#why he supports you? uh hypothetical scenario: he knows you for a while and see potential in you but then bam economy hard financial hard

[popponn]

sae as sugar daddy but not in sexy way but in asian parent "it hurts my eyes to see you as a failure because tf are you a bug go study" way

[prose-for-hire]

Shared Affection

Pairing: Willow x fem!reader; Xander x fem!reader [Bi reader !!]

Request: Hey! can you please write a Willow/Xander x fem reader story where they both have crushes on the reader and they're trying to figure out if she likes boys or girls only to find out shes bi?

Requested by: Anon

A/N: I feel like I’m still a little rusty but I did like writing a little something for this request !! Hope it’s what you wanted and I’m sorry about the wait 💖

You were a new transfer to UC Sunnydale. You could sense that you were on a Hellmouth as soon as you set foot in this new place you would call home. You could sense things, energies and what some may call magic. It just hadn’t occurred to you that this was any different to how other people felt and experienced the world. This would all change, however, once you met who would be your new group of friends. They would show you new possibilities as well as showing you just how powerful you truly are.

You met Buffy in a class you had both taken and subsequently bonded over how much you regretted it. From that first day you both vowed to help each other get through the year. It was as if you just clicked, she was an instant best friend, you could feel it. She then introduced you to her other friends, Willow, Anya and Xander. The latter didn’t actually go to college but he would sneak onto the campus so often and he was good company so you were pleased at this. You got on with everyone so well, it was clear that they had become fond of you almost instantly. Some, more than others.

Over the next five months, Xander and Willow had found themselves adoring you. Neither realising that the other held feelings for you. Xander and you both loved films. You would watch them together all of the time and it became a weekly tradition. You would either go to his basement or he would spend time in your dorm. Sometimes you would forget that the film was on and laugh until you cried at the comments he would make. He was so funny and you couldn’t help but feel so comfortable in his presence.

Willow and you spent time together, she had shown you some small spells for you to practice and you described to her the energy you felt especially now you were in Sunnydale. You could spend hours through the night, just talking. Laughing and sharing your deepest thoughts. She was so sweet to you and you really valued all of the time she spent with you.

Both of them had made you feel so welcome and you enjoyed the attention you had been getting more and more of from them both. You couldn’t lie and say you didn’t suspect that one or both of them may have feelings for you. Although, whenever you thought this you berated yourself for assuming more from their friendly natures.

You couldn’t help loving them, they were so kind and they both looked after you in their own ways. Willow and her magic, Xander and his courage. They were truly now extremely important people in your life. You were thinking of this as you saw Buffy saving your usual seat in your class.

She smile and got you up to speed on all of the latest news you might have missed since you saw her last night on patrol. She was now your closest friend and you basically told each other everything. She had finished telling you all about Riley and what she had found out after the Gentlemen had finally been taken care of. Although, she suddenly changed the topic with a smile and a glint in her eye. She wouldn’t go into detail although she happened to hint about you having a ‘secret admirer’. 

Your mind went to Xander and then to willow in almost the same second. Who you suppose you wished it to be. But then, would you want to choose between them? Hurt one at the expense of the other? Would you even be able to choose? Or could you share them both, forget about monogamy, or would that put a strain on their friendship?

Stop. You had to halt all of the scenarios spinning around your head. It was possible it was nobody in your new little friendship group. Perhaps it was a pretty demon that Anya used to know from the olden days that had seen you from afar.

Willow and Xander were sat in the college canteen while you and Buffy were finishing your lecture. Xander had slid in with a group of guys that had finished a game of football so that nobody would question him. They sat and talked for a little but both of their minds had been on you. On their feelings for you. Neither knew that they had never felt this strongly for another person before. They just didn’t know how you could take it.

Willow had been thinking though. She had told Buffy she was gay. She had finally done it. She was a lesbian. She liked girls and only wanted to date girls now. Specifically, you. God, she adored you. Buffy had been surprised at her coming out but after a few months found herself being Will’s biggest supporter. It was easier to accept as Buffy already knew about your sexuality. You had always been open with her about being bi, you just hadn’t gotten around to telling anyone else.

“So, what do you think?” she asked after her usual rambling as she tried to broach the subject with Xander. She needed to see what he would say. She had realised instead that he had zoned out. His eyes watching for someone who was supposed to be here soon.

“Hm?”

“About y/n. I was thinking of asking her out-”

“You can’t!” Xander said, his voice had gone high-pitched at the suggestion. He then coughed and deepened his voice more than he would usually speak it to compensate, “…She’s not gay, Will”

“You don’t know! What are you th-the king of gay people now?”

“No!” Xander said quickly but his heart wasn’t really in their conversation. All he could ever do now was think of you. There was a pause for a while as both of them thought of the other, knowing now that they both felt the same for you. Then they thought of you. Of how close you had become. How kind and affectionate you could be with them. You cared for each of them but neither of them could help but wish for more. Xander suddenly spoke up again, still staring into the distance, “I know, of course I know. Do you, uh, really think… you know?”

“Sometimes she looks at me and I forget to do the breath-y thing” Willow admitted, now rubbing her hands together in her anxiety.

“Well, yeah she does. She’s- Y/n!” He suddenly said, his voice announcing you as he saw you walk towards them. You smiled and waved a little as you weaved between the tables to get to your friends.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean she’s-” Willow replied, not realising you had been standing behind

“Hey, Y/n! Our Y/n, uh, Y/n our friend!” Xander said a little more urgently, over whatever Willow had been trying to say about your sexuality.

You smile and slide into a seat beside them. Both of them made you so comfortable to be around, you had this sense of home around both of them.

“Buffy caught up to Riley in the corridor, so it’s just me today,”

“That’s good!” Willow said, “Well, n-not good that she isn’t here but good that you are and that they have time together”

“Yeah, I think they’ll be okay. I hope so anyway, he could be good for Buffy right? I don’t know much about Angel but she looks so sad every time someone talks about him”

Willow nodded but Xander wasn’t quite listening. He was trying to think of a way to subtly change the subject from Buffy’s love life to yours. He ended up throwing subtlety out of the window an blurt it out.

“So, Y/n, how would you describe your type. What would your ideal man-”

“O-or woman! Or anybody else!”

“Oh, uh, well I’m not sure I have one type. I fall for people for more than their looks I guess. It just depends on the person!” You smiled but faltered slightly as their brows furrowed at your answer. It wasn’t specific enough for them to gauge who you might be interested in.

However, Willow loved your answer, as did Xander. He was usually a little insecure that he wasn’t the best looking guy or that he made too many jokes to be taken seriously by anyone. But of course, with you, it was different. You could sense goodness from them. You could sense love and promise and potential and you adored spending time with them so much.

But you could feel there was a slight tension. As if they were competing where usually they wouldn’t. Or that they were in some kind of unresolved discussion.

“Why do you ask?”

“Curiosity! We are, um, curious cats”

“If for example, Willow asked you on a date and uh, for the sake of this totally hypothetical situation, I also asked you out too – who would you pick?”

“Well, I think that I would be happy with either of you” You shrugged. And their mouths both widened in surprise at the same time. Neither of them had even considered you might like men and women. Even after you said this as you had to elaborate, “I’m bisexual”

They smiled at you, somewhat satisfied with this answer and both hugged you tightly at you admittance. You couldn’t help grinning so wide at their warmth. Then they caught each other’s eye and saw that they mirrored each other’s expression. That they saw that they had a chance with you. At your love. As you got up and excused yourself that you had to get to another class, there was a silent agreement. Both of them were set on competing for your attention. Especially now that they knew they definitely could have a chance to be by your side.

You weren’t really sure what to make of their question, you told yourself not to think too much into it. Just in case your mind began to spit out unrealistic scenarios that would disappoint you. You left them, not aware that they were both intently watching you leave. Your form dancing away from them in that way that they loved. Their eyes never left you and their thoughts lingered even longer.

One day, you would probably have to make some kind of decision. For now, you were just pleased that they accepted you for who you were. That you couldn’t sense even the smallest change in their fondness for you when you told them. For now, you could enjoy their love, whether platonic or otherwise and keep spending as much free time as you could with them.

[tarteausuga]

More than friends, less than lovers

Pairing: Ten x gender neutral (?) Male preferring reader

Genre: angst, fluff, best friends to lovers, little bit of sexual themes but not really

Warnings: implied sex, strong language

Word count: 1.7 words

Friends did not fully describe your relationship with Ten. Best friends is a bit closer but it still didn't fully encapsulate what you were to each other. Partners or lovers is too far of a stretch and friends with benefits was offensive to both of you. The two of you existed in this grey area and that's what you preferred. There was no social contract, there were no obligations, just an agreement that you would be there for each other and have fun.

This wasn't something everyone understood. You both were often teased by your friends about your relationship or lack thereof. There were always moral questions regarding certain scenarios you could find yourselves in such as one Mark brought up, "what if one of you fell in love with another person?" To which that answer would simply be that you would support it no matter what. Afterall, you weren't in a relationship and at the base of it all, you were friends.

"Okay but what if one of you fell in love with the other person?" Johnny asked during one of your weekly Friday night hangouts with the boys. You were seated on Ten's lap with one of his arms wrapped around your waist while you played with the contours of his fingers.

Ten shot a look at Johnny that you missed before you turned to him and you both answered, "that could never happen."

"Alright but what if? What if, hypothetically, Ten realizes he's in love with you? Would you want him to tell you?" Johnny prodded answers from you.

"Of course I'd want him to tell me. Our whole relationship is based on us communicating well." You answer.

"Oh so this is a relationship?" Jaehyun leans in, as did everyone else in the room.

"It's not like that kind of relationship," you sigh as Ten draws circles on your hip with his thumb.

"We're just friends who take care of each other really well." Ten defends.

"Yeah, you take care of each other extremely well. I wish I had friends like that." Jaehyun laughs as you throw a pillow at him.

You fold your arms across your chest and plaster on a pout as Ten quickly changes the subject to something you have no interest in. Eventually, you doze off, collapsing against Ten's shoulder as his voice lulls you deeper into sleep. He was much more talkative compared to you and always had a quick reply for anything that came at him, something you always admired.

