#which would overwrite her own memories essentially killing her

[laytontheories]

This is one of my favourite images from the credits of Eternal Diva:

When we first meet Amelia, she acts cold and distant. She isn't interested in helping others and even chastises Luke on the boat. Some might assume she's rude or stuck up.

But when she is kidnapped by Descole, we see her cold facade crack. Her grandfather is dying and she wants to give the Eternal Life to him. Amelia literally entered a game where she herself could die so she wouldn't lose her grandfather. In that moment we suddenly see who she really is: a scared child who would do anything for her loved ones.

However, during the credits we see this image. It shows that Amelia's grandfather has indeed passed away. There is a chess piece next to his grave, suggesting that he was the one to teach her the game.

But Amelia isn't sad. She's smiling, probably thinking of the good memories they had together. Maybe watching Janice say goodbye to Melina made her realise that she will never lose him, as long as she remembers him.

It's a bittersweet, blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but it helps add closure to Amelia's character.

But the other reason why I love the image is Layton and Luke in the background.

"Uhhhhhh. Why are we here Professor? We barely know this girl."

"Because Luke; a true gentleman must always attend to the needs of a lady. Even when he doesn't remember her name."

[catboyebooks]

naegi apologizes for being late, says he meant to show up sooner but he couldn't enter the simulation thanks to the virus. junko is like ooooh how convenient that you were able to show up at this exact moment!!! which even naegi realizes means she purposefully delayed his arrival till now, but he brushes that off and says it doesn't matter, he's here to rescue them. junko seems very enthusiastic about her old nemesis (i guess) being here, makes a big deal about how The Hero has arrived, and also acts insanely turned on whenever he talks, which i guess i'm not in a position to judge okay i got that out of my system and i'm not going to say anything else weird about voice acting i prommy. sorry.

it's briefly established that naegi is taking a pretty big risk by being here, as now that he's in the VR program he's as much under junko's control as everyone else here is. of course, naegi felt like he had to do this anyway. he explains to them that junko's lying about their dead friends coming back to life, and lays out her actual plan. essentially, since graduating was supposed to cause their irl memories/personalities to be overwritten with those of their VR avatars, and since the simulation wasn't set up to account for anyone dying, junko plans to overwrite the dead people's brains with her own personality. naegi adds that unfortunately any avatars that were deleted can't be recovered, which seems like bad news until one remembers that we already have proof the dead people weren't deleted (komaeda's the sole exception, he never reappeared when the simulation was glitching after chapter 5, but everybody else did). that's me pointing that out, though, the group hasn't thought of this.

junko downplays and acts like this isn't a big issue. she says she didn't lie, just omitted some details, and besides she thinks she can pretend to be all the dead people fairly convincingly so what's the problem? (obviously uh, no one wants that, but i also wanna point out that we already know from her attempt at portraying naegi earlier that her acting skills could use some work.) kuzuryuu in particular objects to this and she tells him she could pretend to be a version of peko that he'd like more, which of course does not go over well. then she announces that her grand plan is to use her initial batch of junko clones to turn more people into copies of herself and eventually create a "despair utopia" where everybody is a clone of her. or at least has her personality, i guess she doesn't really clarify how far she plans to go with it. hinata asks why not just kill them all then (she could use all their bodies if she did, right?) and naegi points out she can't because of the school trip rules. when junko usurped usami's moderator role, she was able to add her own rules, but couldn't change the existing ones, and one of the rules already in place stated that the "class teacher" can't directly interfere with the "students." hence — and this part junko herself confirms — she essentially ran the killing game to stall for time while she worked on her plan to copy her personality to their bodies. the killing game itself was never important to her and she wasn't truly invested in whatever the outcome would be. as she puts it, their lives are chump change to her.

when asked about her motivations, naegi says all junko's ever wanted to do is infect other people with despair and junko's like wow so true you get me fr! she confirms that she has no motivations beyond wanting to fill everybody with despair. i'm gonna talk about this more later, we'll move on for now. junko also confirms she's the one who got the reserve course to kill themselves and says they did it because they loved her. it's clearly a memory she cherishes. when everyone is horrified she's all, aww, you don't gotta act so shocked about it, you guys are acting like your parents, friends, and lovers all died at once! oh sorry that was really insensitive of me you guys definitely don't have any close relationships like that anymore :(

