat” and said, “yeah, that sounds enough like MonoTV.”

I should also probably talk about the “1”, “2”, “3”, and “4” portrayed at 2:43, which has shown up in the red, yellow, green, and cyan sections so far. These numbers representing Mai, David, Teruko, and MonoTV definitely feels plausible to me, especially if you throw in the wrinkle that David could become the protagonist. The qualification could be “mysterious characters with a darker side,” “characters related to the formation of the killing game,” or even “the most actively important characters at the end of the killing game.” This interpretation makes me more confident that these assignments are correct, although there’s obviously room for debate.

Pink

anonymous hopes,; heart; Rolling with laughter and turning into clowns; brainwashed; degraded copy; original; [untranslated character]; clown; painful

And now, onto a color for which I feel there’s basically no debate. If these text colors do correlate to characters, this color has to be Whit.

For starters, he’s the only character assigned the color pink, probably because it’s so prevalent in his design. I can imagine “Rolling with laughter and turning into clowns” paired with his XD laughing sprite, fitting how he’s the biggest canonical joke-teller in the cast. “heart” fits his Ultimate Matchmaker talent perfectly, while also representing how his empathic ways can make him the heart of a group. MonoTV literally mentions that he has “too many damn hearts on [him]” in Chapter 2 Episode 2. “painful”, meanwhile, can represent his secret, and how he represses the painful memories of loss regarding his loved ones.

The most concerning and confusing lines here are “brainwashed” and “degraded copy”. You could definitely pull these for mastermind Whit analysis, but since I’m not a strong believer in that theory (perhaps because I just desperately don’t want it to be true), I’ll go with another interpretation. Brainwashing could be something that Whit essentially does to himself, controlling his mental state and forcing himself to be happy. “degraded copy” could be how Whit feels about himself in regards to his mother. Although we don’t know too much about her, we know that he doesn’t relate to his dad, and he dyes his hair to be more similar to his mom. Since he idolizes her so fiercely, it’s possible he feels like he can never be as great as she was.

There’s always a lot to unpack with Whit “repression” Young, but… for the sake of post length, we’re moving on.

Gray

(after all); whoever else; (turbatus); XI.; whoever else; [untranslated character]; thing

Despite the fact that we’re running out of colors at a rapid pace, I actually think this one is David again. Specifically, clipless David, after his color turned to gray. C’mon, he’s the star of the show! He gets special privileges.

The gray character feels very depressed. It doesn’t seem to care about anything, using vague terms like “whoever else” and “thing,” as well as taking “turbatus,” AKA “troubled.” David has already claimed to have a family history of depression, and although he’s a liar, I don’t know if he was bs-ing that one. Based on his worldview as portrayed in Chapter 2 Episode 11, it’s not much of a leap to assume David feels this depressing gray way.

The inclusion of “XI.” is quite interesting, given that that’s Mai’s roman numeral, “God is dead.” In my mind, this further cements a potential relationship between Mai and David (and that Mai is red and David is yellow/gray). Just look at the colorization of the quote “XI. God is dead”!

That’s both of David’s colors on either side of Mai. Maybe, as the protagonist, David will be the one to take down Mai, the “God”?

If gray isn’t a second David, I would suggest that this could be Rose. While she isn’t particularly associated with the color gray, “(turbatus)” is part of her roman numeral quote, and she has plenty of troubles of her own. Based on her hidden quote, “In the end, the only thing I can do is watch my wretched life go on,” it would be reasonable to believe she is also depressed. “whoever else” and “thing” could refer to her absentmindedness, and how she tends to forget things that aren’t important to her (despite her photographic memory).

Orange

← that guy; shout; that guy; let’s play!; that guy; original

So it’s a little random, but my best guess is that orange is Ace? Mostly because he’s the only true orange color in the class trial– Min and Rose have sort of orangey colors as well, but to me, they don’t fit the lyrics super well. Not to say that Ace does, but there’s more of an argument there to be had.

“shout” is the most Ace-like lyric to me. Most of his (amazingly) voice acted lines are screaming in some way. He yells a lot, whether due to stress, excitement, or anger.  On that angry wavelength, “let’s play!”, though it sounds innocent, could be something bitterly yelled out at an opponent. Like, “oh, if you wanna play, let’s FUCKIN’ play, Nico/Levi/etc!!” Given that Ace identifies as a man, he would be a more classic “guy” choice than Min or Rose would be as well.

The repeated “that guy” puzzled me at first, but I did find a solution. The thing that was tripping me up was that the orange “that guy” is always paired with the green “this guy.” If Teruko is green, then why would David be putting Ace on the same level of importance as Teruko there? He and Ace have barely interacted!

But then I remembered that there’s one key place in which they did interact, and that was in the second class trial. Ace takes part in revealing David’s secret when he exposes the conversation David and Arei had in the relaxation room. And then Teruko agrees with him, saying that she’s always found David’s behavior suspicious. David could pair Teruko and Ace together in his mind as “this guy” and “that guy” as the main ones who exposed his secret. Whoever else was there doesn’t matter; they were the main ones at fault.

Plum

change!; like that; original; change!; a cup of poison

Purple time! This one is Charles, I’m pretty sure.

Charles has probably had the greatest positive character arc thus far (other than maybe Arei?), so him being “change!” is very fitting. He’s certainly urged Teruko to change for the better, and maybe he’ll do that for David in the future too. “like that” is part of “Do it like that / let’s live together!”, which could refer to Charles warming up to his classmates. Notably, that is part of VII., which is J’s roman numeral. J did possess Charles’ secret and tell him about it, but it’s not the strongest connection.

“a cup of poison”... does not bode the best for Charles’ survival! However, it could just be referring to his custom weapon being strychnine. Rose’s secret weapon is also poisonous in nature, but (spoilers for the post) I’m not sure she actually has a color in this MV. Thus, if the creator wanted to give one of their poison recipients the “cup of poison” line, Charles may have been their only option. It could also indicate that Charles’ strychnine is more important to the story than Rose’s turpentine (a concerning concept, given that the turpentine has already been involved in an attempted murder), but… who can say! (I am in denial)

Black

you; the track to the ideal country →; you; you

We’re running out of colors here, and it would be pretty weird if the second member of the main cast didn’t have one. That’s right, I’m saying that black refers to Xander, despite his red leanings. However, his color was never officially assigned, and his gloves are black.

David seems very fixated on Xander in this MV and its associated content. Thus, the triple repetition of “you” could indicate David repeatedly thinking about Xander throughout the days. Although, if Xander is the black text, Xander should probably be the one saying “you”. Perhaps instead, it’s about how Xander cares about and fixates on specific individuals, like how he noticed that Nico was alone at lunch and went to go talk to them. I’m giving the guy a glowing review, but it kinda seems like David is doing that too.

“the track to the ideal country →” also reminds me of Xander. As the Ultimate Rebel, he calls for country-wide reform. So, he could believe that he’s leading the way to the ideal country. Abstracted a bit, this could also relate to his motivations for attempting to kill Teruko. He may have believed that killing her was “the track” to save everyone and get them out of the killing game.

Although I wish I could give him a color with greater importance, this one makes a lot of sense to me. It is the first color that appears, for what it’s worth.

Dark Blue

cry; original; big

This one is… hard. I’m not super confident about it– “cry” and “big” do not give me a lot to work with. I’m going to give this one to J for the time being, mostly based off of a fringe theory I developed about “original”.

Yeah, “original”. That 8-color madhouse that I’ve been ignoring so far. To be honest, I don’t know what to do with it. It’s possible that “original” itself is meant to apply to all of the characters featured in it– the word is generic enough that I believe it could apply to all of these characters.

However, I was trying to figure out if this could be hinting at a Chapter 6 trial composition. Eight people seems like way too many for Chapter 6, but if you say it includes Mai (red) and MonoTV (cyan), you only need six surviving students. While casts usually roll up to the endgame with 5 people (based on how SDR2 and v3 went), all you need is to skip a double victim case or have a blackened-less trial to get up to 6.

Under this theory, that would put Teruko, David, Charles, Whit, and Ace in the Chapter 6 trial. (Do I really believe this is true? Not really, but, man, what a dream.) I don’t know exactly how much the creator is paying attention to balancing their final cast, but I have to imagine they would notice that Teruko is the only girl listed there.

That was the deciding factor that swayed me into calling this J over Arturo, as both of their colors are blue. I can see J as a survivor much more easily than I can Arturo, and she would be a second girl (or third, if you count Mai) in the trial. I’m definitely not super convinced, though, so take dark blue with a grain of salt.

Light Blue

cry; cry; idk!!!

So, this is… bleak. This person is not having a great time. Based on color, I’m saying this one is Nico. (That’s also why I didn’t mention them as a non-male blue person on dark blue).

While Nico is definitely less of a crybaby than people might have assumed based on their first appearance, it’s still true that they have multiple sprites with tears in their eyes. “idk!!!” could reference how they struggle to communicate with others, and never know what’s considered “polite” to say. “idk!!!” is also part of Nico’s roman numeral, connecting it to them again.

You could also read “cry, cry, idk!!!” as a timeline of what Nico has done so far in the story. They were anxious, got bullied, and cried a lot, until something in them snapped. What are they gonna do after they snap? Idk!!! Kill Ace, maybe? Either of these options, along with Nico’s official color, are enough to convince me that they could be light blue.

Soft Blue

You’re called an; the world

Hang on, isn’t there another blue non-man you haven’t mentioned yet? You’re right. It’s because I think soft blue is Arei.

Even without her class trial color, Arei is a character covered in blue from head to toe,  so she would definitely fit one of the blue options. “You’re called an” reminds me of her for multiple reasons. One, she’s a bully who gives people mean nicknames, so it could be her calling someone else something cruel. Two, many aspects of her personality were derived from her sisters bullying her, so you could say that she’s defined by what she was called as a child. Classic cycle of violence type stuff.

“the world” is a little iffier, but there’s definitely still an argument to be made. In her rant to David and Teruko, Arei makes clear that she believes the world is an inherently cruel place, and that she’s only one piece of that meanness. If she ponders the state of the world frequently, “the world” could be related to her character. (She’s also my world, so–)

Mint

“Idiot”, pointless

Another character who is not having an excellent time! Well, if this alternative green isn’t Teruko, it’s probably Hu, as she’s the other character assigned green. That would also mean that we’ve cleared every character in the cast list, other than the mysterious M__ N____i(___).

While this is not my opinion, I think David currently sees Hu as a “pointless” “idiot”; another person in the long line of manipulable people that he was destined to control. He literally calls her a “fucking idiot” at 18:30 of Chapter 2 Episode 11. It’s also possible that this is how Hu is feeling about herself right now– she says in that same episode that “If no one relies on [her], then [she] won’t be useful anymore.” Since she wasn’t able to prevent Nico from attempting murder or see through David’s lies, she could believe her existence here is pointless.

Kind of an L, but I think this makes sense.

Orchid

doubt; shout

…um.

So, in the assigned colors, the only people with purple-ish pink-ish colors are Charles and Whit, but they’ve already been assigned colors– purple and pink, no less. The next closest person to being purple is Levi, so I guess I’m giving this to him?

It’s not like “doubt” and “shout” are terrible for him. He definitely has moments of doubt when it comes to understanding Arei’s mind games, or when apologizing to Ace. Speaking of Ace, “shout” could refer to the moment in Trial 1 where Levi snapped and threatened to strangle Ace.

I also don’t know if it has any significance that these two words rhyme. Probably not, just because I don’t really see how this would point us to any character, but it’s something worth mentioning.

We’re almost at the end!

