#we've discussed this idea so long ago and it's finally here! *w*

[zu-is-here]

Commission for @skitteringjunbug ☆ Thank you so much for your support!╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

Mixer & Suave from NightsongTale by skitteringjunbug

[blackhakumen]

Mini Fanfic #975: Wedding Planner Meeting (Sonic X Crash Bandicoot)

6:34 p.m. at Rabbits/Chaotix's Household's LivingRoom........

Cream: (Stands Beside the Large Paper Pad in Front if Everyone Present While Tapping it With a Pointing Stick) Alright, everyone! Now that we've officially found our marriage officiant and singer, we can finally discuss a very important topic at hand.

Cheese turns the page of the pad from his side, showing off three shaded colors: White, Purple, and Peach

Cream: Which colors do you guys would fit well to the wedding's theme? At first, I chose purple since it's mommy's favorite color, but then, I noticed how pretty looking the color of the peaches are when I ate one a few mornings ago. But then I remembered that color White is what makes weddings....w-weddings, you know!? So....('Sigh Heavily') I'm afraid I'm in a teensy bit of tight spot here.....

'AHEM'

Cream: (Turns to She Cheese Crossing his Arms, Raising an Eyebrow at Her Before Giggling a bit Awkwardly) O-Oh and umm....The fourth color that Cheese picked was Green. I forgot to color it in and sharpen the color pencil at the last minute....

Cheese: Chaoooooo?

Cream: (Sighs Heavily While Rolling her Eyes) And because of that, I owe him three cookies from the cookie jar. (Immediately Turns Back to Her Chao Friend with a Glare) Which I will give to him LATER, by the way!

Cheese: (Rolls his Eyes as Well) Chao Chao Chao.....

Cream: (Starts Wiggling Her Finger at Cheese in a Motherly Fashion) Hey, don't give me that attitude, mister! Be patient. (Sighs Once More) But anyways.....(Smiles Brightly at the Others In Front of Her) Any thoughts?~

Espio: Well....I think the colors you two have chosen are decent enough choices in their own right. But if I must, I suppose I would say......(Points at the First Color on the Left) Purple would be the best option.

Tails: (Grabs his Chin While Thinking) I dunno..... Peach does seem like the most vibrant out of the four....But Green is definitive color for the current season......('Sigh') I already can't decide which of the two I prefer more.....

Coco: (Brushing Tails' Tails While Sitting Next to Him) I'd be fine any of them as long as it isn't white. It's too obvious and generic for my liking.

Charmy: (Looks at the Colors Front of Him Very Closely) Hmmmmmmmmmm........

Coco: (Turns to the Young Bee) Got any favorites on your end, kiddo?

Charmy: I'm not sure......I mean, Purple's pretty, Peach is Fruity, Green is Greenie, and White's pretty much the most boring one. So we just rule that one out easily.

Everyone: Agreed./Chao.

Cream: ('Sighs in Defeat') I suppose that one's settled...But you really couldn't choose out of the three of them, Charmy?

Charmy: Nope. All of them are pretty cool choices in my book. (Suddenly Comes Up With an Idea) Ooh! How about we combined them all together? I call it....Pureench.

Espio: (Raises an Eyebrow at Charmy) Pureench.

Charmy: (Happily Nodded) Yep! Half Purple, Half Green, and Half Peach. Mixed together into one ultra wedding theme color! (Places his Hands on his Hips With a Confident Grin on his Face) Pretty neat, huh?

Tails: (Quickly Looks at Coco Before Turning Back to Charmy) That....is a...pretty neat idea for sure, Charmy. But uhh....Maybe it would be better if we just choose one out of the three colors instead, yeah?

Coco: (Nodded in Agreement with a Bit of an Awkward Smile on her Face)

Charmy: (Sighs While Rolling his Eyes) If you say so.....Wanna play a game of Uno to see who's color is on top? My money's on Green!

Cheese: (Raises his Hand Up) Chao Chao Chao!

Charmy: (Smiles Brightly) All right, Cheese! Up top.

Cheese: (Happily High Fives Charmy) Chao Chao!