[highladyluck]

Mat’s Types, or On Tricksters

I recently made a joke about Mat's 'type' essentially being the Shadar Logoth dagger, and while I stand by it, I also think there's a lot more to it than that. I believe Mat actually has two types, which is entirely appropriate for a trickster archetype. One of his types is playful, joyful, generous people, who reflect his early- but persistent- personality. The other is sharp, powerful, existentially dangerous people, like the person he becomes over the course of the series. Like a raven- itself a trickster figure in Haida storytelling- Mat is attracted to shiny things, mirrors, and death.

But first, some definitions. I'm calling Mat a trickster archetype, so what is that? The trickster archetype is built on a kind of dual contrast. To trick someone, you must change things in a surprising way. Tricksters introduce chaos into an ordered system, or reveal order in what was thought to be chaos. (It's not surprising, or a change, to add order to order, or chaos to chaos.) So tricksters are transformational, liminal figures, who defy expectations and subvert the preexisting order- but who therefore *require* predictions and structure to have any kind of impact or meaning at all. Playing a game requires there be rules; revealing a loophole requires there be a contract.

Within this definition, there's still a huge range of characters you can call tricksters, and it's useful to categorize them across spectrums. One axis of a trickster is "effectiveness", which refers to the trickster's ability to effect change; this is 'incompetent to competent', 'foolish to canny', 'harmless to dangerous'. Another axis is "motivation" which refers to the trickster's ethical structure; this is 'good to evil', 'generous to selfish', 'just to unjust'. There's another kind of axis that's related to motivation, which I'll call "comprehensibility", and which refers to the trickster's transparency of motive; the range there is 'knowable to unknowable', 'familiar to alien', 'clear to mysterious'. If you wanted to chart them all I'd make effectiveness the horizontal x-axis, motivation the vertical y-axis, and comprehensibility the z-axis perpendicular to both of them, but this is starting to get into 'gesturing at the wall map with crazy eyes' territory and I'm mostly just going to be talking about effectiveness and motivation anyway, so let’s move on.

Tricksters can be foolish figures, always getting caught, often the butt of their own joke. That's our early impression of Mat- a prankster who never really seems to get away with anything, or a fool caught in a trap of his own making. Mat is also generous, insofar as he has apparently been rescuing people his whole life, plus he's very 'easy come, easy go' about money, and has a decent instinct for gift-giving, whether those are compliments or actual physical presents. He has a strong sense of justice that puts him at odds with people who have (unearned) privilege and who are abusing power, and he loves verbally trapping people into confronting their own hypocrisy.

He keeps these traits throughout the series, but he also develops ones on the opposite side of the axes. Stealing the Shadar Logoth dagger is the catalyst for Mat's development from 'harmless, benevolent trickster' to 'dangerous, morally complicated trickster'. It literally overwrites first his personality, and then his memories. While he gets the personality back- sort of- he never gets the memories back, and his quest to do so sets him on the rest of his path.

By the end of the series, Mat has undergone enormous trauma and developed a much stronger sense of self-preservation. He becomes a canny and multi-talented figure, a brilliant tactician and strategist, a dangerous enemy to have. He's most selfish and cruel when under the influence of the Shadar Logoth dagger, but it turns out he's also never been in the rescuing business for free, he wants to be needed and will get a little pissy if he isn't (although to his credit, he respects people's wishes if they say they don't want to be saved from themselves.)

His greed for adventure and shiny things was what got him into trouble with the dagger, and he never quite loses his appraiser's eye (or taste) for luxury goods. And Tuon is entirely right to name him 'Devastation' or 'Ruin'; he's constantly blowing things up, killing enormous amounts of people directly or by proxy, and while everyone in this series commits war crimes, he's got the dubious honor of having another character (Teslyn) actually say to his face, "You know you just did a war crime, right?"

Mat spends the early books- when he's in good enough health to do so, and has the opportunity- pursuing women, wine, and song, and I mention them all together because that's the vibe he's going for. Mat genuinely loves flirting and dancing for their own sake, as fun things to do with receptive people, and that extends to sexual activities as well. It's a joyful, generous, playful way of interacting, and Mat's joie de vivre seems to attract people with similar attitudes.