Periwinkle

world

Part of the reason why I disliked giving Levi the orchid quotes was because his color fits this periwinkle color much better, but I digress.

For starters, let me say that I’m pretty sure this is its own color, but it could be that my eyes are deceiving me from staring at this MV for too long, and this is actually part of purple. In that case, Charles is also my world, so we good. (The other color assignments are subjected to my opinions as well. I tried screenshotting everything and bringing it into Photoshop, but it was coming up with different hexcodes for colors that were clearly meant to be the same thing, so I gave up and went with subjectivity. If you think something is assigned wrong, let me know!)

As I just mentioned in the orchid section, there aren’t really any more pink or purple characters left in the cast, which leaves us with a problem. Based on the answers I landed on for all of the other colors, I found myself left with Min, Eden, Arturo, Rose, and Veronika. I sort of associate Min and Rose with purple based on the colors of their outfits, but officially, they’re both sort of brownish.

That’s why… I actually think this might be a character we haven’t met yet. Namely, Diana Chiem (should she actually exist), the woman in the video/the hand holding the acceptance letter, the class’ teacher that Min mentions, or M__ N____i(___). Or, some combination of these people, should any of them actually be depicting the same person.

Periwinkle is the last color to appear, which could correlate to how this character will take a while to appear in the story. Their one and only quote being “world” matches how this person is currently in the outside world, not the killing game. They could also be a connection David has to the outside world.

I’m aware this is even more of a copout than calling Mai red, but I honestly believe in this more than any of the other students.

And with that, we’re finally done! I’m always a sucker for matching things to other things, so this was a lot of fun. I might have more to say on this MV in the future, or I might not, but either way, it’s been an honor to piece this thing together with you guys.

[incrediblemirai]

Fanfic - Don't Watch Me Die

I wrote this a year ago for the Bad Things Happen Bingo, Public Execution/Torture prompt.

Danganronpa V3 spoilers

Summary: Monokuma decides to change the execution for the third trial. Shuichi suffers deepy.

Trigger warnings: Graphic gore, gun violence, suicide/suicidal ideation, psychological horror, trauma, sexual abuse mentioned, incest, vomiting. This is very dark. It is not an easy read.

Fic under read more

Korekiyo could never forget where they were. He spent half his life outside, walking around the world in field studies, looking up at the beautiful sky. Beautiful in all its imperfections, the irregular clouds crossing it, the way it would shine gray and blue and white. This sky here was fake, too blue, the clouds too regular, the night sky full of fake constellations too well placed. 

It was unbearable. The lies. The untruth of it all. Being trapped in a real place would feel better. Still, some things made being here better. Perhaps passable. Acceptable, for now, knowing he could leave someday. And these things were precisely two (he noted in one his many unfinished notes). One, his lab, with all its amazing artifacts and books, the smell of history that despite everything was real. Two, Shuichi. Shuichi didn’t have a classification, the way one would put on a government form. Circle one: friend, colleague, acquaintance, lover, other. If he had one, it would be other, though Korekiyo wouldn’t choose something as vague and unexplanatory as that. 

Today, he was laying on the soft grass with Shuichi, reading books they chose from the library. After Rantaro’s death, the library was filled with a silent, palpable dread - to most people. Korekiyo didn’t particularly care, but Shuichi seemed uncomfortable and couldn’t stop looking at the stain seeping into the floor, so they left. They took the books outside, leaning against a tree in the courtyard. His book was fascinating, but alas, he was uncharacteristically distracted (yet characteristically self-aware). He could sense Shuichi next to him, hyper aware of everything about him, the way he sat so close their shoulders touched when he turned the page, to how he smiled at his novel (an embarrassing romance novel that he would never actually admit to liking, because he was easily embarrassed like that), to how he was breathing. 

It wasn’t unusual for him to stare, he reassured himself. He was an anthropologist after all, it was right for him to observe others. Right, and normal, and not disobeying any rules. Shuichi bit down on his lip as he read (maybe it was a romantic scene?). If he asked, Shuichi would kiss him with those lips. He was sure of this, Shuichi had told him himself last week, his face red with want and embarrassment as he took Korekiyo’s hand and asked to kiss him, half-whispering, his eyes shining. 

He had to say no, of course, because he had Sister, but for a moment he let himself imagine what would happen if he said yes. Shuichi would kiss softly, but with a passion behind it, the quiet fire that shone out of him, the one that made Korekiyo look, ah maybe he stared too much? Maybe it wouldn’t be soft, maybe he would kiss hard, his hands running through Korekiyo’s hair, kissing until he forgot he had ever kissed anyone else, until the world and the past disappeared.

“Are you alright?” Shuichi asked, bringing Korekiyo’s mind out of the maze he had gotten lost in, turning to face him, eyebrows scrunched in confusion.

“Ah, I got carried away daydreaming. I apologize,” he responded, swiftly turning back to his own book. He shouldn’t have thought that, he got carried away, it was wrong, a mistake… Sister would be angry. 

“So, what’s your book about?” Avoidance is the best way to suppress awry thoughts . Shuichi closed the book, hiding the cover against his chest. 

“Uh, Sherlock Holmes.” An obvious, terrible lie. Sherlock Holmes would not be impressed.

“You don’t have to be ashamed of reading romance books. It’s normal to want such things, isn’t it? Love, affection, comfort… pleasure.” It was sweet, watching Shuichi blush. “And I hope you know by now I don’t judge.” 

“You do judge. I see the way you look at Kaito.” Shuichi said pointedly, but he was smiling. 

“He deserves it.” 

“Hey, no fighting.” He poked him in the arm, in Shuichi’s charming awkward way, unsure if this touch was okay. Korekiyo himself wasn’t sure whether it was okay. 

It was difficult to stop thinking. He had always been like that, mind running a hundred miles an hour underneath the carefully crafted cold exterior. A statue, hands carved together in prayer, no expression on its face. Now he was thinking too much, letting himself get carried away. Sister had been enough, more than enough, his whole world and universe, and then came Shuichi, with his genuine interest in what he had to say, who wasn’t afraid of him, who truly enjoyed his company in a way no one else had. Shuichi who was gentle, who worried for him when he hurt, who wouldn’t hit him or yell at him or drag him to bed when he wished not to… though of course those actions were acceptable, they too were signs of love, it was understandable that Sister hit him. It was deserved. His heart fluttered, and his mind responded, soothing himself with well-rehearsed phrases.

Shuichi was a bad influence on him, making his mind tremble with uncertainty like this, tempting him , perhaps unknowingly, when he was happy with Sister.

He was happy.

Korekiyo’s bandaged hand just barely brushed the fingers of Shuichi’s right hand, enough for plausible deniability, teetering between platonic affection and something more that his Sister would not like to hear about, and maybe that was alright, since it didn’t really mean anything. Friends could touch hands. Acquaintances could touch hands.

I don’t believe you, Korekiyo. Don’t tell me you’re developing feelings for this little whore? Aren’t I good enough for you?

“Saihara, would you kill for someone you love?” He didn’t know he would speak until he was done saying it, left almost breathless, as if it was his admission of guilt. It silenced Sister for a moment. He was a bad brother for wanting to silence her, he knew that, but surely just one moment of silence could be forgiven? No, probably not. He’d deal with the consequences later. 

Shuichi turned to face him, looking concerned.

“Huh?”

“When Akamatsu was found guilty, everyone forgave her because she had good intentions. Would you kill, if you had a good reason?” He paused to take a breath. “The morality of a person is defined by many influences. Your family, friends, the media you consume… everyone is a unique patchwork of their own experiences that cannot be replicated. I want to hear what you think about it. ” If Shuichi noticed him tense up, he didn’t comment on it.    

Shuichi thought about it for a moment, mulling it over, biting his lip in concentration (he always did that when thinking – it was one of things that were charming when Shuichi did them that weren’t charming on anyone else).

“I don’t know if I could. I’d like to say I could do it to save someone’s life, but I don’t think I could actually force myself to do it.” He looked at his hands. “I can’t imagine the feeling of it. Knowing that someone died because of you. Watching their life drain away…” Suddenly, Korekiyo regretted bringing this up.

No one knew better than him that it wasn’t a good feeling.  

He remembered his first kill: standing in the victim’s bathroom, washing her blood off his hands with her lavender scented soap. She was a nice girl, studying nursing at a local university. He met her in a library, when she approached him with a question about the book he was reading and he could see in her face that she had no intention of listening to his answer. She was twenty, only a little younger than Sister, and he told her he was twenty too. 

She took him home that day,  took him to bed. Vaguely, he was aware this was illegal. What would she do, if she found his school ID, and realized he was fourteen? He closed his eyes and thought about Sister. It was her idea, to kill this woman, make her Sister’s friend. 

He turned the tap to hot, as if boiling water could cleanse the sins those hands committed. 

The mirror didn’t show his reflection when he looked at it, but Sister’s, her yellow eyes and lipsticked mouth, and he watched tears roll down her face. I’m very proud of you, Korekiyo , she whispered to him, her hushed voice wrapping thorns around his chest, making it hard to breathe, a feeling that belonged to her, that he felt only because he belonged to her.

“You’ve gone quiet. Are you alright?” Shuichi pulled him out of his memories, one of his thin fingers trailing across Korekiyo’s chest, half-soothing, half a plea for touch. Shuichi was a physical creature, seeking out touch, holding on hard onto every embrace. Maybe if it weren’t for Sister (blasphemy), he’d offer him all the touch he wanted, let him remove his mask, kiss him in the moonlight, let himself become his.

“Shall we switch topics? I realized this question was… rather uncomfortable,”

He’d leave you if he knew what you’ve done. He’d hate you. Imagine his face if he realized what a damaged little whore you really are, the kind of things you’re willing to do. That’s why we stay together, isn’t it? Because no one but me could ever love you.

The horror of the case had infected the room. The tall windows of the courtrooms created slivers of silver light that did nothing to alleviate the darkness that had settled into everyone. For a moment, Shuichi was hyper aware of everything around him. Kaito clenching his fists, Himiko’s pooling tears, Kokichi’s uncharacteristic seriousness, his own breathing, his pounding heart. They were all waiting for the inevitable, the moment Monokuma dragged off the blackened to his death.

There were ten of them there, the room filled with students, but Shuichi could only see Korekiyo. In an hour, he had fallen apart, his composure in pieces. After his last speech, he dropped to the floor, tears shining in his eyes, and now he was weeping loudly, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath. 

The calm exterior had been ripped off, leaving an undignified mess, a raw, hurting creature. Before, he moved with purpose, every touch of the hand meant to convey an expression he couldn’t with his mouth behind the mask. Even now, his mannerisms were delicate, the way he wiped the tears out of his eyes, feminine and familiar, and Shuichi was struck by how this was the last time he’d ever see him like this, because every minute was the last, and he should have been relieved, and that he wasn’t.

His mask had become wet with tears, so he pulled it down to his chin, wiping the flowing tears off his cheeks, covering his mouth with his other hand. He hid his mouth like he wouldn’t exist if he showed himself.

Shuichi had learnt how to read Korekiyo’s eyes before (he knew even as it was happening that there would always be a before and after ) and now those golden eyes were full of fear and pain and Shuichi’s own eyes blurred with tears. Silver light shone onto Korekiyo from the window, making his pale skin glow, and for a moment he looked like a ghost, his bloodless face polished with tears and shining lipstick that was all wrong. 

It made him otherworldly. A shadowed ghost. 

Part of Shuichi wanted to rush over to him, offer some last comfort, selfishly wanting to be held just one more time, just one more memory to hold onto, one memory to cradle when he will lie in his cold bed alone tonight. However, his legs were rooted to the spot, and he didn’t dare move.