The night drew to an end as the boys dissipated and retreated to their own dorms or rooms, leaving you and Ten cuddled up on the couch together. Your quiet snores pulled a faint smile across his lips as he took in your presence. He loved watching you sleep. He loved whenever your dreams would sneak an unconscious smile on your face and how you would occasionally twitch and nuzzle your head into the crook of his neck.

Johnny was coming closer and closer to revealing his secret. At any opportunity he was given, he would try and chip away at the subject, opposing Ten's constant pleading to stop. Johnny didn't understand why his friend couldn't just be upfront about his feelings, he was the type to always lay everything out so there were no surprises or secrets. To him, this was easier but to Ten, things were a lot more complicated. Would he ruin the best thing he's ever had if he told you how he felt? Why say anything when things were going perfectly well? But then again, the thought of you possibly being with other people terrified him, he wanted you to himself.

The silence of the room seemed to wake you up as the noise of friendly banter had ended for the night. "Where is everyone?" You rubbed your eyes and yawned.

"They all went to bed. It's just us. Do you want to sleep over tonight?" He asked you, almost insisting.

"I might as well." You smile sleepily. You were so adorable in that moment, Ten pulled you in for a kiss, followed by another and another. He pulled you into his lap to straddle him as he continued to deepen his kisses. "Ten, we're going to get caught." You gasp for air.

"Who cares?" He smirks into your lips. His hands snake up the front of your shirt to tease your nipples, causing you to let out a squeak while grinding down against him. "Are you okay, baby?" He smiled at you getting worked up from his touches.

"I'm… Fine." You breathed out.

"Good." He said as he stood up, picking you up with him. He wrapped your legs around him and started walking to his room. Though he was small, he was quite strong and capable of carrying you whatever he needed you to be. "We're going to make sure these guys know who you belong to tonight." He muttered into your ear.

---

"I don't like him." Ten shrugged after you introduced him to the new guy you're seeing.

"You never like anyone I date." You frown.

"That's because no one is good enough for you." He rubbed your thigh but you pulled away. "What's wrong?"

You couldn't put your feelings into words since you didn't even know what was wrong. "I just feel like I'm missing something, you know?" You quickly turn to him when the thought crosses your mind. Ten just shakes his head, unsure of how to respond. Instead, he pulls you into his lap to comfort you but for the first time, being with him so intimately didn't feel right. You stand up and pull your arms around yourself for comfort.

"Hey, hey." He stands up as well and cups your face in his hands. You try to pull away but you couldn't help but feel yourself melting into his touch. "C'mon, let me in that mind of yours." He leaned his forehead down to meet yours.

Suddenly, tears start falling down your cheeks. "Why is it that I can't keep a relationship with any guy? I feel like I'm always going to be alone." You cry.

"You're not alone. I'm here." He pulls you into a hug but you push him away, leaving him confused.

"No. Ten, no. I can't do this anymore."

"What's happening here? What are you saying?" Ten suddenly felt his chest tighten, a feeling he's been trying to avoid from the moment he fell for you. He didn't get an answer from you, you could only shake your head as you turned to leave, passing Johnny on the way out.

"Did you finally say it?" Johnny said when he saw Ten standing alone in the living room.

"No, dumbass." Ten stomped to his room.

---

It has been almost two weeks since you basically broke up with Ten. You missed him, he was your best friend but you had come to the realization that you needed more and what you had with him was keeping you from getting that. But even now, you still felt something was missing. Rather, an even bigger piece of you felt like it was missing.

"How are things with-" Jaehyun started but Johnny shushed him. "It's just… we haven't seen-" Johnny shushed him again but this time, Johnny threw a pillow at him to get his point across.

Ten glared at both of them. He was trying not to blame Johnny for what happened because it really was his own fault. He missed you but he was afraid to be the one to admit it and show up on your doorstep when you were the one that chose not to see him anymore.

They all sat in awkward silence as no one knew what to talk about with Ten in this mood. A knock broke the silence and they all stared at each other in panic to try and decide who should answer. Eventually, Johnny groaned and went to open the door as no one had moved for a minute.

"Oh, it's you uh hi." He opened the door to reveal you there.

"Hey Johnny, is Ten home?" You say with a weak smile and Johnny suddenly panics.

"Oh? Ten? Yes. Shit, yeah he's here. Ten!" He yelled for his friend.

Ten looked like he had seen a ghost when he saw you standing there. For the first time since you had met him, he didn't know what to say to you and it confused you for a moment. "Hey, can we talk?" You say quietly.

"Yes! Oh my god, yes! Let's uh… my room?" He stutters. You agree and as you walk through the apartment, you acknowledge his roommates with a weak smile as they also suddenly look like they've just seen a ghost. "So what did you want to talk about?" He says nervously. You take a seat in the edge of his bed and he suddenly feels the urge to kiss you but he has to fully restrain himself.

"I just missed my best friend." You shrug.

"I missed you too." He says, taking a seat next to you. He felt at peace in that moment but there was an elephant in the room that both of you needed to address. You both tried to speak at the same time but ended up in a burst of laughter, a sound you missed, you felt tears welling up in your eyes. "Hey, what's going on?" He notices your sudden change in mood and grabs your hand.

"I don't know. I wanted space from you because it didn't feel right anymore but that just made me feel even more lonely. But then I started thinking that maybe things weren't right with us because I thought-" you started speaking but you stopped when you realized you couldn't put your thoughts into proper words.

"It's okay, I get it." He drew circles on your hand like he always did to calm you down.

"I want us to go back to the way we used to be but not really, you know?" You say desperately.

"I know." He assures you. "We can just be normal friends." He smiles, trying to comfort you.

"That's not what I want either…" you look down, trying to avoid crying.

Ten is also confused as he's unsure of how to make things better for you. Returning to his usual instincts, he pulled you into his lap and wrapped his arms around you. Engulfing you in his presence and allowing you to feel small and vulnerable, you began to cry.

"I love you." He said into your temple.

"I love you too." You respond but he shakes his head and angles your head up to look into your eyes.

"No, baby. I love you," he emphasizes, "You are my best friend and so much more. Please let me be more for you." He says as tears form in his own eyes.

"I would love that." Your lips quiver as you throw your arms around him.

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Bonus 2 - Demo

This is a commentary of the demo of DRV3 from the perspective of someone who is coming back to it after seeing the entire main game. There will be significant spoilers for the main story.

Welp, turns out that covering the demo is going to be more of a pain than I anticipated, because I didn’t already have it, and it’s no longer available in the UK store. So I’m going to have to use a Youtube video of it, which is a lot more annoying than you might think, because you have no idea how useful the game’s backlog function has been for this commentary.

I suppose I should preface this by mentioning that I did see the demo of this game before experiencing the game proper, but it was a fan translation of the Japanese demo something like a year or two earlier, so my memory of it by the time I saw the main game was pretty fuzzy. I only remembered a few things: that Kaede was the protagonist and the Ultimate Pianist, thinking it neat that we had a protagonist who was female, and who had a talent rather than being ordinary. I vaguely remembered Tenko, Himiko and Ryoma’s character quirks – I suppose thse were the ones that stuck in my mind. I remembered Kokichi being kind of a dick who kept trying to make the trial about himself and was therefore clearly this game’s answer to Nagito, because of course Kokichi had to try and be the centre of attention even in the demo and so that stuck in my mind.

And I remembered an astronaut dude who at least superficially seemed to have the kind of personality I generally like in a character – but I very firmly told myself not to get too excited about this, because this is Danganronpa and there is every chance that the narrative won’t give a fuck about how likeable he is and he’ll just get randomly, gratuitously killed off and I would regret ever getting attached to him. This, uh, may have partly influenced my belief during the main game that the narrative considered Kaito expendable and was totally going to kill him off at the slightest provocation, even after he started being very clearly important to the story.

It also very obviously did not stop me getting attached to him as the actual story progressed. I remember desperately trying to rein myself in throughout the first half of chapter 2 as Kaito became more and more adorable and good and Exactly My Kind of Character in his support of Shuichi. Then I got to the part during the investigation in which Kaito gave his speech about believing in people just because he wants to while acknowledging that there’s a risk to it that he’s simply choosing not to worry about so that he can believe wholeheartedly. This was so perfectly applicable to what had been going on in my own head with regards to getting attached to Kaito himself – I so desperately wanted to believe in him and care about him and get invested in his story, yet I was so afraid of what might happen if I did. But thanks to Kaito’s own words, I decided right then and there to not let that fear hold me back any more.

…That’s a first-time-me story that I really should have told at the time during chapter 2 but didn’t, so you’re getting it here instead. Anyway! The demo.

“Daily Life”

Kaede:  (My last name roughly means “passionate red maple tree”. It doesn’t really fit me, but… I still like my last name.)

Kaede starts us off with an introduction of herself, probably trying to make this reminiscent of the DR1 opening. They can’t exactly do that in this game’s real opening, what with the whole pregame-and-reset thing. It’s pretty awkward here that she’s telling us about her last name when nobody’s going to be calling her that in English, so it’s probably for the best that didn’t stay. I think “passionate red maple tree” suits her at least a little, though – she is very passionate!

Kaede:  (Huh? Wait, who am I even talking to?)

That’s a good question! There’s going to be quite a bit of sort-of fourth wall breaking in this demo. But… this is Danganronpa V3, in which a lot of what seemed like fourth wall breaking wasn’t really doing that at all. So maybe this is actually Kaede just being pushed into being all self-introductory in her inner monologue by the Flashback Light that created her, and here she’s having a brief moment of realising that makes no sense.

She finds herself waking up at a desk – again, like the original DR1 opening and less like the actual DRV3 opening. There’s no falling out of a locker and no Shuichi (not here, anyway).

“Makoto”:  “Oh, are you awake? Good morning, Kaede.”

Instead, there’s… Makoto.

So here’s the thing about this demo. Makoto, and later Hajime, are randomly in it. Going into the demo with the assumption that DRV3 is in a different universe from the Hope’s Peak story makes this just seem like a silly fourth-wall-breaking thing. It also wouldn’t work to imagine this is set in the Hope’s Peak universe, because then Makoto and Hajime should both be much older than high school age, not to mention whatever shenanigans should be going on with Hajime. So it’s easiest to assume that, oh, this is just some silly uncanonical nonsense because it’s a demo and it doesn’t need to make sense.