Yes, Mat sometimes puts his foot in his mouth, but he's not actually disrespectful of anyone else's agency, so he's doing better than the rest of the Two Rivers boys. He doesn't make assumptions about whether there will be a next interaction or not, or how far each interaction will go; each step is negotiated with input from both players, which makes it a kind of game. Mat doesn't have long-term relationships with these fun, playful people, but he's not looking for that, and neither are they.

The other kind of people Mat is attracted to are what I'll call 'dagger people', who are sharp (smart, competent, possibly literally an edged weapon), powerful, and existentially dangerous. It is *possible* that Mat might have acquired this taste without the Shadar Logoth dagger's influence. He likes battles, he likes adventure, he generally treats women as respected equals, he might have gotten to 'date a woman who can kick your ass' all on his own. But Mat loved that Shadar Logoth dagger, they had a whole entire fucked-up relationship, and when they broke up he got a bunch of rebound knives and also some sharp, powerful, and existentially dangerous people's memories shoved into his head. Like calls to like, blood feeds blood, etc.

And boy, does Mat find these ladies, or more accurately, boy, do these ladies find him. Case in point: Melindhra, the sexy darkfriend Maiden of the Spear. I think Aludra partially fits, too- sharp, confident if not powerful, dangerous (though not so much to him as like... the world.) Mat isn't pursuing or attracted to either Joline or Tylin, but they also fit this description, and they definitely pursued him. (I'd love to add Lanfear to the list of 'dangerous ladies who made passes at Mat' but I can't quite do it with a straight face.) I don't think Mat's thing for dagger people really reaches its full flower until he starts getting to know Tuon, though.

Mat spends much of the series looking for both his types, and tends to find either one or the other, but not both in one person- until Tuon. Like Mat, Tuon is actually both these types in a sometimes uneasy coexistence. For all their many differences, they think about each other much the same way. They both find each other very layered and confusing, but also are surprisingly quick to trust each other, which is striking in people who are very suspicious, in a fraught situation, and on opposite sides. I think most of the reason they trust each other is because they have the same very contractual personal honor system, where 'my word is my bond'. That's a trickster thing; tricksters have to keep some kind of rules, or how else will they play games and know whether they've won or lost? But their rules can be hidden or idiosyncratic (that's the z-axis, comprehensibility) as you see in 'bargains with the fae'-type situations. Personal honor is also a feature of royalty, though, where the personal and political are bound together, and a person's promises can be treated as legal contracts, as well as honor-based societies in general.

Mat and Tuon take their promises to each other very seriously, but are also always both looking for loopholes so they can get the upper hand. They also are both following the script of prophecy, which I mention because they both devote a lot of time to subverting their own expectations about how exactly that prophecy is going to play out. Mat buckles down and says “I’m going to make this come out in my favor somehow, even though it’s not what I wanted,” yet he’s still surprised at how and when Tuon completes the marriage ceremony; Tuon does not find Mat anything like she expected, and she also is surprised at her own feelings for him. Near the end of the series, they take a break from playing tricks and mind games on each other, and instead bluff everyone else on the battlefield, tag-teaming their trickster powers for one last surprise attack.

Ok, so how is Tuon Mat’s first type, playful, joyful, and generous? She loves playing games with Mat, both actual literal games like stones, but also their weird flirting/power plays. She's super competitive, because anyone who wasn't who was in her shoes would be dead, but she's a good sport, "satisfied when she wins and determined when she loses". She's also got "mischievous" smiles, and turns the tables on Mat in a super trickster-y way, writing the letter that puts everyone in the circus under her protection except for Mat and his crew; which means he and his coterie are still 'not safe' and thus he has to keep travelling with her rather than bringing her back to Ebou Dar right away, by the terms of their promise.

Mat gives us really lovely descriptions of her in moments of joy, and one of the first things we learn about her is that her genuine smile makes her look completely different from the normal Resting Bitch Face she affects for self-preservation reasons. She's generous in the sense that she's (often) willing to consider other points of view and give people second chances, when others in her position wouldn't and don't. She has the generosity of privilege, which I admit is not the most laudable form of generosity, but it's still a form of generosity. She also has a natural compassion and merciful impulses that have been trimmed and hemmed and twisted into only the forms her society deems socially acceptable, but they're still there.