“What’s with the long faces? I thought you’d be excited this time.” Monokuma laughed, appearing out of nowhere with his Monokubs. “Don’t you all want this freak dead?” He walked up to Korekiyo and pulled his hair, making him whimper in pain. “He hurt your friends. He hurt many, many others.” 

“He’s our classmate. We won’t celebrate his death,” Maki said, voice hard as nails, and it was that which really broke Shuichi, the severe way she spoke, as if it was inevitable, something unchangeable. 

A broken sob escaped him, tears escaping his eyes, trailing down to his mouth, their salty taste a sick reminder that this was real, not a nightmare. Even after all he had heard, all these horrible truths, he kept seeing the person who had read with him, told him stories, smiled under the fake stars, who cried when Shuichi told him he cared for him ( I love you went unsaid, because Korekiyo had told him there was someone else, but he still sensed his thoughts and let it happen), who had climbed into his bed and turned off all the lights so he could kiss Shuichi without being seen with his mask down. 

He fell fast, and he always knew Korekiyo would break his heart, but he didn’t think it would hurt like this.

Monokuma grinned. “Does this make you sad, Saihara? Imagining your pretty boy toy dead? Knowing how he’s going to suffer terribly?” He refused to give Monokuma a response. He let the tears run down his face, looking down, avoiding everyone’s eyes. 

“You fell for the act hard, Shuichi. If you were a serial killer, wouldn’t you seduce the Ultimate Detective? He tried to save his ass and look where that got him.” Monokuma laughed horribly. 

The others never knew the two had something between them (something informal, not lovers, because Korekiyo wasn’t willing to call him his lover but let himself be loved, something undefined which could never satisfy Shuichi’s heart), because they wouldn’t understand, they didn’t like Korekiyo before this either. Everyone’s eyes weighed heavily on him, and without seeing their faces it was easy to imagine their judgment, their disgust.  

The silence stole all the air out of the room. How long had it been since the verdict was called? It felt like an eternity. It would be easier if Monokuma gave them a countdown, letting them know how much longer they had.  

Would Korekiyo forgive him if he turned away and didn’t look? Would he forgive himself? After what happened to Kirumi… how badly would he suffer?

A bandaged hand slipped a handkerchief into his own, and Shuichi looked up without even thinking. “Please take it.” Korekiyo’s voice trembled. It’s something to remember me by went unsaid. “I want you to know—” He couldn’t keep his voice stable anymore, letting it waver as he spoke, “it was never an act or a ploy.” 

Shuichi took the handkerchief, put it up to his eyes. “I really wanted to travel the world with you.” Shuichi’s chest ached, and he wanted this to over more than anything, and he wanted this moment to never end because what will be next will hurt more. His bandaged hand brought the handkerchief down to his cheek, stroking it with his thumb, and Shuichi put his own hand on top of his.

He had a hundred things he could say.

“I don’t want you to die,” he whispered, all the strength leaving him.

“You’ll be alright. You’re much stronger than you know.” He’s never felt this small, crushed by the weight of his own feelings, so fragile the wind might break him into pieces. “I do not mind if you do not want to watch.”

“Alright, that’s enough. Execution time!” Monotaro yelled out, and Shuichi clutched the Korekiyo’s hand so tight he must have left half-moon marks, marks that won’t even get the chance to fade.

Monokuma jumped out again, standing at his podium. “Y’know, I’ve thought about it. We’ve done the execution thing so many times now! Isn’t it getting boring?” And for a moment he saw hope in Korekiyo’s eyes, felt it in his own heart, a ray of light breaking through the night.

“Yeah, I’m practically falling asleep here!” Kokichi yelled, and Shuichi felt a rush of affection towards him. “Let’s keep this telenovela relationship drama going,”

“We’ll just make a jail to put him into. That’s still fun for you, isn’t it, Monokuma?” Maki asked.

“Pupupupu, now you’re getting ahead of yourselves! We can’t let the blackened go unpunished, that’s the rules of the game! I’m just proposing an… alternate punishment.” He laughed, a strangled cacophony, filled with malice and hate. “I’m giving you a choice. You can either let dear Korekiyo suffer a regular execution, or one of you can shoot him dead!”

Shuichi’s hopes shattered, cutting into him, shredding up his insides.

There was no way to save Korekiyo. It was torture, or being shot. The alternate punishment was just Monokuma throwing one last rock at Korekiyo, crushing his hope again.

Next to him, all Korekiyo did was let out a strangled gasp, and somehow it was the worst sound he’d ever heard.

Monokuma pulled out a box, and opened it to reveal a pistol. “It only has one bullet, so make it count!” He laughed maniacally again.

Silence spread over the room again, but it felt loud with everyone’s thoughts buzzing around. All eyes were on them now, but no one would say a word, waiting for Korekiyo to say something.

“Being shot would probably be less painful than what Monokuma is going to do,” Kaito said, and Shuichi hated him for it, hated him for saying out loud what everyone was thinking.

“Unless it’s a trick, and Monokuma’s execution would be better?” Keebo asked, static seeping through his voice.

“It’s unlikely,” Maki spoke, looking directly at Korekiyo. “I can do it. You know I won’t make a mistake.” Her words were strong, but there was sadness in her eyes. “I’m used to the feeling of killing someone anyway.” Her nonchalance was a lie, hanging heavy in the air.

Before Korekiyo could respond, Monokuma cut in. “That’s not how this works! You can’t just choose who gets to do it! It’s meant to be a punishment .” He picked up the gun, spinning it around for a moment, before walking up the students. With a wicked grin, he handed the gun to Shuichi. “You’ve hurt so many people with your actions. All those grieving families. Now here’s your final victim – the only person who actually cared about you. You get to ruin him too!”

The gun was heavy in his hand, cold as ice, and his heart stopped beating. The gun was wrong in his hand, he couldn’t, he couldn’t he couldn’t he couldn’t – Korekiyo would suffer if he didn’t, Monokuma would torture him, tear him apart, make his final moments hell—

“Shuichi, I can’t do this to you. Please, just let Monokuma execute me. It will be easier.” Korekiyo gripped his shoulders, but even as he did his hands were shaking. Shuichi looked into his eyes, bright molten gold, and imagined them dull and lifeless, the passion they once exuded gone.

“I don’t want you to suffer,” he said, slowly, the horror of his own words seeping into him like poison.

The night Kaede was executed, Shuichi wept, after she died, and then in his bed all alone. Blankets swallowed him, entangling him. He was hot, and the tears made him sticky. The force of his sobs hurt his lungs. When he closed his eyes, he could still see her expression as she was pulled up, and hear the torturously peaceful notes of the song that she was forced to play as she died. The tears would never stop, he would never forget, the sorrow would never ebb.

Someone sat on his bed. A hand reached out to pet him through the blanket like a frightened animal.  

“I brought you some food. A full stomach will bring you some comfort.” Korekiyo’s voice was muffled by the blanket, but it couldn’t hide its rich tone that now sounded like refuge. The hand had found his back, rubbing it, the motion barely there through the thick fabric.

Shuichi slowly pulled off the blanket, sitting next to his friend. “One learns to live with grief over time. It does not fully disappear, but life becomes bearable,” he said, his gentleness underscored with a familiarity, as if he had felt this suffering before. Slowly, Shuichi turned to lean on his shoulder, a silent beg for healing touch.

“Have you lost someone important to you?” he whispers, as if it would hurt less if he said it quieter.

“Yes, someone very dear to me… but I came here for you, not to talk about myself. Let me ease your pain, if only for a little, Saihara,” he said, wrapping one hand around Shuichi’s waist, pulling him closer. “Let me take your pain away, at least a little.” Shuichi closed his eyes and let himself relax against him, the other’s warmth melting the heaviness of his heart just a little, the pain easing if only for a moment.

“Let me take away your pain,” he said breathlessly.

This might kill him. He will never recover from this, never forgive himself, blood will stain his hands crimson until the day he dies.

“Shuichi, you don’t deserve to have this on your conscience. You won’t be able to forgive yourself,” he said, as if he had read his mind, because they knew each other, and maybe loving someone was just pain in disguise.

“I won’t be able to forgive myself either way. If I do it, I’ll hate myself for it, and if I don’t, I’ll hate myself for letting you suffer,” Shuichi’s voice broke. This punishment was not about letting them have hope and then taking it away – it was to force suffering, to create an impossible choice that would break him. Cooperation is our downfall . “I want to do what is least painful for you, even if really hurts,”

Korekiyo seemed to struggle for words, letting out half formed words he couldn’t make sense of. It was Shuichi’s job, after all, to render the blackened speechless. To win his argument.

He felt hollow, an empty vessel filled with pain and guilt and fear. What would be left of him, when the deed was done? He couldn’t imagine an after. He would never leave this room, never move on from what happened between these walls, the suffering they saw.

“If you kill me, I can never forgive myself for the suffering I have inflicted on you.,” Tthere was genuine devotion in his words. Tenderness. Proof that those nights spent together were true, that Korekiyo, who claimed he couldn’t love anyone but his sister, still had a space in his for Shuichi, that it was always real.

“It would be easier to hate you,” he said, caressing Korekiyo’s cheek, wiping his tears away. “But I can’t, so I just have to live with the pain of loving you.” His voice shook., “You won’t have to live with the pain,” —he inhaled— “so let me live knowing that I didn’t let you suffer.” He hesitated, looking away, his eyes falling on the gun in his grasp, focusing on its metallic shine. It felt like death in his hands. “I’ll aim well…” he whispered, his voice breaking, slipping into nothingness at the end. 

Korekiyo broke from his grasp, turning around to face Monokuma. “What if I don’t let him shoot me? What if someone else does it?” He said it forcefully, but it felt like a lie, like fear hidden by a voice slightly too loud. Even from where Shuichi stood, it was clear his hands were shaking. 

“Then that person is going to get executed instead of you!” Monokuma yelled, hands raised in anger. “Now get on with it!”

For a few seconds, the world stood still. Slowly, Korekiyo turned back to him. Defeat clouded his tawny eyes, and Shuichi knew .

 “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry,” he said hoarsely. Ice filled his lungs, leaving him numb. Tears blurred the world, running into his mouth, suffocating him. 

“I’m so sorry.” There were no words for how he felt, the regret, the guilt, so he kept saying sorry. A weak, useless phrase that was never going to be enough. A bandaged hand took his empty hand, intertwining their fingers, a last little bit of warmth before Shuichi’s heart freezes and shatters on the floor. “Don’t apologize, please.”

“You wanted me to—”

“It’s all over for me now,”  —he squeezed his hand harder— “so take care of yourself.” Finality rang through his voice. It’s the last of everything. Last words .

Korekiyo motioned him to close his eyes, and so he took one last look at someone he had loved. In the darkness, he felt a bandaged hand hold the hand with a gun in it, forcing the gun in the proper position. In a few seconds, his hand will be lifted to his head, and he will pull the trigger. I’m sorry .

He lifted his hand slowly. Then, Korekiyo pulled his hand hard, tearing the gun out of it.

He heard the gunshot before he could open his eyes. The recoil knocked him backwards, his ringing ears barely hearing the sound of a body falling, liquid splattering on the ground, on him. Maki grabbed him, one hand over his eyes, pulling him away, trying to turn him around, and she was saying something, but he couldn’t hear her over the sounds of his screams (when had he begun screaming?)

“It’s okay, you’re okay now. Stop crying,” Maki said, pulling at him. Kaito grabbed at him, trying to calm his flailing hands. Horror reverberated through the room, and he needed to see, he had to say goodbye or he could never leave this place in peace.

“Let go,” he hiccuped, “I want to see.” 