Tails and Coco whispers among one another before nodding and turning back to the group.

Tails: Given the thoughts and discussion Coco and I made, we offically decided to be on Peach side. It is a pretty unique color out of the bunch all things considered.

Coco: Not to mention one of tastiest fruit out there. Also, fair warning, buuuuut.....(Starts Smirking a Bit Smugly While Crossing her Arms) I just so happen as the undisputed champion of Uno.

Tails: (Shrugs) It's true. She beaten me in it over fifty times.

Coco: And I never lost a game since!~

Espio: ('Sigh') Then I suppose I'll be on the Purple side then. (Turns to Cream) Care to join with me, Cream?

Cream: Sorry, but...I'm gonna have to go on the White side on this one.

Charmy: Seriously? But it's a boring color though.

Cream: Yeah, but I don't want it to be left out completely. So as such....(Points Up at the Ceiling) I will stand by it's side and fight for it's honor!....Or at least try not to lose too badly.

Tails: Not good with Uno?

Cream: I'm only average at best..... (Immediately Glares at at a Certain Bee Boy and Chao) Because a certain pairs of hooligans wouldn't stop trolling me with their cheap tactics!!

Charmy: (Smirks at his Soon to be Sister with Cheese While Suddenly Wearing Sunglasses) Hey, don't blame the players, bunny girl, blame the game and your lack of skillz.

Cheese: (Nodded in Agreemen) Chao Chao Chao. (HI Fives Charmy Again)

Cream (Has a Very ConfusedLook on her Face): .......Where did those sunglasses came fr-

Charmy: Cool guys don't need to explain random occurrences.

Cheese: Chao.

Cream: (Stares at the Duo For a Few More Seconds Before Sighing in Defeat Again While Pinching her Nose) You know what? Fine. Whatever. Let's just get the fame started already. Meeting dismissed! (Uses her Pointer to Tap on the Coffee Table)

Charmy/Cheese: (Immediately Rushes Towards the Dining Room) GREEN SQUAD RULES!!!!/CHAO CHAO CHAOOOOO!!!!

Coco: (Follows the Duo While Having her Arm Around her Best Friend's Shoulder) You have nothing to worry about here, bud. With my guidance, we'll both be champions in no time flat.

Tails: It would be fun to win Uno for once.

Espio: (Smiles Softly at Cream) I must say, Cream. You're doing a fairly good job planning out the wedding so far.

Cream: (Smiles Brightly at Espio) Thank you~ It's a lot of work, but I'm really having a blast doing thess.

Espio: (Simply Nodded) I do as well. (Points his Finger Up) But it's important not get too invested into them. You could stress yourself out too easily if you're not careful.

Cream: (Happily Hugs Espio Lovingly) Don't you worry about a thing, Espio. I'll be careful. (Puts on a Playful Smirk on her Face) But what you SHOULD be worrying about right now is getting your bottom whopped in Uno.

Espio: (Smirks Back at the Rabbit) Having confidence of winning already? I thought you said you were an average player.

Cream: I did. But who's to say any of you would would actually win this evening? When I have a strategy to do so on my own.

Espio: You haven't thought of one yet, haven't you?

Cream: (Makes her Way to the Dining Room With Espio) While Sighing Yet Again) No. But.....I-It'll definitely be something! (Points at the Ninja Beside Herself) And you're not allowed to know what it is, buster!

Espio: (Chuckles Lightly) Whatever you say, little sister.

@keyenuta

@caleb13frede

@rechicken-and-waffles

@cyber-wildcat

@albion-93

@ma-lemons

[doctorbunny]

MILGRAM theory time: Haruka!

This isn't going to go super in depth (famous last words) but there's a few heavily debated parts of Haruka's MV I want to share my findings/thoughts on because I think this is my new special interest and during my quest to get best boy's song to 1 million views I have been looking over his first MV with a fine tooth comb so to speak.

Disclaimer: As the Jackalope said in the "This is the MILGRAM" trailer, we don't necessarily know everyone's crime from just the first video, its possible that a lot of things will be re-contextualized in the second MV, however I am not psychic or bilingual and thus will only be working with content released before August 20th 2021 and translated into English (which could cause some language/cultural details to be lost on me as translation is not a 1 to 1 process).