I have less of a job to do proving that Tuon is a 'dagger person'. You remember how I joked about 'sharp' meaning 'literally an edged weapon'? Well, I don't know how else I'm supposed to interpret "Tuon’s right hand swept across, bladed like an axe, and struck [the footpad's] throat so hard that he heard the cartilage cracking". SHE'S LITERALLY A WEAPON. MAT HAS FINALLY FOUND A REPLACEMENT FOR HIS SEXY EVIL KNIFE. :') She's also super smart, super canny, and a snappy dresser to boot. She's one of the most powerful women in the world, and by the end of the series Mat is absolutely into it. (The bit where he's like "She's so good at giving orders! *heart eyes*" is simultaneously hilarious and alarming. I get it- I simp for Kuvira from Legend of Korra, I can't throw stones at anyone who’s like ‘hot evil Empress, please step on me’- but there's a time and a place, Mat.)

And, of course, she's an existential threat to the world, Mat's family and friends, and (theoretically) Mat himself. The Seanchan Empire, despite not being bigoted towards the Tinkers and having pretty good gender equality, is committing massive human rights violations left and right, thanks to the slavery, channelerphobia, and imperialism. As a tool of the Empire, unless he works on extricating himself, Mat's going to be culpable for that (he already is, really, but it could be worse), which is a stain on his soul that I don't think either he or the readers want. Being a tool of the Empire is an existential threat to Mat's idea of himself as an independent agent and good person, and I guess also an existential threat to his life since he's getting all those assassination attempts from his coworkers. (I am excluding Tuon from the assassination attempts; as I've mentioned in a previous essay, her threats to Mat are not serious and are in fact a form of deranged flirting.)

Tuon and Mat are both dual-axis tricksters, in their way. Tuon- or I should really be saying, Fortuona, Lady Luck- is more on the bringing order to chaos side, and Mat falls most characteristically on the bringing chaos to order end of things. But they switch roles- Mat shores up the proper order of things when he reminds Tuon to keep her promises, and Tuon is often a chaotic influence at court, with her mercy or willingness to change her mind. They also both understand what it's like to be both a person and an archetype- Mat worries about losing his individual choice and freedom by becoming a hero, and Tuon worries about becoming too vulnerable and individual to be the strong and impartial hand she thinks the Empire needs.

They've also both experienced their instincts and worldview being overwritten by external forces; for Tuon it's been happening since birth and she's almost entirely embraced the process; for Mat, it was the consequence of a choice he made and he fought it every step of the way. They have very different responses, but they've experienced weirdly similar 'erasure' experiences. And they both have good and evil impulses entwined in complicated ways. Tuon is a survivor and a monster; a preserver and a destroyer; a person and an empire. And Mat builds a relationship with her when- and because- he accepts that he is both a lover and a fighter; generous and thieving; a person and a weapon. You may not like it, but this is what peak narrative compatibility looks like.

[oumakokichi]

When is it revealed that DICE is actually a real group that Ouma lead? Unless I missed something during live translation streams, in Ouma's motive video DICE is described as a group of talented criminals that went all over the world committing "funny" crimes with a creed of no murder. I don't recall anyone saying anything about this group actually existing outside of Ouma's TDR implanted memories. Could you clarify this? Thank you!

Thank you both for asking these! Considering how late in thegame the reveal comes, the information about DICE is still really fuzzy, andnow that I’ve picked back over all of Chapter 6 very carefully, I’m happy to beable to clear more stuff up about them!

As far as pre-game backstories go, neither DICE nor anyoneelse’s loved ones are confirmed to have existed or not existed! DICE is confirmedin Chapter 6 to be the real “organization” of which Ouma is the leader in-game.Rather than any super secret evil organization with 10,000 members, theyconsist of just 10, counting Ouma himself, and they run around committing “funny”or “laughable” crimes while their main motto is “we don’t kill anyone.”