By now, his two friends held him in place, but he fought, trying to fling himself out of their grasp.

“Shuichi. Don’t let the way he died spoil your memories of him. Remember as he was when he was alive.” Maki’s voice was confirmation of what he already knew.

“No…” His voice wobbled. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be. “I don’t believe you, he can’t be—” He couldn’t finish the sentence, the last word stuck in his throat. Maki didn’t respond. 

How much longer could they keep holding onto him? It felt like an eternity had passed. “If we still have him, we should at least” —he paused to breathe, inhaling raspily— “bury him. It’s only right,”

“Shuichi, he wanted you to close your eyes so you wouldn’t watch him die. Don’t waste his consideration.” Gentleness seeped through her voice, and it stilled him a little. The ringing in his ears was subsiding. Energy drained out of him, leaving him limp, until he collapsed on the floor, still held by Maki. Even now, he was painfully aware of Kiyo lying not so far from him. Before, he could always feel him in a room, his passion making him shine. That passion left his eyes now, expression growing cold, the warmth he exuded gone. He closed his eyes willingly.

They stayed closed until he felt the cold outside air hit his skin. Gonta carried him back to his room, because they all knew he’d never get off the floor otherwise. He’d be ashamed of it later, he knew, but now the pain numbed all other feelings. At least his ears had stopped ringing.

Looking into the bathroom mirror was a horror of its own. Crimson stained his clothes, tear shaped splatters staining his uniform, more concentrated around the top of his jacket. Tear shaped drops spread out over a wide area. Characteristic of a gunshot wound at close range. 

He hated his talent. And maybe himself.

In the shower, he washed off someone else’s blood. That blood came from his head. How could he have looked after? There must have been a lot of blood. Is the phrase blowing your brain out accurate? Maybe his skull was blown to pieces, leaving him unrecognizable. The long hair that he could see from across the room, partially covered by his hat. Golden eyes. What was left? Maki and Kaito didn’t let him see, so it must have been horrible. Sickeningly, he imagined a pool of blood, brains scattered on the floor—-

Shuichi jumped out of the shower and threw up in the toilet. The red spaghetti they had for lunch came back out looking like intestines.

Before he put his uniform in the laundry (he would never wear it again, no matter how well it was washed. He would always see the blood), he pulled out the handkerchief. It was white, with red embroidery around the corners. A little heart. It looked self-made, the stitches a little crooked, white showing through spaces in the heart. He wondered when Korekiyo had gotten it, if it was something he bought on his travels, if he had it at home and embroidered it for practice. If it was a gift. Those long fingers would surely be well suited to embroidery.

Dressed in his pajamas, he climbed into bed, holding the handkerchief in his fist, curling up on himself and putting the handkerchief to his face. 

Sleep would mean nightmares.

Before, a nightmare could easily be forgotten. He’d stand outside of Korekiyo’s door and ring the bell and soon he’d be lying in his bed soothed by gentle whispers and kind hands running through his hair.

That would never happen again.

The clock beside his bed read 10:42 PM. Normally, he’d be training with Kaito and Maki, but he hoped that they understood that he couldn’t today. In a desperate attempt to run away from his own thoughts, he watched the clock intensely, waiting for the minutes to change. 

When he closed his eyes, the gunshot boomed in his head, blood splattering him anew. The memories of today were on the brink of teetering into his consciousness, buzzing around his brain like flies. In a desperate attempt to calm himself enough to sleep, his mind flitted between thoughts, lovely memories from before today, random things he had learnt at the school. Eventually, he even began recounting evidence from earlier trials, listing them. Still, these distractions were as weak as tissue paper, nothing but pathetic distractions from the memories he kept at bay. 

Then, the world went dark, and within a moment his eyes were open again, fresh anxiety coursing through his veins, his heart beating like a jackhammer. The clock now read 11:02 PM. 

He couldn’t handle a night of this. 

A dangerous, enticing thought creeped into his mind.

He couldn’t go to Korekiyo, but he could go to his room.

He sat up on his bed, sliding his feet into his slippers. Cold air struck him as he left the safety of his blanket.Shivering, he walked out of his room, quiet as possible to avoid anyone seeing him. Still, he paused at the doorknob, but only for a moment, before opening the door. 

Korekiyo would understand. 

It was even colder inside the room, with no warm body to heat it. The cold had never bothered him before, because it was easily rectified with a little touch, or if he was really cold, he would take the blanket off the bed and sit around like a caterpillar in a cocoon. Korekiyo always found that amusing. His uniform kept him warm enough. 

The room was the same as he left it. The bed was neatly made, while every other surface in the room was covered in notes, books taken from his lab, pens strewn around randomly, sticky notes with last minute notes that were tacked onto papers randomly. He stood next to the desk, looking at the pages of messy scrawl, observations about the school, the students. Touching the items would be a trespass, damage, the room turned irrevocably precious by its owner’s death. 

Korekiyo spent his life studying such items, finding the remains of people lost, trying to figure out how they lived, imagining what they thought. Now, Shuichi stood there, picturing Korekiyo sitting on the very chair he was sitting in now, scribbling notes, his thoughts running faster than he could write. His eyes lit up when he talked about anthropology, passion exuded with every breathless word. He spoke of it as if he had never spoken before, as if every listener was a rare opportunity. Maybe it was so, and he remembered how Korekiyo stood in the background whenever they were together, alone, observing. Lonely.

He wouldn’t let all this work go to waste. When they left, he would take these with them, give them to a university or some journal. So there was always some part of him left, other than memories. Something good.

The closet held nothing but the many exact copies of his uniform. He stroked the thick material of the jacket, feeling its ridges. For Korekiyo, it was the ultimate symbol of his sister’s love. Before today, he thought that was sweet, but now it seemed sickening, how she dressed him up to be a soldier. 

Still, he couldn’t imagine Korekiyo without this uniform, and touching it only reminded him of all the time spent with him. The starched material stiff was on his cheek when he had leaned on Korekiyo’s shoulder, the buttons he had hurriedly undone with his own hands in the warmth of his bed…

The room was so cold. 

Deftly, he slid one jacket of its velvet hanger, pulling the jacket over himself. It was too wide in the shoulders, and too long, the cuffs covering even the tips of his fingers, fitted for someone taller. 

Slowly, he warmed up. 

His bathroom was much neater than Shuichi’s own. A cologne bottle decorated the shelf above the sink, golden brown, the source of the smell that had become so familiar to Shuichi, a mix of sandalwood and musk and bergamot. He picked up the bottle, holding it in the palm of his hand, the fragility of it accentuated by the heavy weight of memories it held, the truth that it had become a relic of a bygone era. 

The scent forced him to remember the long days spent together, scribbling notes side by side, listening to stories, lying together in bed, running away from the killing game that ensnared them through the comfort of each other’s bodies. Then, a sharp memory threatened to burst the comfort that had settled around his heart, a memory of today, and he quickly put down the bottle. 

Or… maybe it would be alright to take it with him. Korekiyo would understand. But he would leave it till the morning. Subconsciously, he had already made up his mind to not leave this room tonight, to grieve in another bed, to sleep comforted by sheets that now had no one to claim them.

The lipstick tube next to the bottle caught his eye. It was quite small in actuality, the length of a finger, unassuming, unaware of what it symbolized, what horrors its owner made it do. He opened the tube, feeling dirty for it. The lipstick itself was painfully ordinary, a dark red bullet, curved by months of use. Deft hands had picked it up, spreading pigment around their owner’s open-mouthed pout, a horrible secret masked as a beauty ritual.

Disgust spread through him, toxic mold that suffocated his lungs, tore apart his heart and mind.

Yet he had loved those lips.

He lifted the lipstick to his mouth, letting the pigment rub on his lips, his hand shaking. It felt strange, the wax coating his mouth.

He couldn’t recognize the stranger in the mirror, with Shuichi’s hair and eyes and certainly someone else’s mouth. Did Korekiyo feel that way too, that he had lost himself in the mimicry of his sister? That person who he knew… did he even know he never existed?

The lipstick tasted like vanilla, a sweet taste that was dreadfully wrong for this horror. The burst of pleasantness brought Shuichi back to his senses. Quickly, he pawed for the tap, trying to rub the lipstick off with water. It wouldn’t come off cleanly, leaving him looking red around the mouth.

He couldn’t do this. Take his jacket, cologne, lipstick, turn himself into him , hide in his skin to avoid this grief, not feel. He wasn’t going to be Korekiyo, who held on so tight he shattered. Sister had scooped out everything that made him him , and grief had broken him apart and gutted him until he was nothing but cracked remnants of a person held together by suffering and pain.

I’m sorry that I didn’t notice sooner.

He put the bottle back. The jacket too. He looked at the room one last time. The notes that would be the last thing Korekiyo had ever created. And he knew that in fifty years, he wasn’t going to be known for his contributions to anthropology. A case for criminology students. For psychiatrists. Maybe Shuichi was the only person who ever saw good in him. He turned off the light and left. It wasn’t the last time he ever saw that room. No, as the days went on he would return, filled with sadness, or rage, or both, with love and hate and shame. And it would get easier, slowly, after a while, and one day everything they were would be nothing but a memory, Korekiyo stuck as an eternal tortured sixteen year old. But that was far away, and today Schuichi crawled back into his own bed, clutching his sheets like they were a lifetime, and tried to sleep.

@badthingshappenbingo

[dangancode]

Rain Code Chapter 0, and why its Twist F*cking Sucks.

This is going to be the start of a series I call "My Gripes with Master Detective Archives: Rain Code". Unfortunately, they are quite numerous, but I figure it's better for me to split them up rather then write one massive post complaining about it.

Because yeah, I did the writer's equivalent of a rage quit on this game, and it breaks my heart. Not only because the writing doesn't work, but because IT HAD THE POTENTIAL TO.

And what better place to start this then the Massacre on the Amaterasu Express, and why shock value is not good writing.

Spoilers for Chapter 0 of Rain Code, and also for Danganronpa 1, 2, V3, and UDG.

Right off the bat, we're introduced to five other characters besides our infamous protagonist, Yuma Kokohead. Aphex Logan, Melami Goldmine, Pucci Lavmin, Zilch Alexander, and Zange Eraser. They're introduced, provide a bit of exposition to Yuma and the player, and their dynamics seem pretty solid so far. Each of them has room to develop, there's hints that Pucci might be a love interest of sorts to Yuma, and some of even show off cool powers that definitely might come in handy in later cases. But then what happens?

They're all f*cking killed. They last twenty minutes before every single one of them, including the culprit, all die off-screen.

SO YEAH. IF YOU'RE ANYTHING AT ALL LIKE ME, YOU'RE MAD. Not upset, not devastated seeing characters you like die.

F*CKING. MAD.

What Kodaka seems to have forgotten when writing Chapter 0, is that there's a reason the deaths in the Danganronpa series work. THEY EXPLICITLY PUT THE IDEA OF MURDER INTO YOUR HEAD. From the very moment Monokuma is introduced in DR1, he says directly, without any sugarcoating, that the only way the characters can get out of permanent imprisonment is to kill someone and get away with it.

The writers don't say who will die (ignoring the whole 11037 thing), because they don't NEED TO. They know the player is smart enough to use context clues and figure out, "Hey, Sayaka and Makoto have been getting awfully chummy, chances are she's probably kicking the bucket." It makes sense, there's payoff, and the moments leading up to that are meant to build connection between the player and the characters.

WHAT PAYOFF IS THERE IN RAIN CODE CHAPTER 0'S TWIST?!

There is none, because Kodaka forgot to give us, the player, any semblance of a hint aside from the chapter's title that maaaaaybe these characters aren't gonna live much longer so try to avoid getting attached.