But! Having finished DRV3 and gone back to this demo knowing the truth of the V3 story, this actually can make some kind of sense within the V3 universe. Because this is a universe where Makoto and Hajime exist as fictional characters. This whole demo could in fact be some show set up by Team Danganronpa to build hype for their new series before it properly starts, including pandering to those genwunners and twoers in the audience by featuring Makoto and Hajime – which is to say, people cosplaying as them. Hence me using inverted commas for his name in the quotes here like I did for everyone Tsumugi cosplayed in trial 6. It’s not really Makoto Naegi at all.

(This still doesn’t totally work in the canon DRV3 universe, because, given the reset and the fact that they were accidentally their pregame selves at first, it seems unlikely that Team Danganronpa would really have done this “demo” in between the reset at all. This isn’t quite something that actually happened in canon before the story we saw began – it’s more just an AU scenario that could have hypothetically happened before the main killing game started, if things had gone a little differently.)

Makoto introduces himself as the Ultimate Lucky Student and even gets a proper Ultimate title card for it.

Kaede:  “Only one student in the entire country!? That’s amazing! You must be really lucky!”

No, Kaede, it doesn’t mean he’s always really lucky; that is not how luck works. He just got incredibly lucky this one time but is otherwise entirely ordinary. Luck as an actual goddamn superpower like it supposedly was for Nagito still grates on me (and there’s no convincing proof to me that Makoto also had that superpower).

Makoto mysteriously already knows Kaede’s name and talent. He explains that it’s because information about the students here is on public record – that is how the real Makoto learned about everyone in DR1, after all – but that’s probably not really the truth here, is it.

There’s a very genuinely-fourth-wall-breaky letter on the desk telling Kaede that to progress the story she just needs to come to the gym, but she can wander around and have the other students introduce themselves to her first if she wants. Obviously anyone doing this demo for the first time would want to do that – the whole point is getting to know the characters!

The layout of the school has been changed a bit in the demo to make things simpler and keep some locations a surprise. Kaede was in not Classroom B on the second floor, but Classroom A, aka the lookout classroom. Or what would function as a lookout classroom if only there was a basement, but the stairs to the basement have instead been replaced by a big red door that will lead to the trialgrounds. The stairs to the second floor are completely blocked off with an opaque shutter, so that all you can access is the first floor, and they moved the gym closer than usual to cut out the part of the corridor containing the locked things leading to Himiko and Kaito’s labs. Apparently they didn’t want to give any kind of tantalising promise of further areas that you’ll get to fully explore in the main game. Meanwhile, the front door that would lead out into the courtyard instead connects directly to the dorms, so that the demo never even shows us that they’re trapped inside a dome.

Everyone’s introductions are more or less the same as they will be in the main game, with Makoto filling in the part in the conversation that Shuichi would have played, if need be. Certain parts are left out if they were less about the character and more specifically about the main story in a way that isn’t relevant in the demo.

Rantaro is the first person we meet. Makoto says he doesn’t know Rantaro’s talent because it wasn’t on public record, but is still insistent that he definitely has a talent. This is totally because he’s just being good old hopeful Makoto and definitely not that he knows exactly what Rantaro’s talent is and why it’s being kept a secret right now, right.

Hajime is also hanging around in the corridors as if he’s a regular student. He gets “Ultimate ???” as well in his title card, even though he goes on to admit that he doesn’t have a talent. He doesn’t mention the Reserve Course, though. I guess the Ultimate Academy isn’t supposed to have one of those.

“Makoto”:  “Well, Hajime, we have seniority, but… She’s the protagonist this time around.”

Ahaha, here we go. One of the things the demo very gleefully does is make a big deal of how Kaede is the protagonist. Did you know Kaede is the protagonist of this game, guys? Because she is very definitely the protagonist of this game.

This would also sort of work with the whole fiction thing, except not so much, because the in-universe protagonist is supposed to be Keebo. So this is a thing that really is just out-universely here for the sake of the demo and doesn’t quite make sense in-universe with what Team Danganronpa are doing here.

Kaede:  (And also… what did they mean by ‘protagonist’?)

At least, for her part, Kaede is very confused by all this.

Shuichi is also just hanging around in the corridor like a totally regular student and not the actual protagonist of this game. I didn’t remember him from the demo at all until seeing him in the main game jogged my memory, because without him being Kaede’s investigation partner, he kinda just blends into the background like the introvert he is.

Shuichi:  “I don’t even remember enrolling in this academy. But it seems I did…”

Bonus dialogue you get from talking to him again after his main introduction shows that he’s very much thinking about the important questions, though. In the main game, while nobody remembered being kidnapped, everyone’s general assumption was that they were brought here against their will and forgot how. However, in the demo, it seems most people are assuming they somehow got enrolled in this academy and are just having a slightly odd version of a school introduction. Only a few people are questioning this idea.

(Kaede actually mentioned at the very beginning that she remembered being kidnapped, but then the writing apparently forgets about that, because she never mentions it to anybody else. Nor does anyone else mention remembering something similar.)

Since there’s no outside in the demo and therefore no wall to be thinking about trying to get over, Kaito is just in the dining hall here. Everyone whose introduction in the main game is in a location that doesn’t exist in the demo just gets put somewhere random instead. Kaito’s lines about getting over the wall are therefore also removed from his introduction, which means that we sadly don’t get as much of a sense of his unshakeable determination and philosophy about not complaining when you could be trying to make things better.

Kaito:  “But now that I’m thinking about it, why am I at this academy? I wanna blast off into space ASAP! Weird situations like this are only gonna slow me down…”

Kaito is also asking the important questions. Why is he doing this thing that isn’t working towards going to space? That doesn’t make any sense as something that he’d choose to do! He should be in astronaut training, not enrolling in some weird academy!

Maki immediately introduces herself and her cover-story talent rather than not wanting to do so at first. She also doesn’t have any of her lines about how she doubts they’ll be able to escape this and they shouldn’t be working together with strangers, so a lot of the hints towards her interestingness are gone from the demo, boo.

Maki:  “I don’t even remember enrolling in this academy, but… Do you know what’s going on?”

At least she’s asking the important questions, too! I wonder if that “but” is a hint at her thinking “but at least this isn’t as bad as having to kill people”. Or so she thinks.

As Kaede finishes meeting everyone and is about to head into the gym…

“Makoto”:  “Sorry, but this is where we part ways. I can’t go past this point. …Because you’re the protagonist now, Kaede.”

Kaede:  “What?”

“Makoto”:  “From here on, you’re the one who’s going to learn about this situation we’re in. You might feel despair… but I don’t want you to throw away hope!”

Oh man, the buzzwords. I’m pretty sure that even post-DR1-ending, despite literally being declared the Ultimate Hope, Makoto did not throw around these buzzwords as meaninglessly as this. This really is just someone desperately trying to sound like him, isn’t it.

It’s also very strange that apparently Makoto can’t be with her for the explanation of the killing game. You’d think, even if he already knew what was happening (which, fair enough, Makoto has done this before), he’d want to be there with Kaede to reassure her through the bad news. But he has to leave for no particular reason.

(Also, reminder, Kaede is the protagonist, you guys.)

Kaede:  (Protagonist? Hope? Despair? What does any of that mean?)

Heh, I like how she’s also bewildered by the sudden buzzwords and not just the protagonist part.

For some reason it’s only Kaede and not all the other students here getting this announcement about the killing game. I guess, since this is not remotely how it happens in canon, writing sixteen characters having new reactions to this would be too much of a pain for what’s only here to justify the demo having a trial.

It does also mean that most people – including Kaede herself, since Monokuma alone doesn’t count as a witness – don’t have alibis for the “murder” that’s about to happen.

Monokuma:  “While you live together, you’re all responsible for maintaining the harmony of the academy. But if someone was to disrupt that harmony…”

Geez, is this the game scrambling to justify the Killing Harmony subtitle again? I wonder what this was in Japanese. (But I’m not quite curious enough to actually check, because this is only the demo.)

Kaede:  “D-Don’t mess around with us! I would never… murder anyone!”

Hee, that’s also there even though this is the demo.

Monokuma:  “Don’t you see, Kaede? This is how your story begins.”

Kaede:  “‘My story’? What does that even mean?”

They really are dropping hints to the whole fiction thing even in the demo. Although, again, this doesn’t work so well in an in-universe sense because Keebo is the in-universe protagonist (and because Tsumugi was definitely planning to have Kaede get herself killed in the first chapter, probably largely for the sake of Shuichi’s story.)

Monokuma then tells Kaede to go and check out her room in the dormitory. It seems he already knows that she’s going to find someone dead in there.

Kaede’s door awkwardly has Makoto and Hajime’s portraits slapped onto it as well. Monokuma shows up to explain to her that this is the “Protagonists’ Room”, for all three of them! (Did you know Kaede is the protagonist.)

Once she goes inside, everything’s a mess, with slash marks all over the furniture and walls, kind of like in the first case in DR1.

And Yasuhiro Hagakure is dead in the shower with a kitchen knife in his stomach.

“Deadly Life”

Monokuma:  “Geez, this is like the second time he’s died already… Eh, you guys can just ignore that.”

As Monokuma cheekily alludes to here, this is an amusing little nod to the original demo of DR1. Apparently, to keep Sayaka’s death a surprise for the main game, they instead made Hiro the victim there. Looks like they decided to make him the victim again here!

Given the reality of the situation, this cannot really be Hiro, because he doesn’t exist. Which means that most likely, nobody is actually dead at all – this is just a Hiro cosplayer doing their best impression of a corpse.

Hajime is here to help investigate the dorm room. Kaito, Miu, Kirumi and Ryoma also show up in the room to investigate. (But apparently nobody else thought that confirming if a murder has really taken place and trying to figure out the culprit so they don’t get punished was important? Not even Shuichi?)

It’s also relevant to note that nobody looks very closely at Hiro’s “corpse” to confirm whether he’s actually dead.

Kaito:  “So does this mean someone believed that the only way to get out of here… was by killing someone?”

Ryoma:  “Hmph… The dead body is proof of that. There’s no way a body would end up quite like this by accident.”

Kaito:  “Damn it… why’d they kill him? Why didn’t they just talk things over with us?”

Kaede:  “Yeah, we haven’t searched the whole school yet. There could still be a way out of here.”

Kaito:  “Yeah, that’s exactly right! And they resorted to this, right off the bat… When we find the culprit, I’m gonna punch some sense back into them!”