Of course, just because their confirmation is limited toOuma’s in-game backstory doesn’t necessarily negate their importance. Both fromOuma’s motive video and from bits and pieces of Ouma’s dialogue throughout theplot and in his FTEs, we can kind of piece together and assume that he clearly “remembers”these people, but that he also considers them essentially dead and gone.

Whether it’s because they’re all dead and gone according towhat he “remembers” from his in-game backstory, or because he clearly knows thathis own memories have been tampered with and therefore will not allow himselfto think about these people as real, because having that kind of motive to killand get out of the school is exactly what the mastermind wants from them all,he won’t allow himself to think of them as potentially okay and alive. Thereare plenty of times at which Ouma alludes to having “no one who would be sad ifhe died,” and when Saihara questions him in his FTEs about if his organizationsubordinates will come rescue them, Ouma dodges the subject by saying hissubordinates are probably just “happy that he’s gone.”

And yet despite thinking of these people as either dead andgone if they really do exist, or else potentially having never existed in thefirst place, Ouma keeps his own motive video there in his room. If he’d trulywanted to discard of it, he could’ve just let Monokuma dispose of it the way mostof the other evidence is disposed of after each case. No one would have it, sono one else would be able to find out any vital or important information aboutOuma himself. If he truly thought it worthless or lacking in clues to his realidentity or pre-game backstory, I don’t think he would have kept it around.

Precisely because his memories (all of their memories,really) are so horrifically jumbled and messed up, and because he realizes theimplications of having nothing at all that he can trust or hold onto in asituation where he knows reality is very subjective and transient, I think hekept that video for something to connect with. DICE, according to that video,were his everything. They were hisvery best friends, “as close as family” to him, and I think Ouma himself wassmart enough to know that whether that attachment was real or implanted, it wassomething he wanted to hold onto, which is precisely why he clings to theirno-kill motto so much and so desperately as the one real pillar of support in anotherwise horrible situation that requires him to do horrible things. And it’swhy he becomes so jaded and tired and bitter when he has to break even thatparticular rule.

I’ve talked before in recent Tsumugi meta that I’ve writtentoo, but while there’s certainly no direct confirmation, I personally thinkthere are a lot of indications that Tsumugi was lying hardcore about all of thecharacters having “nowhere to go back to.” The easiest lies to make are oneswith some truth mixed in, after all. By trying to destroy any hopes that theyhad something to rely on even though their backstories and talents were fake,she was trying to make them submit to being in the killing game, and to theidea that the killing game was something that would keep continuing forever.

Just from little bits and pieces we can glimpse of the othercharacters, there’s nothing that really confirms their loved ones that theyremember didn’t exist pre-game in some way or another. While I’m sure theirbackstories were altered and catered specifically to the talents they weregiven, there are still things that stand out to me.

One is Amami’s particularly protective personality, whichstems from his in-game backstory being about how he’s an older brother toseveral siblings. He nails the onii-chan vibe, and tries to take the burden onhimself for nearly everything. One of his bonus mode interactions with Mukuroinvolves her commenting that he has a “little sister waiting for him to comehome,” and the two of them seem very capable of bonding over siblings. Being anelder sibling is vital to his character—and it seems to mesh perfectly wellwith his previous killing game history too, considering he chose to sacrificehimself for the sake of “hope,” and was thrown into another killing game aspunishment so that two survivors could go on and graduate.

If everyone’s siblings or loved ones truly didn’t existpre-game, I don’t see the need for foreshadowing these things, or keepingcharacterization consistent with a character between one killing game and thenext. Even the bonus modes wouldn’t need to mention anything about thesecharacters’ histories or loves ones, if they were all truly irrelevant—and yetthey do, and I think it’s very specifically for the sake of giving additionalclues.

A smaller and less important thing I found worth noting wasKorekiyo’s mask in the prologue. Pre-game Korekiyo can very clearly be seenwearing the same kind of medical mask worn commonly in Japan whenever there’s aparticularly bad virus or cold outbreak. It’s a very common Japanese trend andanyone who’s watched a lot of 90s anime has probably seen it at some point or other:these masks are worn everywhere because people believe that it will lower therisk of contagion.