And no, saying "it's made by the same people who made Danganronpa so it's on you for not expecting that" does not suffice here. Even if Rain Code were established to be part of the same universe or whatnot (it's not), why didn't they give us a bit more warning?

WHAT IS THE POINT OF INTRODUCING THESE CHARACTERS IN THE FIRST PLACE IF THEY'RE ALL GONNA DIE WITHIN TWENTY MINUTES OF MEETING THEM?

The short answer is: shock value.

Take a look at Kodaka's writing, and you'll find that he adores shock value. Between the protagonist swap in V3, the divisive "it's a lie!!" ending, and a handful of deaths throughout the series (Taka, Hiyoko, Yuta Asahina), and it becomes entirely clear that payoff isn't his top priority. It's pulling the rug from under our feet, watching us land on the floor, and when we say, "WTF Kodaka?!", his response is probably, "IDK what to tell you fam, you really should've seen that coming."

No, my dude. Of course I didn't see this twist coming. Because you did a terrible job with your foreshadowing. You introduced five characters whose only purpose is to improve your marketing by showcasing a bigger cast on the game's cover art, vaguely hinted at potential development in later chapters, and then did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITH THEM.

As a writer, I despise shock value. Not hinting at a twist properly beforehand almost never works, and when it does, it falls in line with what we know about the story and the stakes. But by the time the stakes are set up in Rain Code, Aphex and the others are already gone, so their deaths don't really matter.

If Aphex, Melami, Pucci, Zilch and Zange didn't exist, THIS STORY WOULD'VE PANNED OUT THE EXACT SAME WAY. Nobody mentions these characters again anyway, SO WHY DO THEY EVEN EXIST?

Oh, and I've barely discussed the culprit himself, "Zilch-Alexander-but not-really-it's-just-some-unnamed-hitman-who-looks-and-sounds-exactly-like-him."

You mean to tell me that the real Zilch just happened to look EXACTLY LIKE THIS RANDOM HITMAN? A hitman who, much later in the game, is revealed to be old pals with Yomi Hellsmile, the symbolic leader of Amaterasu?

You're telling me this isn't actually a hitman, he's an insider from Amaterasu who managed to not only get out of Kanai Ward, but only left to kill four detectives, use some intricately designed train to pull off their murders, and then frame the trainee who just happened to have amnesia so his alibi is already pretty shaky?

You're telling me he got past all of the security regulations that Kanai Ward had in place preventing people from getting in or out, and instead of taking this opportunity to spread Amaterasu's influence, HE WENT STRAIGHT BACK THERE AND EXPECTED TO BE GREETED WITH OPEN ARMS?!

Are you starting to get why I have issues with this chapter?

It would've been so much simpler to say "Zilch was bribed by Amaterasu to betray the WDO". Melami or Aphex could even mention something along the lines of, "Not all detectives care about the truth. Some only care about lining their own pockets and making themselves look better in the eyes of the WDO." Which would make it easier for us to understand that detectives don't always have everyone's best interests in mind.

And if it's absolutely necessary for the sake of the plot, to fuel Yuma's desire to solve injustices and learn how to use the Mystery Labyrinth to uncover the truth, why can't it just be ONE DEATH INSTEAD OF FOUR?

I discussed this with a friend of mine on Discord, but rewriting this chapter so that only Zange dies would be incredibly easy. Zange realizes their drinks are drugged, and when everyone else falls asleep, he confronts Zilch. Of course it ends badly, and by the time the others realize he's dead, Zilch's status as the traitor becomes even more apparent. One Mystery Labyrinth later, and Swank kills Zilch for blowing cover, saying something like, "You said this would go off without a hitch." It would make Amaterasu seem more like a threat, since they're willing to go to such extreme lengths to compromise the WDO's involvement in Kanai Ward. Aphex, Melami and Pucci would all join the rest of the detective gang along with Yuma, and the story would proceed as normal.

Do you see how easy that was? I'm not trying to say this would've been better than how it actually played out, but I certainly would've enjoyed the game a bit more, at least.

Anyways, I digress. Rants are exhausting, but I definitely feel better getting all of this off my chest. Of course, you're free to agree or disagree, but I'd really prefer not to be called an egomaniac just because I disliked Kodaka's galaxy brain storytelling on this one.

Have a great rest of your day or night, I'm gonna go lay down now. :')

[acacia-may]

Hello hello, it is I again, here to poke at your blog again. Hope you've been having a good week! Thought I might as well see some of your takes on a few things, though I'm not sure if you only wanted one of these categories or all four of them. Either way, feel free to answer the ones you find most interesting!

Show: Not exactly shows, but I guess Danganronpa or Your Turn To Die would be a fun start, ahaha.

Character: Kai Satou or Sei Satou? (Though this one is a little unfair, since Kai has so much more screentime and impact in the main story, unless you wanna count Ranger with Sei 😅)

Pairing: I don't often get to ask about Demon Slayer, so here's one. Shinobu and Giyu, or Mitsuri and Iguro?

Anything: As for which one you prefer more; whether it be writing it or reading it - Hurt/Comfort, or Fluff AUs?

REPO-NET THE GREAT!!! 💙 Oh my gosh, hi friend! I'm so excited to see that you're back. I hope you're doing wonderfully! Thank you so much for your ask. I really can't tell you how excited I am every time I see an ask from you. You're one of my favorite people, and your asks always make me smile! Please poke at my blog anytime. I am always, always happy to talk to you! 🥰

I'd love to answer all of your questions. Thank you for sending them in! 😊 I apologize that it has taken me a bit to circle back with you. You came up with such wonderfully difficult questions (and impossible choices), so I really had to give them some thought before I responded. I really appreciate them though and enjoyed these a lot. My answers are below the cut. Thank you so much for the ask and for the playing the make me choose ask game!

(Warnings: Some spoilers for Your Turn To Die. Vague spoilers for Danganronpa & Demon Slayer)

Danganronpa or Your Turn To Die?

Out of all of your questions, I think this was the hardest for me to answer. I love them both so much so this is kind of the impossible question for me. 😅 There are things that I enjoyed more about Danganronpa than YTTD and things that I enjoyed more about YTTD than Danganronpa so it's hard to compare the two even though they are similar genres. I have waffled on it a lot and even asked my sister for a second opinion, but I think I will have to say Danganronpa just because the series is finished.

To be fair, I adore Your Turn To Die. It's riveting and compelling with top-tier storytelling and characters, and as a whole, I think I enjoyed it even more than Danganronpa so far (which is saying a lot because the Danganronpa series is really amazing). However, while I expect YTTD to continue to be just as incredible as it has been, the last chapter isn't out yet, so I suppose there is the off chance that the story could stumble in its final act and have a disappointing ending. Whereas with Danganronpa, I just finished V3 (and the series) and thought it was really interesting. I liked the final game a lot more than I expected, and now that I have the whole story, I feel confident saying that though the Danganronpa canon of games does have some flaws (as everything does), it ultimately tells a very compelling and interesting story and contains some incredibly dynamic characters. What it did with its "antagonists" in UDG especially is one of the most interesting storytelling/narrative choices that I've ever seen. While there were some things that could have been executed better in the series and there is a certain macabre whimsy to the tone of the games that can be a bit hard to get used to at first, the series is so inventive, and I love it for being so different than everything else. Its ideas are solid, its themes are compelling and often make you think, and its characters are very distinctive, memorable, and (in many cases) endearing. Also, how could I ever vote against my children? ❤️💛💗💙

Kai Satou or Sei Satou?

(Warnings: YTTD Spoilers Ahead)

Ouch! This one hurts. I don't want to choose. 🙈 My heart says Sei, and here's why: my sister would say Kai in a heartbeat. He was her favorite character in the whole game, and Kai gets plenty of love and admiration from her so I feel like my love and admiration is less important. Poor Sei, on the other hand, has never been picked first for anything in his life. Even his own "father" preferred Kai to him which is genuinely very sad and tragic. His family issues aside, I think his brash and callous personality is also a little off-putting and isn't doing him any favors in the overall likability department. It is understandable to me that most people would likely choose Kai over Sei in this scenario since he is arguably more personable--just awkward upfront but the biggest softie when you get to know him.

The way I see it, what Kai has going for him is that you might think he is a misanthrope who can't stand company and just wants to be left alone only to find out that deep down he's actually just shy and awkward and wants friends. But with Sei, you might think he's a misanthrope who can't stand company and just wants to be left alone only to find out that deep down he actually is. And I will be perfectly honest with you, I love him for it. You go, Sei! 🧡 I'm only joking of course. After all, much, much deeper down Sei also wants friends and is deeply devoted to the select few people he has chosen to care about, but I have a hard time believing he cares about the opinions of the majority of the people of the world. He has "his people" and he loves them but to everyone else he is a misanthrope who can't stand company and just wants to be left alone. I can respect that, especially since he's pretty upfront and honest about it.

I know I'm roasting Sei a little bit (out of love, of course), but in all honesty, he really is one of my favorite characters in the series and my heart says choose him here even if it doesn't make logical sense, as you pointed out in your ask. I will own this. I will admit it. I am usually a logical, analytical spreadsheet person who can be kind of cynical, but there is a reason I got an emotion route on my first YTTD playthrough. I get really, really attached to my favorite characters, and I am really, really attached to Sei. He managed to have such a compelling story arc for such a tiny "little tree" (side character), and he fits perfectly in my "favorite character" alignment chart, so I'm a little biased. I have such a bleeding heart for the overachieving perfectionists with rough edges, brother issues, childhood trauma, inferiority complexes, and (secret) deep devotion and loyalty. It's an ongoing problem, and, naturally, I adopted Sei as one of my favorites right away (even though I knew his story would ultimately break my heart and it did). While I'll roast him to the end of time, I'll also be the first to defend him because he really did love his brother and deserved so much better than what he got.

I would be amiss if I didn't mention that I absolutely love Kai as a character as well, and yes, you are absolutely right that Kai had a much bigger role in and impact on the story than Sei. He really is one of the most influential characters in the game with his connection to the Chidouins, his laptop filled with game-changing (no pun intended) information, and his defiance against Asunaro serving as a catalyst for others to rise up against the death game. But, on the other hand, given Kai's backstory and how influential Sei was in Kai becoming who he is by the time we meet him in the canon, I think the argument could be made that Sei is also one of the most important characters since (arguably) Kai was only able to have that role and that impact in the story because of Sei and because of his sacrifice. Without Sei as the catalyst for Kai and his arc, Kai couldn't have been a catalyst for the other participants and their arcs. Sei's the real hero here, so I choose Sei (and am getting down off my soap box now 😂).

Shinobu x Giyu or Mitsuri x Iguro?

Oh my gosh, Repo! I had no idea you were also a Demon Slayer fan! That's awesome! I don't get a lot of Demon Slayer asks, so this was a very pleasant surprise. (Please feel free to ask about it any time if you're so inclined). 💕 I'm not sure if you've read the manga, seen the anime, or both so I'll try to be as vague as possible as not to spoil anything for you, just in case.

I'll admit I like both of these. They're great dynamics! Shinobu is my favorite character in Demon Slayer, and her dynamic with Giyu is one of my favorites in the entire series (My sister used to joke that Shinobu and Giyu's friendship was actually my favorite character in Demon Slayer 😂). I don't mind Giyushino as a romantic pairing and have played around with it in an AU sense, but I think I prefer to think of them as platonic friends under most circumstances (and think they probably were just platonic friends in the canon) so I'm going with Iguro and Mitsuri on this one.