TW for discussions of ableism, child abuse, murder and animal death. Also this is really long so sorry to all the people that follow me for non-MILGRAM stuff

Firstly, I want to start on the topic of Haruka as a person. He is disabled. He does not have 'the mind of a child' (although he is 17, making him legally a minor in both North America and Japan). He is not just 'child-like'. And he is not mentally ill (well he might be, in the sense that many disabilities like Haruka's have strong comorbidities [where a person has two or more conditions but neither directly causes the other] with anxiety, depression and PTSD, but usually when I see people talk about him 'struggling with mental illness' they go on to refer to aspects of his disability). Sometimes on tumblr, people like myself, will see canonical traits written into a character and identify them as being traits associated with our disabilities/mental illness and headcanon them as such. Sometimes this even involves saying things like "It's basically canon!" Although we understand that these characters were probably not the result of a writer intending to write a disabled person. When I say that Haruka is being written as a person with a neurodevelopmental disability, I mean the writer intended to write a disabled character and wrote them in a way that they wanted the audience to pick up on. As an autistic person (which is one of many neurodevelopmental disorders and also something I probably didn't have to specify because who else would be writing an essay about a series they got into a few days ago at 11 o'clock at night) I really like how Haruka has been written so far. There's definitely some parts of him that have been exaggerated so abled normies can pick up on his disability (namely how his MV 's main motif is really child-like drawings) but the writers also included a lot of smaller details I appreciate like how it is noted he avoids eye contact when talking to other people and is depicted as nervously pulling at his sleeves in official artwork, or how he says he finds his prison uniform (which has tight straps) 'relaxing' and when he gets nervous/tense, he will dig his fingernails into the palm of his hands. (These last two potential being examples of 'self stimulation' [aka stimming] where a person seeks out specific sensory stimuli in order to help regulate their nervous system/emotions, in this case the tight uniform creates a comforting, secure feeling [you may have heard about some people preferring to sleep under weighted blankets for this reason] and digging nails into his palms sounds uncomfortable/painful but is done in an attempt to deal with a greater sensory discomfort caused by the situation/environment) I also appreciate the depth he is written with, he struggles to communicate verbally but in his MV and interactions with other inmates is shown to have insecurities, opinions and a consistent thought process (this is all basic character stuff but unfortunately not always present in disabled characters)

Also I want to add that (in terms of what we've been shown so far) Haruka did not kill anyone because of his disability/mental illness. Disabled people are not inherently more innocent than abled people. But there is no disability/mental illness where a symptom is that you kill people and real people have to live with the stigma when you speak carelessly and suggest things like "Haruka is the kind of mentally ill person who kills people as a cry for help" 🧂 (or at the very least real people have to read BS like that and cringe). TL;DR Haruka is less child-like and more onion-like (as in, he has layers) 🧅🧅🧅

Now is the actual theory stuff, oops:

Every prisoner in MILGRAM is supposed to have committed murder in some way, obviously considering Yuno just had an abortion (which i personally do not consider an act of murder) whilst Mu literally stabbed someone to death, this definition is stretched a bit. But it is not agreed upon yet who Haruka killed/how many people he killed or why he killed.

In his MV he is shown to have chased after his dog into a forest, seen something off-screen, then beaten something into a messy pulp with a rock. Some people think the dog is a red herring and that Haruka actually killed his mother/the girl from the fireworks show/his brother. I do not agree.

First: I believe Haruka when he says he doesn't have a brother. The MV literally starts by Haruka looking in the mirror and then switching between the him now

and a really similar looking younger child who just so happened to be a key feature of his memories (I don't have the vocabulary to explain it but its like cinematic parallels that establish this is the same person at different points of their life)

Its not impossible that this is Haruka's secret younger brother, but i think its unlikely. I saw someone saying they had to be different people because Haruka looks less happy than the child but like, most 17 year olds are less visibly happy than when they were 7 (or however old the child is meant to be). Life happens.