I love how Kaito this is. He can’t get his head around the fact that anyone would give up so quickly. He realises that they most likely just did it because they were scared and wanted to escape and therefore it’s somewhat understandable, but even then, he can’t see why they would resort to it so soon without having tried every other possible option first, including talking to everyone else and trying to co-operate. He’s not angry at the culprit for being a cold-blooded killer, but rather for being so weak, in the sense that they didn’t even want to try and get stronger, and so they did something this awful out of cowardice.

And also look at him and Kaede clearly being on the same wavelength about working together to escape and not giving up!

Kaito doesn’t contribute any Truth Bullets to this investigation, but I’m delighted that he’s here in this room anyway so we could have this little insight into the way he thinks about things like this. This is nuanced enough that people playing this demo before the main game just to get a basic sense of the characters probably aren’t really going to think much of it – but it’s here anyway, because Kaito is this nuanced and complex of a character and he would react like this in this situation, regardless of how unnecessary him doing so is to the purpose of this demo. I love Kaito so much.

Ryoma:  “Going straight to an investigation? That’s pretty forward-thinking of you. Even if you’re used to seeing dead bodies, it’d be stupid not to feel anything.”

Meanwhile, Ryoma is already being perceptive and making observations about Kaede’s character, which is a very him thing to be doing.

Kaede:  “But we have to do this. I don’t want everyone else to die…”

Ryoma:  “Hmph… You’re rather motivated to stay alive. I wish I had… No, never mind.”

There’s also a little hint at Ryoma’s lack of motivation to live and desire to find one, which is neat!

(It’s a shame that, even though Kaito is also here and presumably overhearing this, he doesn’t comment. I’d have liked that a lot.)

The lack of any hair in the room was a clue in this case in DR1, but this time, there’s a single short brown hair here, about the colour and length of Makoto or Hajime’s. This is despite the fact that Hajime claims he’s never been in the room before now and that Kirumi cleaned all of the dorms shortly before the murder was discovered. Kaede also notes during this conversation that it’s odd she hasn’t seen Makoto since she went into the gym. Hmmm.

Just as Makoto finally shows up and is about to help Kaede investigate everywhere else, the Monokubs appear. They have not been in the demo until now. Why did they need to be in the demo at all. It would be a more favourable advertisement of the game to pretend they don’t exist, you know, demo writers! They literally do not contribute anything of value to the narrative by showing up here.

Kaito:  “Buncha cowards… Trying to interrupt my investigation with their stupid crap.”

Oh, Kaito. This is basically chapter 1 Kaito, who has no sidekicks yet and is instead desperately trying to feel like he can make a difference by doing something. Hence him making a point that this is his investigation. He leans towards this kind of attitude a couple of times in the main story, too, particularly in chapter 1 when he has no sidekicks, and in chapter 4 when he’s feeling like his support of his sidekicks isn’t enough and wants to be more of an action-oriented hero. This is bound to be the reason he’s here in this room at all despite not contributing anything to the player’s investigation – because he’s trying to do something about this, even though he doesn’t really know how!

Kaito:  “Whatever… If I get serious, I can solve this case in no time flat!”

I don’t like this, though. It implies that he’s currently not being serious and would ever willingly slack off from something this important. That’s not in character. Kaito is always trying his hardest and always wants people to know he’s trying his hardest; he’d never use “oh but I just wasn’t really trying” as an excuse for the gap between how much he wants to make a difference and how much he actually can. It reads like some writer is superficially trying to get across the fact that Kaito talks big without backing it up, without truly understanding why he’s that way and keeping it in line with that. It’s odd, since the conversation just earlier showed quite a nuanced understanding of Kaito’s character, as opposed to this.

(If I were playing this demo myself, I would immediately talk to Kaito again after this to see if he has anything else to say on this matter, but because I’m forced to use Youtube, I can’t see if he does. There are words that Kaito said that could have been interesting that I’m unaware of dammit this is why I’m mad I had to use Youtube for this. Admittedly it’s most likely just him repeating those lines, or continuing to be written badly… but what if it isn’t.)

Kaede asks Makoto where he went off to, and he claims he was wandering around the school trying to find a way out or at least a map to help Kaede out. That does not properly explain why he insisted he couldn’t come into the gym with her in the first place, but okay.

Hajime stays behind to guard the crime scene while Makoto accompanies Kaede out of the dorm to investigate elsewhere. Makoto is getting a lot more screentime than Hajime in this demo. Still more genwunners than twoers in this audience, apparently.

Maki:  “The crime occurred in the Protagonists’ Room. Stupid name aside, that’s your room, isn’t it?”

Aha, good old Maki, always Done™ with everyone’s nonsense.

Maki:  “I don’t intend to just go with the easiest answer… But at the same time… I have no reason to trust you guys either.”

This is very Maki, not wanting to trust people without a good reason but also not being so stupid and hasty as to jump to any conclusions just because she doesn’t trust anyone.

Himiko:  “Kaede, is it true? Did a murder really happen?”

Apparently some of these people really didn’t actually go and check out the body for themselves. You’d think they’d want to confirm it… but to be fair, it is very believable that Himiko in particular wouldn’t.

Kokichi:  “Why’d ya kill him, Kaede? Did you really wanna escape that badly?”

Of course this is Kokichi’s immediate greeting to Kaede upon seeing her during the investigation. Of course.

Kaede:  “N-No! I didn’t do anything!”

Kokichi:  “So you’re saying the culprit has to be either Makoto or Hajime… Because if you didn’t do it, then that’s what you’re getting at, right?”

And of course he’d also think that she’d happily turn on the two people apparently closest to her and throw them under the bus to protect herself.

He really does (most likely, not that you can ever be sure with him) seem to believe it’s one of the three of them simply because it was their room. Look who is jumping to conclusions because he doesn’t trust anyone.

(I should point out that the room was unlocked the entire time and so there is literally no concrete reason to suspect the room’s owners above anybody else.)

“Makoto”:  “Did you see Hiro?”

Tsumugi:  “No, I didn’t. I think I’d definitely remember seeing hair like his.”

If the students who aren’t in the room right now didn’t see the body, how does Tsumugi know what Hiro’s hair looks like? This might be a very subtle clue as to the mastermind’s identity, because of course Tsumugi would know what Hiro’s hair looks like anyway.

(I’d say that actually she could have seen him from the Monokuma File, but based on Himiko’s comment earlier, I’m not sure if everyone necessarily has a Monokuma File to even know for sure that someone’s dead?)

Shuichi:  “One of us killed Hiro… That’s what Monokuma said… But… I don’t think that’s the only possibility.”

Indeed it isn’t. There’s also the possibility that nobody killed anyone.

…I still don’t know why Shuichi isn’t in the dorm room to actually confirm whether or not Hiro is dead and do a proper investigation himself. Then again, if he did, we’d immediately know this class trial is bogus, so.

Kaede:  “Shuichi, do you suspect me, too?”

Shuichi:  “Ah, you don’t seem like the kind of person who would kill somebody… But… until I find evidence that proves you innocent…”

Kaede:  “That’s true…”

Shuichi:  “S-Sorry, it’s not that I *want* to suspect you, I just…”

Kaede:  “No, it’s fine… That’s what the Ultimate Detective is supposed to do…”

Aww, Shuichi. He’s caught between the part of him that hates suspecting and accusing people (even when he has no particularly strong reason to trust Kaede in this universe) and the detective side of him that knows it’s the right way to deal with this situation. I complained about him not investigating, but maybe it’s simply because he’s afraid to thanks to his issues, and without the bond with Kaede that he has in canon, he can’t overcome that fear and manage to investigate anyway. Shuichi really does only manage to be a hero with others’ help.

Kaede:  “Don’t worry about me, just do your best to investigate. That’s what’s going to save us.”

Shuichi:  “… …Okay.”

Kaede:  (Huh? That was a dull response… What happened?)

Kaede is noticing that he doesn’t seem enthusiastic about the idea of investigating to save them! A tiny, tiny little hint at his issues, since for the most part this demo really doesn’t want to focus on Shuichi at all. (Kaede is the protagonist, after all.)

During a conversation with Kiyo, he notices something about the way Makoto is talking about the investigation and trial.

Kiyo:  “…You speak as if you are familiar with the process, yes?

“Makoto”:  “That’s… also something that we can talk about later.”

…

Kaede:  (Does Makoto know something…? I can trust him… can’t I?)

Of course, this reads perfectly innocently to anyone who knows Makoto is the protagonist from a previous Danganronpa game, but it genuinely must look pretty suspicious to Kaede. It’s a big testament to her general optimism and belief in people that she does still trust him even after all this.

One of the knives in the kitchen went missing while Tenko and Himiko were having tea in the dining hall. This is still really brazenly ripping off the first case of the first game.

And that’s the whole investigation, so everyone abruptly assembles in the trialgrounds which are right behind the red door, no elevator or Shrine of Judgement or anything.

“Hajime”:  “Monokuma… I don’t know what you’re scheming, but… I won’t let you do whatever you want!”

Monokuma:  “You’re an upperclassman protagonist… I think you can come up with a better line than that.”

“Makoto”:  “Hajime’s right! You can’t just do whatever you want with their lives!”

Monokuma:  “Geez, that’s basically what Hajime just said! You two need punch-up writers or something! Whether this demo is exciting or not depends entirely on you!”

Bahaha, this is such a deliberate attempt at pandering on the parts of Makoto and Hajime’s cosplayers, and is also so blatantly Monokuma calling them out for being kind of bad at this.

They have an awkward situation with this trial, given that there’s eighteen students here and only sixteen podiums. Obviously the game devs didn’t want to remodel the trialgrounds to have two extra podiums just for the demo.

Monosuke:  “I know! Let’s just pick two people at random and rip ‘em apart with the Exisals!”

The Exisals have not been shown or otherwise mentioned in this demo. This line must rather confuse people seeing this before the main game.

Obviously there is no actual Exisal-murdering and two people simply have to sit out. Kokichi decides out of nowhere that Keebo should sit out because of course he does, lol Keebo’s not a person or anything, and then it conveniently turns out that Rantaro was with Keebo the whole time so they can vouch for each other not being the blackened and both safely not take part. Rantaro not being part of the demo trial is probably because he’s not a part of any trials in the main game either. Keebo sitting out is… just because Kokichi is a robophobic dick, apparently. (In an in-universe sense, you’d think Monokuma would have more of an issue with this, because isn’t Keebo supposed to be the audience’s camera? More indication that he really isn’t the only camera they have, then.)