Obamitsu is probably my favorite romantic pairing in all of Demon Slayer. I was on 100% board with it from those socks 🧦 and only got more and more invested as time went on. It brought actual tears to my eyes by a certain point, and for someone who usually doesn't get into shipping in media, this was a huge thing for me. I had a friend of mine laughing once because she texted me and asked what I was doing and I had to tell her "listening to music and crying over a fictional relationship." 🙈 (I have an entire playlist devoted to them that I listen to on repeat when I'm feeling particularly feels-y about their relationship. It's one of my favorites I've ever made). I don't want to say too much about them in case of spoilers, but there's just something about the selflessness of their devotion and loyalty to each other, the sacrifices they were willing to make to protect each other and ensure the best for each other, and their bond of love built on a strong foundation of friendship that I found incredibly compelling. I was just so moved by how Iguro and Mitsuri both struggled with these deep insecurities as individuals and, in a certain way, thought of themselves as unlovable, but then they find each other, find someone who truly sees them-- flaws and insecurities and all--but still thinks they are wonderful and chooses to love them anyway. It was really beautiful--one of my favorite things about the series, if I'm being honest (even if it turned me into a weepy, emotional mess). 💕

As for which one you prefer more; whether it be writing it or reading it - Hurt/Comfort, or Fluff AUs?

(Warnings: YTTD Spoilers)

This is a tricky one because these are probably my favorite genres when it comes to fanfictions (both for reading and writing). I think it depends on the fandom and also on the characters involved as well as my mood. Sometimes I just want good times, happiness and shenanigans for my favorite characters and want to imagine the bad times never happened to them, but on the other hand, I think the hurt/comfort genre in general is much more cathartic to me personally than an AU where everyone lives and/or everything is fine and the bad stuff never happened.

While I want good things for all the characters I love, sometimes I feel like I'm forcing them into a fluff AU or that such an AU would change who they are too much, if that makes sense? A lot of times the tragedies that a character has suffered in their life had an integral role in shaping who they are. Like I was saying about Kai for instance. I firmly believe that losing Sei, especially losing Sei the way he did, was one of the things that gave him the courage to stand up against Asunaro in the end. In very simple terms, I think, he grew to see Sara as a little sister and couldn't bear the thought of Asunaro taking another sibling away from him. While I can definitely have a little fun imagining a fluffy shenanigans world where Asunaro didn't even exist and the Satou brothers work together in a bakery owned by Mai for instance, I think there's something about a Fluff AU that feels a little cheap to me, like that's not really Kai and Sei so it doesn't really fix anything, whereas with a quality hurt/comfort story, the actual lived experiences (the trauma, the grief, the suffering ect.) of the characters involved is acknowledged and validated, but the characters find the hope and healing necessary to move forward to a brighter future.

I personally take much more comfort in that than in imagining a world where the tragedy never happened in the first place, and I think I write more stories in that vein of hurt/comfort than I do fluffy pieces or I sometimes figure out a way to combine them, like with the Dad Nagisa story where there's that bittersweet twinge in there that all this fluff and this happy ending is deserved after everything he has been through. I think overall I like hopeful endings, and for the characters I love most, I want them to reach a place where they are on the other side of the most tragic aspects of their lives and yes, there might always be a wound there and there is nothing that the future could bring that would make all that pain they went through okay, but I want them to reach that place where they know and they get to experience that there is something better, something brighter waiting for them on the other side of something so terrible. I want to use my fanfictions to give the characters hope that tragedy isn't the end of their story.

I love the same things in the fanfictions I read though I am way less particular about the fanfictions that I read than I am with the ones I write. I'm a pretty tough critic of my own writing and much more particular when I choose what to write about versus choosing what to read 😅, and most of the time I filter stories by character or relationship (whether platonic or romantic) rather than by genre. Looking back on some of my all-time favorite fanfictions I've ever read though, most of them had some of those more hopeful, hurt/comfort elements to them, so perhaps Hurt/Comfort really does win the day!

That said, stumbling upon a well-written, cotton candy fluff piece can absolutely make my day and have me grinning ear to ear and squealing at my computer screen, so I'll never deny the absolute joy that fluff can bring either. I guess this really is just another tough choice to end a series of tough choices. 😅

Thank you so much for such wonderful questions that really made me think and for listening to all of my ramblings. Cheers & much love to you, friend! 💕

[96percentdone]

Fic Writer Interview.

thanks for the tag @juudaimes-true-form. the @ is. not working. sorry kjnbhvbhj

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

30.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

245,076, apparently.

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Oumasai Oneshots: 1,297

A Fragile Bridge of Trust: 710

Lost Souls: 593

History Maker: 433

Game Over: 417

All of these are old and older. One of them isn't even finished. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--

Please read my newer works o(╥﹏╥)o

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Nearly always yeah. I like the people who read my work and overcome whatever anxiety they might feel to know that I appreciate anything they have to say, and I'm grateful.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I enjoy angst a fair bit but rarely do I ever write something that ends with angst. Obviously, Game Over was expressly written as a bad end to a v3 au i was working on, so it's the easy answer, but there are a few in the oumasai oneshots that I think count, namely Chapter 22, Chapter 24, Chapter 26, and in more ambiguous turf Chapter 19 and Chapter 15. I still like the ambiguous ones a fair bit even now, the first 2 not-ambiguous ones just do not hold up with my interpretation of the text anymore (and also i wrote worse), but 26 is fine. Game Over could have been better, but hey I was a different writer then.

That said I have a lot of stuff I consider heavy on angst, but since they have happy endings I don't think they count for this. But I enjoy that kind of fic the most.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

the ones I haven't finished yet--/gets shot. Nah, probably Le Chasseur et le Démon (The Hunter and the Fiend), because it's a fairytale. It gets a fairytale ending. But I like happy endings so it's pretty hard for me to pick.

7. Do you write crossovers?

No because I tend not to like them and find them obtuse, UNLESS said crossover is between dangan ronpa and Higurashi. No I could not explain why these two things in specific inspired me this much. But also I'm SO right and one day I'll get back to those. But mostly crossover concepts exist in jokes in dms with my friend Cass.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yep lmao. A couple times. It's been pretty lackluster though like solid 2/10 hate comment y'all can do better.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No? Okay so I did orphan a series of fics that had smut in them, but that smut was kind of poetic and deliberately vague, and it's probably the most I plan on committing to in the future for the fics I'm working on rn.

I think people who write pwp or other hard smut are very impressive and have a set of skills I lack, namely....the ability to express physical intimacy in any capacity, including through words! I honestly like. Still struggle with kiss scenes sometimes, but for me all this comes down to my visceral irl discomfort with people existing within 3 feet of me, nevermind touching me.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I sure the fuck hope not. 

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don't remember if this happened with a fic, but iirc I think someone translated that long ass DR meta I wrote about Ouma and Komaeda into...Russian? I don't remember very well. Also that meta is being majorly overhauled spoilers I guess.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not for fic no. All my fic belong solely to me, as do my original works, and its what I prefer. I've done volunteer writing on other people's original projects however, even right now. @clusterfuck-au is something I work on with my friend Wren, but I do all the writing, and they do art stuff, so its not the same lmao.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Idk how I'm supposed to have one of these when I can't really pick a fandom over a fandom. So I'll just name some fandoms I like, and the ship I currently like the most for it.

Ace Attorney: narumitsu (there are a couple close runner ups tho)

Dangan Ronpa: komahina

AITSF: ryudate

Higurashi: keimii

Spy x Family: Twiyor

There are other I fandoms, and other ships, but it'd take forever so take these.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I HAVE SO FUCKING MANY MY GUY, AND I REALLY WANT TO FINISH THEM, BUT I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN IF EVER I'LL GET TO EM. HERE WE GO. I will not be including the WIP I'm working on right now! That's happening! fuck you @ self

The Long Way 'Round: This is supposed to be an extremely long narumitsu Ace fanfic about their relationship through the years from their time together in childhood to after Apollo Justice. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about their relationship, its ups and downs, and the character development they undergo together and seperately. The fic would not feature anything actually shown in canon, and doesn't include DD or SoJ because I hate them and think they're bad and disowned them from canon. This fic is next on my list of things to work on.

Exoneration AU and the LCC rewrite: aus that only makes sense to anyone who has ever read the visual novel Chaos;Child and is in fandom (maybe 100 people) and ALSO is gay enough to ship Takuru, the main character of a bishoujo game, with Shinji (his token best friend). Also has to be gay enough to ship the girls together. also has to be based enough to think Kawahara deserved better and are mad about the writer's gaslighting. I'm not going to explain the plot of these any further; y'all aint gonna get it.

The Cries of Hope's Peak Academy: AKA, clusterfuck AU. What if I took the higurashi cast and put them in a pre-despair dangan ronpa setting (also the v3 kids are here too). Also. What if I shipped. Mion with Keiichi, Hinata, and Ikusaba, Keiichi with Ouma, Kamukura and Saihara, Ouma with Kamukura and Saihara, Kamukura with Komaeda, Komaeda with Hinata, and Hinata with Saihara. This is the titular clusterfuck; they are a polycule in progress. Its not even the only ship. The plot though is inspired by all that I wished Dangan Ronpa 3: Despair Arc was, with Enoshima taking advantage of vulnerable people via manipulation and HPA's inherent powderkeg, but with higurashi's thematic core.

Higurashi: When They Cry - Uso (Lies) and what would be its answer arc counterpart I haven't named yet: The other crossover fic. This one is just. What if I yeeted Ouma into the Higurashi setting like it was where he belonged. What would happen. It's Higurashi, so it borrows a lot from its overarching story and arc ideas, but every arc would be a unique twist based on the existence of a new guy in there! I still like this a lot. I still think of every character in dangan ronpa, Ouma feels the most like the one who would belong in Higurashi, and stands the most to gain from it.

The Klav/Seb enemies to lovers fic: it's exactly what it sounds like. I just think they have a lot in common but their themis years would absolutely be filled with PETTY beef because seb is a nepotism baby which pisses Klav off, and seb doesn't know he's a nepotism baby so he doesn't understand what the fuck his problem is. Also Apollo is there later. Klavier has 2 hands.

Pewter in a timeloop for aitsf and he gets a buddy cop dynamic with Iris on his looping quest to save renju. yeah that. that's the jist. also includes REHABILITATING THE OKIURA HOUSEHOLD AAAAAAA

I have some oneshots I haven't written yet, but those don't count. If you're aware of a long fic/series I was working on that isn't listed here....sorry but I think I've grown past those ideas.

I have two WIPs that are original, but I still work on those. They're both visual novel concepts I came up with, and they both mean everything in the world to me.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Fanfic specific strengths, I'm great at being in character. Translated more broadly, strong dialogue and internal narration coupled with actions and behaviors that reflect their emotional core.

I think my narration is at its best when it's just sitting inside some messy bitch's head and living out their entire thought process, and I think my background in poetry really adds to that. I like using line breaks and font sizes/alignments/effects to express intensity or disarray, etc. I do that for dialogue too. Also I'm pretty fucking funny in both places when I want to be. I think it adds to the charm, and I think my authorial voice adds to that.

Also tbh I'm so good at structuring and pacing frankly I think I'm a natural at it. I think my scenes are as long as they need to be, my stories hit every necessary beat, every scene and story ends and begins on the correct note, and readers learn things when they need to. Pacing and structure is not really something people think a lot about when they get asked this question, but I think it's the most important element to any story. If your pacing, your narrative structure is broken, no amount of metaphor and poetic description can save you.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

God forbid I have to describe a physical thing. Forget it. Not actions per se (although sometimes yeah those too, but more like clothes, settings, sounds, smells, tastes--that's a real struggle. I always think its the weakest thing I have to offer, and a lot of my writing process is desperately trying to put the image in my brain into words that make sense and sound good. Definitely the biggest weakness I have no fucking contest holy shit.