So when Haruka is shown pushing the child around and eventually strangling him, this isn't meant to be literal (homicide or suicide), but a representation of how conflicted Haruka feels about his younger self, who may have committed the murder (if you've ever been kept awake cringing at memories of something you said in the past and wishing you could go slap some sense into your former self, this is like that but 10 times more self loathing). The lyric "I am always repeating yesterday," implies he might think about this specific past event a lot.

Moving on, its pretty well accepted that Haruka's parents were abusive in some way and Haruka internalised a lot of it: he constantly apologises, he says in his interrogation questions that his one wish come true is that "[he] want[s] to be loved" and describes in his MV how when he couldn't find the words he was looking for ("you're unfair") one of his parents "would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless.”". He seems to know its unfair but also still says he 'loves' his family, possibly mistakenly believing it is his fault, but also showing an awareness of his situation (and how his parents might behave).

Now, the MV is stylised in a way that makes certain details unclear, but there is one clear detail showing that Haruka's dog was killed

This is the first close up of Haruka and the dog. Haruka's mother is just out of frame supervising, but they look pretty happy. Notice how the puppy has a silvery chain for a collar. Somehow, this dog gets out of the house but only Haruka is shown chasing after it (whether his mother was searching elsewhere or didn't bother following her disabled son into the forest is unclear). Either way, young Haruka is now in the forest, unsupervised.

By the time he finds the dog, there is already blood, suggesting it was initally attacked by something else.

is this a sigh of relief from a boy whose finally found his beloved pet or a jealous weakling glad that nature took its course and he is finally free of that meddling mutt stealing all his mummy's attention? /j

I think this shock at the discovery that 'there is blood on his hands' could imply that rather than literally getting the blood from his dog, Haruka has seen his already injured dog and realises that if the dog got out because of him (he is previously shown to be aware his parents seem to blame him for everything) then he is the reason his dog is injured/dying and will be blamed for it. (this scene plays over the lyrics "It’s fine, though it’s really not It’s really fine, though I don’t really think so When I tried to understand it, You’ll make that disappointed face again" suggesting he is trying to avoid making his parents disappointed and letting the family pet escape into danger is something that could make them very disappointed)

now we get into rock murder (this is present-day Haruka implying that this is either: not how the scene really played out; the writers really wanting the audience to know that this was Haruka's doing and not someone else's; or this turns into a separate incident that happened much later [although note that the red sky and blue moon is the same as when young Haruka first appears at the start])

b the corpse is beyond mangled now, but its clearly the dog because the silver chain collar is still there, to the right of the body. (circled in red for your convenience :3)

My hypothesis is: Haruka didn't set out to kill his dog, but upon finding it injured (we don't know the severity aside from bleeding and also it not being able to run away from Haruka kneeling down above it w/ a big rock so it could range from treatable with a lot of vet help to already on death's door, TBH I don't think Haruka would know the difference) He knew he'd be blamed for this; made into a villain who let the poor puppy come to harm. He panicked and killed the dog out of some idea that it would make him the victim here (since he'd be found crying over a dog corpse, which might make a parent go comfort him rather than getting angry about what could've happened to the dog). This is over the lyrics: "I cried, I screamed I wanted to be a pitied and loved weakling I was in denial, I was in denial I just had to make sure I’ve become a victim, I’ve become a victim" (there's another theory that he was also jealous of the dog, which could work here too, since this is not some calculated plot; rather its a rash decision) This ties in with his Japanese song title (translated as Weakness) which is a play on a phrase sort of like "The strong eat, the weak do not" to become "The weak are eaten by society" or "The weak eat each other to survive" [once again I am reminding everyone this is based on second hand information from the youtube comments section (from users mitchki and Alphaistic) because I do not speak Japanese] This second meaning (The weak eat each other to survive) makes sense under the reading that Haruka killed his dog in order to 'survive' making his parents disappointed for the dog escaping.

Miscellaneous points:

We don't know where Haruka's necklace came from yet, it must be a gift since the most expensive thing he's ever bought was cotton candy. The younger child in the video isn't wearing it and neither is his mother or the girl in the purple dress.