Rantaro demands that at least he and Keebo are each allowed to ask one question at the end if they don’t agree with everybody else on who the blackened is, and that in doing so they could potentially restart the discussion. This doesn’t ever matter because the demo’s going to end before the trial reaches a conclusion, but it does show that Rantaro is a very smart and cautious person.

Kaito:  “I’ll be carrying your lives, too! I’ll definitely do something about all this!”

But don’t worry, Rantaro and Keebo, Kaito is going to do something about this! You know, about this whole trial. Of course he is. Definitely. Even though it’s just the demo and it doesn’t really matter, his tendency to insist this out of his desperation to be able to make a difference is still here and it’s great. I also love the way he says he’ll be carrying their lives. Like he’s bearing that burden for them.

Kaito:  “And don’t worry! We’ve got the Ultimate Detective on our side!”

Also this!!! Kaito doesn’t seem to have interacted with Shuichi at all this whole demo, but that’s not going to stop him from believing in him, because with a talent like that he’s bound to be awesome, right? It is very delightfully reminiscent of the main story that Kaito says this immediately after his own bold declarations. Despite his big words and how much he genuinely intends to do his best to fulfil them (because Kaito is always trying), he knows that Shuichi’s really the one most able to save them in this situation. Kaito’s relying on and believing in Shuichi’s ability to be the real hero here. I love this tiny tiny nod to their delightful friendship dynamic in canon.

Shuichi:  “Huh?”

Shuichi is not used to people believing in his detective skills. Kaito really does mean it even though he’s only just met you, Shuichi!

Class Trial

In the trial, Makoto has Rantaro’s podium and Hajime has Keebo’s. I’m quite surprised that they didn’t do it the other way around – Keebo is after all basically meant to be Robot Makoto, and that would have been one reasonable excuse for leaving him in particular out.

Things start with people throwing out some baseless ideas. Tenko of course decides someone male must have done it.

Shuichi:  “We can’t rule out suspects that way… We need to look at all the possibilities.”

Shuichi, at least, is being rational about this. He doesn’t say much in this demo, but what he does say is always quite sensible.

Tenko:  “Kiyo looks creepy! That’s suspicious enough for me!”

Aaaaagh coming from Tenko in particular that’s just painful. Demo why would you do this.

By the way, fun fact: the English voicework for this demo was almost certainly recorded after that for the main game. How do I know? Because of Kaito’s voice. For the earlier trials in the main game, Kaito’s voice sounds a lot rougher and growlier, which becomes less of a thing as the game goes on. It’s gradual enough that you don’t notice it while it’s happening, but going from trial 4 Kaito back to trial 1 Kaito gives quite a noticeable difference. I assume this is because his voice actor started out consciously trying to emulate his Japanese voice, which is indeed quite gruff, but then as things went along he got more into the character and developed his own instinctive feel for Kaito’s voice, one which wasn’t as growly as it started out. And here in the demo, Kaito’s voice isn’t growly at all; it sounds like his lines from trial 4, not trial 1.

(The voice actor getting more into the role has to be the only reason for the gradual shift, because really, in-universe, Kaito’s voice should have been subtly getting more rough and growly as time went by, thanks to his illness getting worse. It’d have been really fun if that had been a thing. Alas.)

Kaito:  “He didn’t even have a chance to resist!”

Like in the main game, Kaito is the first person to be refuted. In trials where Shuichi is his sidekick, Kaito doesn’t tend to make any arguments at all and just sits back and lets Shuichi handle it (with the exception of trial 4, for chapter 4 reasons). But in trial 1 he didn’t have a sidekick and was instead trying to feel useful by actually contributing to the discussion despite knowing he might be wrong, kind of like in trial 4.

In the actual trial 1 in the main commentary, I explained why Kaito wasn’t being stupid even though he was wrong, but in this instance, he has simply been very rudely handed the idiot ball. Kaito was one of the people who investigated the dorm room! He saw the signs of a struggle!

Obviously, this argument is also mirroring the very first argument you refute in this case in DR1. But then they should have given this line to someone who actually wasn’t in the room and didn’t see the state of it, of which there are plenty of options. In DR1, the person who makes this argument is Chihiro, who didn’t investigate the room out of fear – and in fact, him making this assumption despite not knowing the facts was likely a sign of his issues about feeling weak, because of course he’d have been afraid of being killed by someone stronger without even being able to fight back, so he projected that onto Sayaka.

But Kaito making this argument here? Doesn’t make any sense or have any good reason for it. They’re apparently trying to have Kaito be the first person to be refuted like he is in the main game (and perhaps for similar reasons), while also having the first refuted argument in this case be the same as it was in the DR1 case. Either callback (or call-forward) alone would be fine, but doing both of them at once does not work and ends up very uncharitable towards Kaito.

Kaito:  “Okay, so that room wasn’t such a mess to begin with, then.”

They try and justify this by having it so that apparently Kaito thought the room was always that messy, but no, that doesn’t justify anything. Sure, I can potentially imagine Kaito as someone with a messy room himself (though if so it’s probably the “organised chaos” type in which he knows where everything is even if nobody else would have a clue), but this was more than just a messy room here. There were slash marks everywhere! Things were outright broken! Kaito is not stupid, and it is very rude of the demo to twist him out of character in order to give people a first impression of him that makes him seem like he is.

Kaede:  (The two people who fought in that room were…)

-      Kaede and Shuichi

It’s ridiculous that the demo is making us do a multiple choice to figure out that Hiro fought with the culprit, what the hell, that’s a Psyche Taxi level of stupidly obvious question there… but it’s interesting that this is one of the obviously-wrong answers. There’s been absolutely no indication of any kind of connection between Kaede and Shuichi in the demo, except for this.

Kaede:  “Of course, it was Hiro and the culprit.”

Kaito:  “Huh!? Really!?”

No! Stop it! Stop making Kaito seem like an idiot! He is not stupid! This one doesn’t even have any kind of excuse of trying to be a call-forward to the main game! There is no reason for this!

Kaito, I am so sorry you got handed this idiot ball, please just throw it away and pretend you never saw it, you don’t deserve this.

Miu: “Who else would it be, dumbass!?”

If that was supposed to be setup to give someone an excuse to call Kaito an idiot for the further bad writing that’s about to ensue, then, this is still uncalled for. When people call Kaito an idiot, they are not meant to be actually literally right about it!

Kaito:  “Who you callin’ a dumbass!? I’m Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars!”

…

Kokichi:  “Hey, you two idiots over there… Stop chit-chatting and keep this discussion moving.”

Miu:  “Hey! Don’t lump me in with that idiot! You’re talkin’ to the gorgeous girl genius, Miu Iruma!”

Kokichi:  “Yup, you two should be lumped together. Your statements are on the same level.”

No, they really, really shouldn’t be, and this is still doing a horrible disservice to Kaito. Kaito usually reacts strongly to being called an idiot, sure, but he does not do so by talking himself up, because he is not actually insecure enough to need to “prove” he isn’t one (unlike Miu, whose boasts always reek of insecurity). Comparing him to Miu like this is making it look like Kaito only talks himself up to save face for himself and protect his own ego when it’s being battered, like she does, and that he actually is just a useless idiot beneath these empty words, especially when he really just was one thanks to that undeserved idiot ball. That is so incredibly not even remotely the point of Kaito’s character, oh my god. Please stop, demo. How can you get some of the Kaito parts so right but others so horrendously wrong.

(It makes me feel better to imagine that Kaito’s actual main writers, the ones who created a very carefully-crafted character arc full of all of his delightful issues and principles and complexities, were just, I dunno, on lunch break or something, and some clueless intern with only a very superficial knowledge of Kaito as “an idiot who talks big” got to write some of his lines here while they were out. That clueless intern is probably also the one responsible for the tiny handful of Misogyny Bullets that hit Kaito and briefly forced him out of character for one line each throughout the main story, right?)

Moving on, Kokichi begins making a big point of how he suspects everyone whom the room belonged to, because of course he does. (Look at him acting all high and mighty and more intelligent than the two supposed “idiots” and then immediately turning around and jumping to unfounded conclusions. Clearly the smartest way to handle a class trial there.)

“Makoto”:  “The discussion won’t move forward if we all just point fingers. Like Shuichi said, we need to talk about all the possibilities.”

He may just be an actor pretending to be Makoto, but he’s got a goddamn point. Kokichi’s accusation flinging is never actually helpful.

Kaito:  “Yeah, what he said! No way Kaede’s the culprit!”

Welcome back, Kaito, it’s good to see you again! This is a very Kaito thing for him to do. He’s barely spoken to Kaede or seen much of her in the demo, but he did have that conversation with her at the crime scene where she agreed that the culprit should have tried to work together to escape before giving up and resorting to murder. His instincts are telling him that she really meant that and really is this kind of person! He has a hunch, and he’s right, because his hunches always are!

Kokichi:  “Kaito! This trial won’t go anywhere if you don’t suspect anyone!”

And this is a character dynamic involving Kaito that’s actually correct and relevant in the main game such that it makes sense to hint at it in the demo, thank you.

Shuichi:  “What we have to determine now… is the murder weapon.”

And of course Shuichi is the one who’s focusing on the actual logic and getting the trial back on track instead of arguing. This was a very trial 4 exchange we just had here.

Despite Shuichi’s attempt at being sensible, everyone else then starts arguing over whether certain people could have killed him with their bare hands, because it seems that nobody who saw the body feels the need to tell them it was a goddamn knife and also apparently no-one read the Monokuma File. I guess at least Kaito smashed his idiot ball into several smaller pieces and shared it around the group.

Shuichi:  “There was no indication the body was punched. I don’t believe fists were the murder weapon.”

Shuichi I know you’re hesitant about doing this detective thing and you maybe didn’t go to the scene but you clearly read the Monokuma File just tell them it was a knife please.

Ryoma:  “Then our murder weapon is… the knife stabbed into his gut?”

THANK YOU RYOMA I don’t know why you didn’t say this sooner but.