Other smaller struggles is a tendency to overuse words like just/maybe/really/still/etc; the problem with having a strong voice is that some of the quirks from my way of TALKING don't actually add anything to narration or the dialogue, so I've been training myself to cut back and cut things out. It can lead to things being repetitive.

Also, while I believe I have a lot of killer ideas that slap 10/10, and I'm a very creative person, the ADHD makes it hard to keep working on ideas even when I love them. The smallest thing stumping me, or boring me, or just kind of draining my sole, can get me not writing for weeks. I guess this is an ADHD problem, but it affects writing, my one true love, and in some ways that makes it the real biggest issue.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I think it's fine depending on how you do it. If you put a note at the end translating all the lines in other languages, or fit the translation smoothly within the narrative, I think that's completely legal.

With that said, I do kinda cringe when instead of writing Japanese someone types out just. romaji. I get that you want your audience to know how to read it, but they're likely not to know what it means anyway even IN romaji, so just commit. Go for authenticity. You can put the pronunciation in your footnotes too.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Pokemon in my spiral notebook in 5th grade. It's still pokemon online cause I made an illegal ffn account and moved it there at age 11. You can't read it; I literally don't even remember what the account was.

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

Mmm....I guess spy x family? I haven't written full fic for it yet, and it'd be nice to. The list of ships is longer, and I'm not going to bother with that, but needless to say I have a lot of passions lmao.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

The ryudate fic I'm revising right the fuck now. No, okay, that's illegal, it doesn't exist in full yet, although you can read its revised first chapter here <3. That said, I find this decision kind of hard, so I'll give you a few that I've finished: Yours, Le Chasseur et le Démon (The Hunter and the Fiend), A Rational Man, The "Death" of Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth and a fic for a Pandora Hearts zine that hasn't come out yet!

Um. I will tag. @generalherasyndulla, @queenshroorn, and anyone else who reads this whole thing and considers themselves a writer.

[g0nta-g0kuhara]

Consumed by Rantaro thoughts in class today

[commentaryvorg]

Reading your latest post it kind of made me realize that the third chapter in these games are usually viewed as pointless or disappointing. In 1-3, they wasted Taka, removed potential for Hifumi to ever change, and Celeste was kind of dumb with her plan (and Ultimate Gambler could have been a fitting rival). In 2-3, Hiyoko never gets to change, the motive was a disease, Mikan dies unceremoniously. And then 3-3. Do you think anything's going on here (despair of unfairness?) or just bad writing?

Yeah, there does seem to be something of a pattern with chapter 3s, doesn't there? Given that the more obvious pattern of there being two murders is clearly deliberate, it does make me wonder if there was something deliberate about the rest of the pattern as well.

I don't know if I would quite say that the point is showing the despair of unfair deaths, though. In 3-3 they at least try to make that something of a point, what with Himiko lamenting how pointless and unfair it was. But in the other two, nobody left alive particularly cared or was particularly sad about the victims to even be able to complain that it was unfair (even if a couple of those victims may have been fan favourites). So it doesn't really feel like that was ever intended to be a narrative point back then. It's possible that V3 made something of a narrative point of it because the writers were aware that fans felt this way about 1-3 and 2-3 (especially with how meta V3 likes to be), but I don't think that can be what they were going for originally.

To me, the pattern (aside from the double murders) is more of just... a pattern of lazy writing? Which seems like a really stupid thing to consciously make a pattern of, but it does appear potentially deliberate. I mentioned when complaining about Kiyo that one point of Danganronpa is to see what it takes to turn a decent person into a murderer, which is wasted when the culprit is a terrible person who would have done the murder without the killing game, and... that's basically true for Celeste and Mikan as well. I kind of get the feeling that Celeste would have killed someone if you offered her enough money even outside the killing game because she’s that self-absorbed (meanwhile 1-1 and 1-2's killers (or attempted killers) only snapped under their motives because the killing game was already stressing them to breaking point). And Mikan suddenly shockingly turns out to have always been someone obsessed with despair who kills for the hell of it.

Of course, in Mikan's case, there's more to it than that which connects with the overarching plot twist. There's also more to the Despair Disease motive, since it turns out that Monokuma cheating just to get someone to die is precisely what he's doing because he doesn't care about making a point this time, and the idea of a disease that can arbitrarily change someone's personality (or return their memories) suddenly doesn't seem so wildly implausible when you realise where they are. This is a thing in 3-3 as well - the lazy writing of Kiyo's blatantly murderous backstory and obviously scripted plan is precisely the point, not to mention the whole deal with Kaito's phobia. So both 2-3 and 3-3 (though sadly not 1-3) have a common theme of their apparent lazy writing actually being connected to the real truth of the situation and something that you can look at in a new light once you know the whole story. Now that's a pretty cool theme! But unfortunately, doing that inevitably means that the chapter comes across as disappointing the first time around, and even when you're replaying and can appreciate the narrative point of it better, it still doesn't stop the actual events that happen during the chapter from being kind of lackluster.

(It also appears to be part of this common theme that the reveals in the chapter 6 never actually explicitly link back to the chapter 3 and point out what was really going on; we’re just left to figure that out for ourselves. That’s objectively a cool thing - I’ve said a lot how much I love it when there are things about a story that are clearly true even though they’re never explicitly addressed - but also, because of that, I’ve not seen anyone else realise that Kaito’s phobia is an in-universe attempt to nerf him and this makes me sad because I am So Sure it’s true and it should be talked about more.)

The other thing that disappoints me about the writing of 3-3 in particular is it having basically no connection to the overarching themes of the rest of V3 (selfless murderers! the truth is painful!), but that isn't something 1-3 and 2-3 could ever have in common with it because DR1 and 2 didn't really have a clear overarching theme with their other cases in the first place.

[blookmallow]

im probably never going to actually do anything with the concept but i keep thinking about a dangan ronpa oc whose talent is like. gravekeeper or mortician or something and. i guess they'd have to be a v3 oc because none of the other games had the "ultimate labs" concept so anyway their lab is a graveyard and whenever someone dies a new grave appears there. like how they discovered the morgue in dr1 but this time theres graves. i dont know what purpose this character would serve at all i just really like graveyards

[saigonotantei]

@ninthextrication

     His arrival in the city is meet with confusion and panic. Having escaped from the killing game only to arrive in yet another closed space, in a word, Shuuichi was afraid. But the scientists seemed to have nothing to do with Monokuma or the killing game he was forced into, so there was that.

     But there was still much he didn’t know. All he knew was that he was here for an ‘experiment’ as they put it, but that just sounded wrong for some reason. But they weren’t going to hurt him, or force him to kill it seemed like, so there was that.

     So that’s what’s lead him to where he is now, roaming around one of the districts. He’s a detective, he needs answers. Though if and when he would find answers was the real question. Still, he has to start somewhere after all. Though maybe he should pay more attention to where he was going, least he have not bumped into someone.

     Ah well, this was embarrassing. “S-Sorry!” he stammers out. “I didn’t see where I was going...I didn’t interrupt you with anything, did I?”

[doritofalls]

i love korekiyo's character so much!!! What would you write differently 👀

same unpopular fav....! liking kiyo is thankless work but someone gotta do it. thank you for your interest!! let's see... spoilers for drv3 under the cut.

in my opinion, up to chapter 3 korekiyo's character was not handled particularly bad. there are several subtle hints to his backstory and involvement with his sister, remaining noticeable without giving off warning signs. and i think his free time events are delightful! so honestly i wouldn't even really wanna touch any of that. they establish korekiyo as a fairly eccentric, emotionally distant if non ill-intentioned person, who approaches human relationships like academic encounters.

now we get to chapter 3, and with his research lab opened he clearly hits an obsessive phase. the behavioural changes are very obvious, especially if you intend to spend free time with him (the re-occurring message of him going on and on about seances quite reminiscent of the message you get in game 1 when spending time with a completely shut-down taka). we obviously don’t know if that’s just the kind of state korekiyo got himself in with each of his murders (quite possible, with the ritualistic nature he considers them with) or if it is just his his wavering composure, but it starts cluing the viewer into the fact that kiyo is far from a mentally stable individual, despite his fairly good handling of the unique challenges of the killing game. and i still think that’s fairly good writing, showing the audience that something is off about kiyo instead of telling them. 

now where i feel like we hit the wall is definitely with the trial and korekiyo’s subsequent execution. i think the idea of double murders - with only the first culprit being punished - leaves SUCH a fascinating chance for someone to stay in the game despite committing a murder. korekiyo killing tenko, but not angie, and thus continuing to be a part of the game would have been such an interesting direction for the plot and for future character dynamics. though knowing the cast v3 wants to put actual focus on, there was simply no way for kiyo to gain a bigger role than what he already has. 

i do think though, development-wise, that kiyo’s arc is broken in half like a cracker, because we earn the twist of his identity as a serial killer, we learn about his sister, we see whatever he’s got going on, but his near immediate execution really puts an immediate stop to any potential development that could come from this. which, again, i find to be SUCH a shame because korekiyo is an extremely complex and extremely misunderstood character imo. he’s someone who’s learned all the wrong lessons and took all the wrong paths and there’s a lot you can build on that. 

imo, for korekiyo to develop though, he would need a dose of ego death first, because his present personality is... very much a fabrication in more ways than one (something i also find fascinating!). through learning about kiyo the viewer finds that nearly nothing about him is truly his - his uniform is a memento of his sister, which he admits to finding too flashy; he kills in a misguided attempt to appease his sister who could never accept him as her friend; his interest in anthropology even, is something he took up after his sister. korekiyo does extremely little on his own accord without direct co-relation to his sister. he exists as a mirror image his sister left behind and let’s be honest... 

whatever korekiyo and his sister had going on, was very very clearly abuse (it’s enough if you put the timeline of kiyo’s possible age together to get the yikes) and extremely traumatic, something that korekiyo's in-game arc only vaguely hints at. because he’s under layers and layers and layers of denial. i think for korekiyo to develop he’d have to come to terms with this fact, and all the hurt that would come with it - not to mention the kind of hit it would take on his identity, which again, is near completely modeled after his sister’s precieved wants and needs. 

i just think keeping korekiyo around in an environment where he IS a confirmed murderer, while having him go through this crisis of taking himself apart and having to rebuild with near nothing with few allies would make for very interesting character dynamics and loyalties, in a version of the game where he’d have a more major role in the story. because kiyo is not a bad person, per se, but he’s extremely misguided with a LOT of past mistakes to own up to and re-contextualize, and a LOT of issues to address and treat. but i don’t think being abused by his sister and bending over backwards to wrap it into something positive is one of those.  i do have an au for this. i think about it a lot. but that goes in the realm of Making Stuff Up, of which i tried to keep from this post. i hope this made sense;;; :’] i have a lot of thoughts about kiyo and it’s hard to put em cohesively. 

[secret-engima]

So I started RWBY (thanks for that, it’s all from you), and I gotta say I love Yang. So are there any Dragon!Yang rambles you have? What about lunweiss too?

It’s been a while since I enjoyed a show like this, it’s nice

Hi!!! Welcome aboard!! And not to taint your opinions but just- idk I feel obligated to warn you that while I 100% recommend V1-V5, V6 is emotionally hard (and has plot points I am Not Happy With) and V7 is just ... a train wreck. A wonderfully animated, woefully badly written train wreck. And I’ve yet to watch v8 so I have no idea what’s going on THERE beyond Oscar being a Suffering Sunshine Boi.