Haruka's home seems quite big, at the start we can see a large flower garden outside the window and there's a forest in walking distance. This might suggest his family is quite wealthy

Haruka probably did go to school at some point as homeschooling is not a legally accepted as an alternative to public schools in Japan. (However it is estimated that up to 5000 families homeschool, this is uncommon) A lot (about 62%) of Japanese schools apparently have a 'special needs' classes and there are about 505 schools focused on educating intellectually disabled students (although I do not know which sort Haruka would've needed as whilst intellectual and development disabilities can be comorbid they aren't the same). Now, if children aged 7-14 don't go to school, their parents receive a fine, but its possible that if Haruka's parents are wealthy, they just paid it to avoid sending him to school. (This might imply they wanted to hide him or were generally ashamed of him in some way) However high school education (for students over 14) is not legally required and its likely that even if Haruka went to elementary/middle school, he hasn't been around people his own age in at least 3 years. As he seems quite lonely and glad that the other prisoners give him attention.

I don't think Haruka's parents are divorced and if they are, its not his father who left. Haruka mentions in the 30 questions that he thinks he disappointed his father. But still includes him as part of his family ("My father and mother and me"). A theory I've seen is that his father was disappointed by his son being disabled and left. but developmental disabilities (especially in non verbal and semi verbal children like Haruka) can be diagnosed before the age of 3, so I feel it is unlikely that Haruka would bring up his father if he left that early in Haruka's life

All MILGRAM prisoners have covered one of DECO*27's older vocaloid songs (DECO*27 is a well known producer who composes the music for MILGRAM) Haruka covered 'Two Breaths Walking' (https://youtu.be/puXLfVWrz2Q) which is about a boy's first relationship and how his mother's jealousy set him up for failure as the relationship becomes toxic (specifically it has some very funny out of context lines like "Whose breasts are you sucking on now?") so yeah, mommy issues: the song (Also: some people say in the song, the boy kills the girl at the end, but this isn't literal, TBW is the first of a trilogy of songs about the same relationship, it is followed by Android girl then Two Breaths Walking: Reloaded and the story resolves with the couple reuniting as adults and getting in the relationship again, although its not necessarily as abusive as before, its still implied to be codependant ending on the line 'We should live like oxygen tanks, sucking breathe from the words each of us exhale, until our last breathe')

In all seriousness, the scene where younger Haruka is walking through the city with his mother but it keeps repeating until older Haruka pulls the younger one away might indicate an attempt to focus the happier memories of his parents (since this is also over the lyrics "Why is it breaking? Tell me why? Please don’t change If I tried and couldn’t say it, You would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless.”" which depict a worse scene) I think both his parents are still physically present but have become far more emotionally distant, not giving him as much attention, which exacerbates his loneliness from not having any friends his own age to talk to

And if one of his parents did leave? I think its likely his mother since she is shown disappearing out of his reach after the dog-incident (inferring she got angry/disappointed in Haruka anyway) This could also be where he got his necklace from: Its something his mother used to wear (although this is 100% a guess) and that's why its shown to be important to him

This one is just me, but i didn't realise until a rewatch that when Haruka is watching the younger him and the girl running together, the background has fireworks. Haruka mentions fireworks being a key memory to him so I wonder if this was one of the first/last times he got to make a friend...

On three separate occasions in the interrogation, Haruka mentions not liking animals. Despite this, he is depicted as sleeping with a rabbit plush and on his birthday art (I'd include that too but tumblr only allows 10 pictures per post, so here's a link) he is standing next to a giant blueberry and strawberry cake with two bunny themed biscuits at the side. Through my experiences of seeing Japanese fandom art on pixiv, sometimes rabbits are used to insinuate a character is cute and timid in fanart.

Meaningless details: Haruka sleeps with his necklace on; he sleeps on a bed and not a futon; at first I thought he woke up holding his plush's hand but his hand is merely next to the toy; and considering the state of the pillow and blanket, I wonder if he moves a lot in his sleep or if the is just because in this case he seems to be waking up from a nightmare about the dog incident...

Final note: I've spent so many hours writing this I don't remember if i was building up to any big finale or not but I hope you enjoyed reading this! Feel free to add on in the comments/reblogs.