Kaede:  (I wonder… Was the murder weapon lodged in Hiro’s abdomen really a knife?)

Yes, Kaede, it was a fucking knife! But apparently the game wants us to be more specific about the fact that it was a kitchen knife. I don’t know if this works better in Japanese in that the word for kitchen knife doesn’t include the word “knife”, but even if so, it is still a type of knife! This is something else that was an argument made in the original DR1 case – someone says the culprit used “some random knife they had on them”, and Makoto counters that it was a kitchen knife because the more relevant point is where it came from. So really, to make this be even remotely sensible here, that should also be the question Kaede is asking herself. Not was it even a knife. What the hell.

This is specifically an excuse to demonstrate the Mind Mine minigame, which is a pretty bad example of it because the other two images that are options in it aren’t even knives. Not that Mind Mine is ever really a super justified minigame that doesn’t point out something rather obvious, but.

Another thing I remember about the fan translation of this demo that I originally watched was that this part apparently made the translator flip tables, because they broke immersion to have Kaede’s line announcing her answer also include something to the effect of “oh my god Kaede I can’t believe you had to do a whole minigame just to figure out it was a kitchen knife what the hell”. Same, though, random fan translator from years ago. Same.

Kaito:  “Yeah, I caught a glimpse of it too… That was definitely a kitchen knife.”

Oh hey, look who’s capable of observing and understanding basic facts! Yes, hello, we would like to apologise for our previous misinformation and inform everyone that Kaito is, in fact, not stupid, please disregard everything you may have heard in the past few minutes implying that he is, thank you.

Shuichi:  “A knife… I do remember seeing a knife in the kitchen. That could be it.”

Angie:  “I see, I see… An excellent deduction from the Ultimate Detective. Well done.”

Yes, clearly, Shuichi is the only person in this room capable of realising that kitchen knives come from the kitchen. I know I said Kaito isn’t stupid, but he still obviously pales in comparison to this detective genius right here.

Shuichi:  “Ah, it’s not because I’m a detective… I’m still in training…”

Shuichi is also apparently the only person sensible enough to realise that it wasn’t even a clever deduction. This is supposed to be a hint at his insecurity, but also he’s just making a very valid point.

Maki:  “You really don’t need to be a detective to know that the knife came from the kitchen.”

Thank you, Maki, for being one of the only other sensible people here. God, Maki is always such a breath of fresh air.

Kokichi:  “Geez, who cares about the murder weapon?”

Kaito:  “What do you mean, ‘who cares’!?”

Kokichi:  “We can already guess who the culprit is. There’s a super-duper huge hint already.”

Yeah, who cares about actual concrete evidence when we can randomly sling accusations around based on completely circumstantial stuff! This is so very Kokichi. I also appreciate that Kaito’s the one to question him.

After some discussion in which the three protagonists insist it wasn’t them, led largely by Maki, who of course has no qualms about suspecting them even though she’s not going to conclude it definitely was them yet…

Kokichi:  “Ugh, I already told you it’s not Kaede. Suspecting her right off the bat is so mean!”

Of course, the demo’s got to also have some of Kokichi’s transparent two-faced insincerity in an attempt to make everyone else’s belief in and defense of each other sound hollow and empty. Wouldn’t be Kokichi without that.

Kaito:  “Hey! You’re the one who brought it up!”

And Kaito’s the one to call him out on that, because of course he should be!

“Makoto”:  “We need to talk this over more to uncover the truth. This is a test.”

Kaede:  “Huh?” (This is a test…?)

The way it lingers on that comment makes it seem relevant. Maybe this is just another nod to this being a demo, which is meant to “test” players’ skills in preparation for the main game. Which could also potentially be the idea in-universe, if this is indeed being done as a test-run before they wipe everyone’s memories of this and put them in the real killing game (though as I said before, this still can’t have been quite what happened in real canon given the whole pregame reset thing).

Gonta:  “Gonta not good at tough subjects… but Gonta will work hard for everyone’s sake!”

Kaede:  “That’s right! We need to work together so we can overcome this class trial!”

Yaaaay, Gonta. He hasn’t really done much of note in this demo but he’s still here and doing his best! And also here’s some Kaede being very herself.

“Makoto”:  “Everything’s gone smoothly so far, but…”

Kaede:  “Huh? Did you say something, Makoto?”

“Makoto”:  “No… it’s nothing.”

Hah, Makoto really is acting quite suspiciously now, isn’t he.

Ryoma:  “Either way, we’ve got three main suspects now…”

No, we haven’t, we only ended up on this topic because of Kokichi’s random accusation slinging, can we get back to talking about the knife, please. Ryoma, you are meant to be smarter than this.

Kaito:  “It’s not any of them! I believe in these guys!”

Oh, Kaito. I’m a little more surprised that his intuition is giving him a fully positive read on “Makoto” and “Hajime”, but he hasn’t interacted with them that much either and their acting has been fine so far and made them seem superficially heroic, so, eh, fair enough.

Shuichi:  “If we can determine who took the murder weapon from the kitchen… that would clear Kaede of suspicion.”

Yes, thank you, let’s talk about the evidence. Shuichi’s is always the most sensible voice in the room. I also like how he’s thinking of it as clearing Kaede of suspicion – he really doesn’t want to think she did it.

Kirumi:  “First, we should listen to Kaede and the others’ testimonies.”

This whole thing of awkwardly veering the topic onto these three suspects in particular (thanks to our convenient Kokichi in the room just wanting to be overly suspicious of everyone) is actually an excuse to demonstrate a Mass Panic Debate. Which is a horrendously bad example of one of these. They’re supposed to happen when people get so riled up at being suspected that they all talk over each other, but Kaede, Makoto and Hajime have been quite calm and level-headed about this, and each happily agree to Kirumi’s suggestion to let them testify. So they shouldn’t need to talk over each other!

And then, to make things even more confusing and distract even more from what’s supposed to be the point of a Mass Panic Debate, Monokuma and his cubs awkwardly interrupt to declare that Kaede can’t participate and they’re arbitrarily going to make someone else testify about their alibi instead of her. This is of course because Kaede is the protagonist and so can’t participate in a playable debate, and it’s also because the person they’re having testify instead is someone who actually has testimony about who took the knife and is therefore the relevant thing to shoot at. But my god, does this end up giving a completely unclear and misleading impression of what a Mass Panic Debate is even supposed to be for. When I first saw this demo, I remember being confused as hell and thinking it was pointlessly gimmicky to have three Nonstop Debates at once for no apparent reason. It completely fails to communicate the idea that these are supposed to be less about the gameplay and more about narrative tension (even if only one of the Mass Panic Debates in the main game really pulls that off to its full potential).

The third testimony in question is from Himiko, who was having tea with Tenko when somebody took the knife. Specifically, she was lecturing Tenko about the difference between real magic and a magic trick, because of course she was. It’s cute that Tenko was happy to listen to her.

Tenko doesn’t know who it was who came in, because it was a dude, and so, being Tenko, she didn’t pay him any attention beyond that. This jogs Himiko’s memory, though…

Himiko:  “Nyeh… now that I think about it, someone was in the kitchen. Someone who’s no longer with us…”

…and then she decides to tell us all who it was in the vaguest possible way instead of just saying “it was Hiro” or “it was the victim”. Which is in fact a very transparent way to shoehorn in, drumroll please, the actual stupidest Psyche Taxi segment in the game, for real this time! At least if you count the demo as part of this game.

Credit to them, they actually did put Kaede in the car and not Shuichi. I think  her car might be a little different, too? The idea of driving through Vegas to pick up sex workers is… basically just as out-of-character for Kaede as it was for Shuichi, given that she’s a huge piano nerd without many friends, not that that part of her character has been illustrated at all in the demo. (She’s still picking up women, but then there are a few comments Kaede makes that strongly hint she’s bi, so hey.)

The two (at least it’s only two; even they couldn’t stretch this out into three or four) questions asked here are: “Who is not here?” [Victim/Culprit] and then “Who is the victim of this case?” [Hajime/Hiro/Makoto]. Yup, they actually thought those were questions that anyone ever would have to think about at all.

…I mean, they probably didn’t really. And to be fair, this is pretty similar to how stupid actual Psyche Taxis are, so, uhh, representative demo gameplay???

Kaede:  “Are you saying Hiro’s the one who went into the kitchen?”

Because obviously Kaede had to drive a taxi through her mind to figure this out, and nobody else in the room figured it out in less time than it took her to do that. And she also couldn’t possibly have just asked Himiko to clarify who she meant in the first place.

But hey, the one who took the knife from the kitchen was in fact the victim. More references to the DR1 case! I wonder if we’re supposed to think that Hiro was secretly planning murder and not just taking it for self-defence. Honestly I wouldn’t entirely put that past him; if anyone would be the kind of coward looking for an easy way out that Kaito was denouncing back in the investigation, he seems a reasonable candidate for it.

Having realised that the one who took the knife isn’t the culprit after all, suspicion falls back on the three protagonists, particularly Kaede as she discovered the body.

“Makoto”:  “No, that’s wrong!”

“Hajime”:  “Yeah! You’ve got that wrong!”

Monokuma:  “Oh? The two leads just said their catchphrases! Finally, this is getting exciting!”

Man, this is apparently some genwunner-audience-shallowness worthy of trial 6 if they’re supposed to think that a couple of people just yelling “no, that’s wrong!” somehow makes things the height of entertainment. Admittedly the rest of the trial has not exactly been riveting, but still.

“Makoto”:  “Kaede… don’t give up hope. Keep going and you’ll be able to reach the truth!”

He can’t just tell her to not give up – he has to throw in that buzzword and make sure everyone knows that this is about hope. Look, guys, he’s totally Makoto.

Kaede:  “But, how do I prove my innocence?”

“Hajime”:  “That’s…”

…But neither of them actually know how to do this and are just spouting meaningless protagonisty lines.

Kokichi:  “Fine! I guess my decisive testimony will help us find our culprit!”

Oh boy, it’s Kokichi Making Everything About Himself time.

Gonta:  “You know who culprit is? That means everyone not have to get punished!”

Aww, Gonta. Look at him naively believing everything Kokichi says, this is totally not foreshadowing for anything important and tragic in the main game, not at all.

A couple of the other slower characters also go welp, great, this means the trial can be over soon.