But yes! Headcanons!!!! Also apologies for any spoilers I mention for the show in these? I don’t know where you are in the show and I’ve already talked a lot of spoilers I’m sure XD.

Dragon Yang:

-Yang is excited to go to Beacon actually. Nervous and dreading it, but excited. She’s learned over the two years since returning to Remnant how to manage her strength and limit her lethality, how to hide the worst of her ... odd behaviors. She wants to make new friends, and she’s hoping to see Velvet there (Yang transfers to Velvet’s combat school in this AU and makes friends with her by accident). But she’s also dreading the “living in dorms with strangers” thing.

-Then she learns Ruby is getting to join early and she oscillates between HECK YES SIBLING TEAM HERE WE COME to MY BABY SISTER IS NOT READY FOR THIS. PROTECC. Of course, she’s been training Ruby these last two years too, because she’s afraid of her own strength but she’s more afraid of Ruby being unprepared for the dangers of the world. Ruby will never be a STELLAR hand to hand but she can fight mean and run away and her parkour skills have reached ninja levels even without her Semblance.

-Now she just has to get on the same team as her sister.

-She’s honestly ... highly amused by the initiation exam? Like- yeah sure fling the DRAGON SLAYER off a CLIFF and expect her to be alarmed. Psh.

-She means to track down Ruby and is will on her way to doing so when she runs into Blake first. That’s ... a little annoying. She doesn’t even know this girl’s name (Yang never dragged Ruby off to make friends during the pre-initiation sleepover thing in this AU) but it’s not Blake’s fault so.

-Also, on the note of Blake lemme just sidetrack to point out something interesting in Yang’s mentality. She can tell the moment she smells Blake that Blake is a Faunus.

-She still doesn’t think of her as a Faunus. Because- to Yang, she genuinely doesn’t .... really understand the difference between Faunus and human? To her everyone is human, some of them just have extra bits and more useful senses. And this is a TOTALLY UNCONSCIOUS MENTALITY from back when she was living on Earthland. Because in Earthland, people can look really, really weird (especially in the magic community) and yet they are all still called “humans” and are still treated perfectly normal. Like this girl from canon Fairy Tail show-

That tail and those ears are 100% real, they move and react like actual limbs in the anime, but they weren’t always THERE. When that character was teeny, she looked like a “normal” human, but her magic is feline oriented and so over the years those traits GREW on her. And literally NO ONE BATS AN EYE IN THE SHOW. Not even the people who knew her when she was tiny non-cat human child. She’s far from the only example, but she’s the easiest to think of especially in regards to the Faunus thing.

-So yeah, Yang smells feline traits on Blake and just- doesn’t even react. Doesn’t mention it to anyone because her brain skips right over “cat ears = Faunus” in this world and goes straight to “ah yes, my new 100% nonmagical human teammates. My Sister, Ice Child, and Girl With Decent Hearing Thank Goodness”.

-So while Blake thinks she’s keeping her Faunus traits a secret from her whole team, her partner Yang is just vibing off to the side, perfectly aware that Blake has cat ears but still thinking of her and every other Faunus as regular ol’ humans.

-Yang doesn’t abandon Ruby at the entrance to Beacon either, so Weiss made a ... bad impression on Yang very quickly for yelling at Ruby’s sister for an accident. Yang shut that whole thing down pretty fast, but Ruby was still feeling humiliated and nervous and Weiss was prickly and embarrassed by Yang’s blunt opinions.

-Yeah it’s a good thing they can bond via Nevermore killing because otherwise this team would be way more dysfunctional than it is in the first few days.

-Yang has mixed opinions on Team JNPR. It is painfully clear Jaune has no idea what he’s doing, but frankly she has her hands full with her own team atm and no time to try to gently bully this boy into proper training. She makes a note to do it later. Pyrrha smells lonely and she’s a sweetheart. Nora is wayyyy to prone to getting into Yang’s (and everyone’s) personal space. Ren is nice. He has manners and he smells of tea.

-There’s a scene early on where this guy called Cardin bullies Velvet for her ears by grabbing them and pulling them and I’ve never like how none of the main characters or anyone else try to hELP.

-Ergo, when that scene happens, Yang promptly gets up, twists Cardin’s wrist so that he lets Velvet’s ear go, then picks him up by the back of his shirt and flings him right through the farthest cafeteria window she can aim at from this angle. When his team of fellow bullies take it poorly, she proceeds to throw them through other windows.

-Her only defense when taken to the Headmaster’s office to face down Glynda and a very bemused Ozpin is that 1. at least she didn’t break their jaws or bones like she did the first time she caught someone bullying Velvet, 2. Professor Goodwitch can fix the windows with telekinesis to it’s not like the school was actually damaged and 3. if the Headmaster can fling people off cliffs for initiations, she can fling people through windows for being moronic bullies that needed spanking when they were five and spoiled but never got it.

-Goodwitch is not amused. Ozpin, on the other hand, is highly amused by trying not to show it. Yang can smell it and sense it in his magic tho.

-Yang, later in the dorms, more to herself then anyone, “So Velvet was born with one more pair of ears than most humans have, that’s no reason to be a jerk. I mean come on, he was born with a dumb face but I left him alone until he made the first move.”

-Blake: *vague staticky brain noises of confusion* “She’s ... a Faunus.”

-Yang: Gesundheit.

-Yang meeting Ironwood is gonna be-

-Fun.

-Because she first meets him in v2/v3 when he shows up for the Vytal Festival and brings an army with him and it makes Yang’s instincts SCREECH. This is OZPIN’S territory and this random general man is stomping all over it, bringing his army with him like some kind of power statement and she is immediately ready to Throw Hands with this man on Ozpin’s behalf just out of PRINCIPLE. So when she goes up to visit him at one point and finds Ironwood already there, she ignores the conversation she interrupted by arriving, points at Ironwood and goes, “Is this guy bothering you, Headmaster? Should I through him out the window? Or down the elevator shaft?”

-Ironwood is stunned that a student just- SAYS THAT. Ozpin, who has already gotten to know Yang enough to know that her social default setting is “subtle as a brick that’s been dunked in gasoline and set on fire”, sighs, “I’m fine, Yang. This is General Ironwood from Atlas.”

-Yang clicks her tongue and cracks her knuckles, “I know who he is, he’s the guy who showed up and cluttered up your skies with those rattling junk heaps he calls an army. It’s why I asked if you wanted me to throw him.”

-Ironwood, truly aghast, “Excuse me?”

-(ngl I DO like Ironwood and feel like they did his character dirty in v7 and likely v8 but, especially in v2/v3 he does have a bit of a arrogance problem)

Lunweiss:

-Weiss probably confuses so many people at Beacon. She is a Schnee, so while people are expecting some measure of dignity they are also expecting snobbery or brattiness and instead she’s just- the sweetest, mildest person under her reserve?

-Jaune still has a huge crush on her, she firmly but gently informs him that she’s just not interested. When he is slow to take the hint she gets upset, but that just means she withdraws in on herself.

-Yang, activating her Big Sister instincts: Yo, Jaune. I like you, you’re a good friend. But if you don’t drop it then I’m going to drop kick you off the top of Beacon Tower.

-Jaune: o.o yes ma’am.

-Lunweiss has had ... something of a deprived childhood in both lives. I don’t mean physically, because of course as Oracle and then as Heiress she had the best clothes and finest foods, but just- in the ordinary Teenage Life Experience. Things like video games and board games, carnival food, shopping with friends- she doesn’t have any real experiences like that? So obviously, as soon as Team RWBY realizes this (aka the day they’re lounging around the dorm and Luna asks what “these” are, “these” being Yang’s and Ruby’s collection of video games), they set out to do All The Fun Things with Weiss. Even Blake gets in on it when she comes to the somewhat stunning realization that the life experience even she, the Faunus activist, took for granted, is stuff Weiss has only ever heard of distantly in books and film.

-Weiss, bemusedly attempting to play a video game while Yang and Ruby lean on either shoulder and coach her on the buttons: ...What is the purpose of this?

-Ruby: *initiates lore dump about the video game plot and characters and emotional story beats*

-Yang, yanking Ruby’s hood over her head so she sputters to a stop: To unwind and have fun with friends.

-Weiss: I thought that was what ‘sleepover night’ was for?

-Ruby: People can do more than one ‘fun’ activity, Weiss.

At one point Blake reluctantly takes Weiss book shopping because Ruby, as Team Leader, has organized an entire schedule of “who does what fun thing with Weiss” and this was hers: So this is my favorite book store, the fiction genres are that way, non-fiction is that way, and comics are over there.

Weiss: *looks incredibly, hopelessly lost* Ummmmm

Blake: ... let’s start simple. What kind of books did you read as a kid?

Weiss, a little helplessly: whatever the tutors my father hired deemed proper for my education at the time and whatever books I could sneak out of the library without being caught and told to put them back because they were either “too young” for me, “too old”, or “not proper for a young lady of my standing”. Grandfather had a lot of books that my father put in that latter category and eventually he just- locked the doors to the library entirely and bought a new copy of whatever my teachers or tutors said I needed.

Blake: *listens to this and slowly has an internal crisis that the ‘spoiled’ Schnee heiress has never been allowed to read her own choice of books aka Blake’s favorite childhood activity*

Blake, a little desperately: Are there any books you remember enjoying as a child? Even if they were assigned?

Weiss combs through her memories, decides that’s not productive, and goes all the way back to her Luna lifetime before tentatively admitting: I ... enjoyed reading mythology and other tales set in historical eras with little evidence of being actually true, but entertaining nonetheless, especially since they often had a moral component woven in.

Blake runs that through her internal Weiss Translator: Fairy tales. You like fairy tales. Okay, I can work with that.

[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!

[onebizarrekai]

(danganronpa v3 spoilers with some dr2 spoilers)

I’m not a very big fan of the idea that the v3 characters were different people prior to the killing game and the general concept of their entire story being fabricated as is BUT

what I am wondering is why a large portion of the fandom has generally agreed that pregame kokichi is a huge pushover and pretty much the opposite of what you see in the game

because like, honestly, sloppily rewrite someone’s memories all you want, but you can’t really get rid of their inherent nature that easily, much less evidence of their former selves–like, think about the fact that izuru may not remember anything but his memories of being hajime are still noted to be in there somewhere even if they’re not at the surface.

so I feel like if anything, one, even if we’re regarding the characters as having willingly signed up for a killing game (ignoring the frankly objectionable idea that the rest of the series wasn’t real in its own universe, just to bring me some peace of mind–thank god the creators said v3 wasn’t canon to the remainder of the series), there’s no way they can be that different from their in-game selves aside from the environment that they grew up in affecting their worldview… and two, for kokichi’s ‘pregame’ self specifically, I think he would would feel really threatened in his environment due to killing games apparently being normative and him thinking that they’re horrible, and so like… what if he actually joined the killing game with the intention of ripping it apart to begin with, because he knows how wrong it is?

what if kokichi and shuichi actually did know each other, as people tend to headcanon due to kokichi’s “maybe we knew each other in an earlier life,” line, and that the shuichi that we see in the video was acting, and asked to be the ultimate detective so that he would have an advantage, and that’s why his behavior seemed so unnatural when he promised he would come up with a clever murder for the game?

I’m just kinda spilling ideas out of the blue, I guess. with kokichi and shuichi both being pretty smart and whatnot, if they knew each other, with shuichi’s good conscience and sensitivity, and kokichi’s wit and hatred for killing, I feel like it would be a lot more complicated than just ‘shuichi is nuts and kokichi is a wimp’ when all I can imagine that the killing game developers were doing was vaguely editing their memories and also probably throwing talents into them izuru-in-moderation style, since anything more would be far too much work for them to get another season out in time.