Korekiyo wearing this sort of mask on its own means nothing,of course, but considering what little we do know from his in-game backstory about having taken care of his sister for a longtime, before she passed away due to poor health… Well, it’s just my theory butI think it would make a lot of sense if Korekiyo had had a sister in real lifewho perhaps either did pass away or was simply sick (maybe even from the samevirus Momota is implied to have), and if he was wearing that mask preciselybecause he was so afraid of the effects of it spreading, even if he and theothers were supposed to be immune to it.

I feel like it’s exactly the same with DICE. Ouma’s faketalent is SHSL Supreme Leader, and his intended role in the game as written byTsumugi was essentially as SHSL Despair, taking on the role of a “Junkosuccessor.” And as I’ve stated before, I’m pretty sure SHSL Chessmaster wouldfit as his real talent, considering everything we know about him. But none of these talents, at all, accountsfor his prankster-like disposition and absolute love of stupid, silly tricks,unless it was just something innate to him and unaffected by his in-gamebackstory. And if DICE were some kind of equivalent to a real-life group offriends he had, and who he ran around trying to pull pranks with and avoiding gettinganyone hurt or killed, I think it would make quite a lot of sense.

Even in Ouma’s lab, where we can see the “criminal”organization set-up and the whole thing has a distinctly supervillain/Batcavesort of feeling to it, Saihara can’t help but comment upon examining some ofthe things in the room that it all feels rather like a kid playing pretend,rather than anyone even remotely malicious or evil. In addition to a hilariouslyridiculous Batmobile ripoff car, a working remote control helicopter, and afloating throne chair, Ouma’s lab ischock full of prank set-ups, including fake moustaches and prank glasses,walkie talkies, stupid wigs, clown masks, etc.

These things are all clearly associated with DICE, eventhough we don’t know much about what it was they did. But considering each andevery item associated with them is so based in pranks, and lighthearted fun, andconsidering they were limited to a group of 10 people, mostly kids judging byappearance, we can assume they were…well, harmless. The phrase used todescribe their crimes in Ouma’s motive video limits it to “funny” or “interesting”crimes/pranks, so we can assume they did pretty much anything harmless at all,whether it was stealing or putting on a show.

Whether DICE or any of the other characters’ loved ones didexist pre-game or not, and if they did exist, whether they’re alive or dead, issomething that’s currently in the catbox until Kodaka decides to give us sidematerials or a sequel. It’s all up to speculation—but precisely because we can’tdo much else other than speculate, I feel like it’s important to look at allthe possible clues and indicators.

If the motive videos and everyone’s memories of their timebefore the killing game were actually completely irrelevant to figuring out thereal truth of things, I don’t think they would have been included at all, inthe same way I don’t think Ouma himself would’ve clung to the information assomething to study and something to hold onto about himself.

Finally, something else I found of note was that when theother characters in Chapter 6 start asking Tsumugi to “put them back” using theremember lights, she says this can’tbe done. Remember lights can, according to her own words, only implantmemories, backstories, etc., not overwrite you into an entirely differentperson. Therefore, she says it’s impossible to make them “who they were before,”and that any attempts to add new memories would only be “adding more fiction.”

And yet, I feel this directly, noticeably contrasts withwhat she was just saying about all of their memories, even the ones unrelatedto their talents or the killing game, being fake. If remember lights can’t makethem into entirely different people, but only give them fictional addendums andbackstories, then how is it that their fictional personas currently are “entirelydifferent” from the people they were before, to the point that Tsumugi says “thosepeople no longer exist”? The only reasonable explanation I’ve found is thatTsumugi was lying, because she knew it would crush them.

In any case, DICE will probably remain a mystery untilKodaka decides to expand on them. I’d personally love to see more of them. Whenpeople first saw Ouma as a character, I don’t think “literal prank-loving clownwith a 12-year-old’s sense of humor” was anyone’s guess for what his realpersonality would be like, but the reveal was quite nice, and I’m very set ontheorizing that DICE has some kind of real-life importance to him in the sameway I think most of the characters’ loved ones and families must have some kindof real-life importance. It’s much harder, however, to know if they’re actuallyokay or not, the same way it was impossible to know about if the dr1 characters’loved ones were alive or not prior to drae giving some confirmation.

Again, thank you both for asking! I’m glad if I was able toclear things up at all!