Shuichi:  “Kokichi… if you had information like that, why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

Kokichi:  “Well, if I said something that important right away, that wouldn’t be much fun.”

But at least Shuichi is still being the most sensible and realising exactly what is so fishy about this. (This is also the question he has to worry about himself with regards to his own lies that he tells in canon.)

Kokichi’s response is “lol, for fun”, though, because of course it is, and that is exactly what he would do if this testimony he’s about to give weren’t a lie. Especially considering that that’s the usual reason why he really does frequently withhold important information from everyone else in canon.

Kokichi:  “Anyway… the culprit is Makoto.”

From just the text alone, this could seem like it’s deliberately being reminiscent of Kokichi’s “Well, then… the culprit is Gonta” line in canon. But alas, the delivery is completely different – which I guess is fair enough, since here he’s just lying.

Kaede:  “Huh? Wh-What are you saying?”

“Makoto”:  “…”

Interestingly, Makoto doesn’t immediately try to deny this.

Regardless, Kaede decides she’s going to believe in Makoto, and so she’s going to lie for him. Finally, a mechanic introduced in this demo that, A, is an actually interesting new mechanic and not a pointless minigame, and, B, is represented properly!

(There’s no Debate Scrum in this demo, sadly. I’d say it’s because they couldn’t come up with a proper excuse for one, but honestly they could probably have scraped together a short one about whether or not Makoto did it, similar to the one about Shuichi in canon.)

Kokichi:  “I saw Makoto leave that room by himself! I swear!”

Wow, that totally doesn’t sound like a lie at all.

“Makoto”:  “I didn’t go into that room even once… so Kokichi must be mistaken.”

“Kokichi is lying.”

There’s eight different white noise lines for this last statement, most of which are quite easily identifiable. Even though this one is less obviously so, I bet it’s Maki. It sounds like her.

So Kaede lies that she was with Makoto the entire time until the body discovery.

Kokichi:  “Hmmm… Kaede, you’d rather choose a lie than the truth, just to protect Makoto?”

Kaede:  “Do you have any proof to show that I’m lying, Kokichi?”

Kokichi:  “Nope, none at all. I lied about seeing Makoto.”

Welp, that didn’t last long at all.

Kaito:  “Why you…? Don’t mess with us!”

Again I love that Kaito is the one to call him out on this! He hates that someone would be this insincere and selfishly mess with their lives just for his own petty entertainment.

Kokichi:  “I just wanted Makoto to talk, so I simply tricked him into speaking.”

Kaito:  “Why beat around the bush like that?”

This is so Kaito – he’s not using the word here, but this is his concept of manliness! Don’t beat around the bush, just come straight out and tell people what you want from them! If he wanted Makoto to testify, he should have just asked him instead of being insincere and indirect and manipulating him into it.

Kokichi:  “Cuz it’s still not clear where Makoto was before and after the indicent, right? Aw maaaan… I totally thought Makoto would talk if we started accusing him.”

And your lie didn’t help us clear anything up any more than just asking him directly would have done, so good fucking job, as usual. It almost seems like Kokichi’s actually acknowledging here that his lie didn’t work, but really he’s probably telling himself it totally would have worked if Kaede hadn’t jumped in with her own lie, because Kokichi can never be wrong about anything.

Some of the others point out that Kaede is also lying because she was on her own shortly after the body discovery and it’s weird that she and Makoto would split up after finding a body. Since Kaede’s lie is so provably false, it’s surprising to me that Kokichi backed down so soon on his own lie rather than just trying to disprove Kaede’s. Maybe his actual intent was that he thought Kaede was the culprit and expected her to throw Makoto under the bus to protect herself, and then when she didn’t, he realised she’s probably innocent and backed off? Maybe? But then again, Kokichi expects people to throw others under the bus to protect themselves even when they are innocent, like he was trying to get Kaito to do to Maki in trial 2, so, eh, I kinda doubt he’d see anyone not doing that as actual proof of anything. There’s too much selflessness and trust involved in that idea.

Gonta:  “Huh? Kaede… tell lie?”

Aww, Gonta.

Kaede:  (I need to be more convincing if I want them to believe me. I’ll remember that next time I need to lie… Of course, I hope that time never comes.)

Heh, that sure is a rather transparently this-is-just-a-demo thing for her to be thinking.

Kaito:  “We just got dragged around by Kokichi’s lies… We didn’t clear a single thing up!”

Exactly! God I love like 80% of the Kaito in this demo. All of the bits that aren’t horrendously out of character are so wonderfully him.

Everyone awkwardly laments that they still don’t have any more of a clue who did it other than maybe the three owners of the room and maybe in particular Kaede for no good reason. (Come on, guys, the rooms weren’t locked, literally anybody could have seen Hiro wandering into that room and taken their chance to kill someone.)

“Makoto”:  “It can’t end like this. No one wants an ending like that.”

Wow, that is so hilariously trial 6 of him. I am very sure the demo writers are doing this on purpose at this point.

Hajime decides he can prove it wasn’t Kaede, so he starts talking in very vague terms about “it” that was on the floor in the dorm, and something off about the crime scene. I’m not sure what the latter thing he’s supposed to be referring to is – Kaede’s comments in the investigation suggested there was supposedly something suspicious about the blood on the knife handle, so it might be that, but I couldn’t tell myself what was off about it. (There might not even be anything off about it, because this is about to go precisely nowhere. Then again, maybe it was the fact that it’s actually a prop knife because “Hiro” wasn’t really dead? Although “Hajime” probably wouldn’t want that to be known, would he.) The former thing is clearly the short brown hair found on the floor after Kirumi had cleaned, which suggests it is not Kaede but is instead either Makoto or Hajime.

But before Kaede can actually properly mention either of these things Hajime is vaguely alluding to, Monokuma interrupts and declares that the demo is over, and the trial abruptly ends.

So we never actually find out who supposedly killed Hiro – but I think the clues make it pretty clear that it was supposed to be Makoto.

On my first time seeing the demo, I was certain it couldn’t be Makoto because I already implicitly trusted that he’d never kill anyone. But that’s only if it was the real Makoto. Since this is just a cosplayer, and this is just a show being put on by Team Danganronpa for some very superficial demo entertainment, anything goes. I can totally see them pulling out the shocking twist that Makoto murdered someone, just for the hell of it.

All the clues point to Makoto – the hair that’s either his or Hajime’s, his extremely unexplained disappearance, plus a couple of moments in which he acted quite suspiciously, such as the way he didn’t immediately fervently plead his innocence when Kokichi claimed he had proof. And even if it had actually been a real murder, none of the people here who are real people and not cosplayers just acting would snap and give up that quickly on getting out of here without resorting to such drastic measures, just like Kaito said.

Then, right at the end of the demo, over a blank screen, there’s this.

“Makoto”:  “Hey, how was… our acting?”

Monokuma:  “Puhuhu, it wasn’t too shabby! I especially liked how convincingly you wasted everyone’s time!”

“Hajime”:  “I was a little worried about the end there… Hope it was exciting enough. Welp, since we got through it smoothly, that’s it for today!”

Monokuma:  “Smell ya later!”

“Makoto”:  “Good job, everyone!”

“Hajime”:  “Good job! See ya!”

…………

“Hiro”:  “Heeey! Wait for meee!”

This sure is a thing. I’d actually forgotten this bit was here while coming up with my theory that the Makoto, Hajime and Hiro we see in this demo are just cosplayers and nobody died – and this basically completely proves that this idea really was what the out-universe writers were going for here.

On a first viewing of this demo without having seen the main game, Makoto asking about their acting would potentially just seem like him referring to how he and Hajime hid the fact that they’d already been in another killing game – and, perhaps, the fact that they knew Hiro wasn’t really dead and this was all staged. But even then, it’s kind of odd that they’re asking this to Monokuma, like they’re in league with him, which doesn’t seem right for them at all.

But it makes every single bit of sense after finishing the main game if you assume that they really were cosplayers just putting on this demo as a teaser for the in-universe audience. When “Makoto” asks about their acting, he’s asking if they were convincing enough as Makoto and Hajime in the first place. They work for Team Danganronpa, so of course they’re in league with Monokuma and having a casual conversation with him. And everything about the way they’re talking comes across like actors or directors being all “welp, that’s a wrap, good job out there on set today, guys, we sure made an entertaining show!”

This bit didn’t need to be in the demo at all, but it’s really fun that they put it here anyway. It’s a very subtle, cheeky little hint to the real truth of everything that nobody’s going to be able to piece together without already knowing the truth and is just going to assume is meaningless demo shenanigans until then.

Also, while obviously nobody actually died, Team Danganronpa was still presenting a fiction in which Hiro totally did die, and within that fiction they apparently still totally had it in mind that Makoto killed him. They didn’t really have to hint towards anyone having done it at all, but they still had Makoto’s actor go out of his way to put in deliberate hints that it was him. I wonder how many of the audience picked up on the hints, and how shocked they were if they did. Gasp, their precious Makoto did a murder!! How could he fall to despair like this!?

[hahanoiwont]

a concept

Virgil in his Angsty Villain Phase still trying to help people.

Patton’s pretending not to have a bad day. No one notices bc he’s really good at that but Virgil happens to enter the kitchen right as he does that thing, you know, where you wipe your eyes and take a deep, shuddering breath and paste on a smile and keep going.

And he owes this guy nothing, okay, Patton never wants him around any more than anyone else, but Virgil is remembering Patton being nice to him a time or two and he wants to help. So he goes to Logan and Roman and gives a spooky monologue that strongly implies that he’s done something terrible to Morality, all part of his grand plan to uh,,, hurt Thomas? keep him from having fun and realizing his dreams? or whatever everyone thinks he wants out of his life. muahahahaha. It is clearly too late to save Morality. Don’t even try.

So Logan and Roman, of course, go to see what the fuck Anxiety did to Morality. And they catch him in a stressbaking crying jag and Anxiety is largely forgotten while they help him to recover. With the support of his friends, Patton feels a lot better.

Logan gets frustrated another day because no one will listen to him and they keep shutting him out in pursuit of wild fancy. He is TRYING his BEST but everyone just seems to want to pretend that Logic isn’t necessary! No one even cares what he has to say! And maybe someone goes a little far and says that he isn’t helping, and what would he know about how to keep Thomas happy, anyway? And Logan is just SO FRUSTRATED, but no one is LISTENING and no one CARES and he is just about ready to sink out and leave them to their devices.

So Virgil, who popped up as soon as sides started fighting each other, just starts spouting random bullshit. No, Roman, we will never be successful. We’re not learning to be adult. Everything we have ever done has had no effect on the world and we will die alone. No one cares about us. Like some of it is stuff Virgil actually worries about but most of it is stuff he knows Logan can and will fight him on. And he just fucking refuses to listen to anyone else until Logan steps in and outlines, point by point, exactly why everything he says makes no logical sense and how, although they can always stand to improve, they’re doing pretty darned well.

Virgil, being kind of a dramatic little shit, does a whole overblown villain speech about how he’s been bested by the strong hand of Logic and his plans have been ~~foiled~~ but hE WILL BE BACK, so just WATCH AND WAIT, because ONE DAY YOU WON’T HAVE LOGIC TO SAVE YOU

And Roman says that actually, Logan can be kind of a hero, too, as Anxiety makes his ‘escape.’ Logan gets a win in and now he’s feeling valued. score. (also virgil had so much fun just shutting Roman down every time he tried to speak)

When Roman has his bad day, that’s the hardest. What the fuck do you do for him? He has a literal goddamned sword, Virgil isn’t gonna play his bad guy any harder than he has to for fear of ending up skewered. But Roman is feeling useless and discouraged and yeah, he doesn’t deserve to feel that way, even if he can be obnoxious. So Virgil’s Plan A is to summon spiders in front of Patton so Roman can vanquish them, but Patton fucking murders them in a way that is deeply frightening for both Roman and Virgil to see, so Virgil has to try again. He needs someone in distress for Roman to ‘save.’

Logan doesn’t play a very good damsel (and can kick Virgil’s ass), and the indignity of having Roman save him would mean Virgil just has to help him out of a bad day again, and in the confrontation he might hurt Roman’s feelings, so the problem doesn’t even get solved. He’s out. And the other darker sides might possibly be able to help, but Virgil either doesn’t trust their good intentions or doesn’t trust their acting abilities, and if Roman figures out it’s a trick he’ll probably stab first and ask questions never. They’re all out. So clearly it’s up to Virgil to need Roman’s ‘help.’

He makes this whole plan to ask Roman for help on something creative, with explanations for every part of the scenario, and approaches Roman with just enough guarded hostility and humiliation that he buys it. But as soon as he hears “I need your help with--” Roman immediately goes to the recent Valentine’s video. Clearly, since Anxiety’s wooing idea was never played out, he must be asking for help with how to ask someone out!

So poor Virgil has to sit through an entire afternoon of Roman explaining how to make Hypothetical Valerie think he’s awesome and feel appreciated, with copious examples of grand gestures and heroic acts from Roman. But at the end of it Roman seems to have recovered somewhat, and he expresses that he’s always happy to offer inspiration to the ‘romantically hopeless and frankly kind of depressing.’ So Virgil chalks that one up to a success and goes home and screams into his pillow. why does he bother.

Now, in classic 3-to-1 format, this may end in Virgil having his own bad day (or in my wildest dreams, 3 bad days, one with each side offering their own ideas of ‘help’), or it could just be these three interactions, but guys I just love Virgil being a good bad guy. Just using his Definite Malice which Totally Exists, Yo to make things better for his counterparts. Just. “evil” virgil doing good things badly. He doesn’t know what he’s doing but he’s doing his best. Please guys I need it

@stella-scriptor I feel like you would appreciate this

[rosesisupposes]

Destined, part 13

aka Seeking Advice from Glasses Nerds

Character Tags: Virgil/Anixety ; Patton/Creativity ; Patton/Morality ; Logan/Logic ; Remy/Sleep ; Dante/Deceit

Chapter Pairings: Logicality, Prinxiety mention, Platonic Moxiety/Analogical

Chapter Warnings: blushing & puns  (i have two settings: angst/worldbuilding and blushing)

Reader Tags: @residentanchor @royally-anxious  @bewarethegrammarpolice   @fellowthomassandersfander @jemthebookworm

Summary: After centuries of acting as an oracle to heroes, quest-seekers, and villains alike, Virgil just wants to live as a normal, modern human. For someone who can see infinite probabilities, you’d think he’d know better.

<<Chapter 12 | Masterlist | Chapter 14>>

Read on ao3 [updated]

The morning had been a complete and utter mess.

Virgil and Gilda’s careful truce was utterly ruined whenever Virgil was distracted, and sweet Sybill was he distracted the rest of that day. His black hoodie was a mess with steamed milk and flavored syrup stains, and he was pretty sure coffee grounds were, well, ground into his sleeve and never coming out.

The one saving grace was that the sorcerer had caused him to be late today, so Roman hadn’t seen him looking like a mess of a somewhat-human-being. Remy had informed him with far too much glee that Roman had looked disappointed when he’d come in to see Virgil missing, and that Remy had flirted extra hard to make up for it.

If he hadn’t already been a mess of indecision and worry, Virgil would probably have been more annoyed by that. As it was, he was much more worried that he was going to get Roman hurt than whether he’d ever text him.

Remy was about to sail upstairs to sleep when he looked Virgil up and down, frowning.

“Boi, you are a mess. What has happened to your clothes?”

“I blame Gilda.”

“How dare you, she has done nothing wrong, ever, in her life. Here, you’re not my size, but I think you’re Antony’s. This should fit you.”

His boss tossed him a distressed purple t-shirt. Virgil started walking to the back room to change, then stopped. “Wait. Where did this come from, you’ve been downstairs all morning.”

“From the back. Antony… left it there. Last week,” Remy replied with a self-satisfied smirk.

Virgil rolled his eyes. “It’s a good thing the health inspector is in love with you.”

Remy shrugged. “It’s not my fault I’m the perfect man. Go change, I can’t have you besmirching the aesthetic of How You Brewin’. We have a very attractive reputation to maintain.”

Virgil wouldn’t admit it out loud, but he was very grateful for the shirt. It was hard to clean up the mess that was his thoughts when his entire appearance was a mess too. And to be honest, he dug the purple.

Feeling just a bit better, he made it through the rest of morning and early afternoon without any more spills. But he was still conflicted. What should he do about Dante’s destiny? He’d never been connected to a seen future in any way, let alone been infatuated with friendly with a pivotal actor in that future. Who would he even ask for advice? It’s not like Sages had parents.

But he wasn’t most Sages, he realized. There was someone who actually did call him ‘son.’

He made his way over to the bakery and saw, with a warm bubble of pride, that Logan was leaning against the side of the counter as he chatted with Patton, who was glazing pastries and smiling even larger than normal. It seemed that the happy resolution of months of mutual pining was constant conversation and flirting.

“Hey, if I’m interrupting I can come back later - I just need Patton’s advice on something,” he offered as he approached the counter.

Patton looked up at Logan, who smiled, still a little tentative and embarrassed, and said “Not a problem. I can leave you alone to consult.”

“Actually,” Virgil interrupted, “you can stay if you want. I… have a bit of an odd situation, and two perspectives would probably be better than one. Unless you have work to do.”

Logan rubbed his neck. “I probably do have work I could be doing, but now I’m intrigued. I will gladly assist if I’m able to do so.”

Virgil nodded and pulled himself up onto one of Patton’s only clean baking benches.

“Kiddo, I can get you a stool, you don’t need to sit up there...”

“Pat, I appreciate the offer, but right now I am too overwhelmed to worry about what is or what isn’t a chair,” he muttered, his anxiety heightening as he tried to think of how he’d explain his predicament. He wasn’t quite ready to tell them both that he was an ageless magical being.

“So. Um. I have a bit of an issue, but it’s kind of… private? It involves some sensitive details I don’t know that I can share,” he offered, not making eye contact.

“You only need to share as much as you want to, kiddo,” Patton said kindly, pulling up a stool.

“Unless, of course, the details are so crucial as to make any advice without them useless,” Logan interjected, sitting across from him.

“I hope that’s not the case - here, let’s try a hypothetical. You both know the trolley problem?” Virgil asked.

Logan’s eye widened. “Philippa Foot’s thought experiment? Of course, yes, I suddenly feel much more qualified for this discussion.”

“No, like the meme,” Virgil and Patton said at the same time.

“I… I don’t understand, but go on,” Logan said, lifting his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose.

“Okay, so, hypothetically, I know someone who has control of a lever to change the train tracks. He has a choice between an empty rail, and one with several people, whose death will somehow benefit him. Like, uh, the king and the next three in line for the throne before Lever Man. You’re following so far?”

Patton and Logan both nodded, Patton slightly more confused than his darker-haired friend.

“So, hypothetically, Mr. Lever is pretty likely to want to pull the lever towards the people, but there’s a small chance he won’t. He could decide last-minute to be merciful. The only way I know for a fact that he won’t flip the lever is if… um, Superman flies in, and forcibly pushes him to keep the lever on the empty track. But if Supes tries that, there’s a nonzero chance he’ll fall onto the empty track himself and be hit by the train.”

“Well obviously that would be the ideal situation, Superman will survive such a blow easily,” Logan offered.

“Okay, not Superman. Just a regular dude then, I don’t know what to call him…”

“Call him Logan!” Patton said eagerly.

“Um, why me?” Logan asked.

“Cause you’re my hero,” Patton said, smiling. Logan immediately blushed and looked down.

Virgil smirked and exaggeratedly rolled his eyes, then tried to pull them both back on track (Heh, track. Wait shit, no, he needed to focus. This was what happened when he spent this much time with Patton).

“We’re talking about trains, I’ll call the hero… Thomas. Like the Tank Engine.”

“More like Thomas the Dank Engine”

“Patton, buddy, focus. Okay. So the only person who can guarantee that Mr. Lever won’t kill the royals and become king is Thomas, but Thomas could get hurt or worse in the process. But, there’s also a chance that Mr. Lever will decide to not kill anyone. If I’m the only one who knows this… Do I have an obligation to tell Thomas?”

Logan looked pensive. “Hm. That is an interesting hypothetical. What would happen if you didn’t tell Thomas?”

Virgil thought. “I mean, there’s a chance that he’d still be in a position to stop Mr. Lever anyway, and so there’s a chance he would still be at risk, he would just be unprepared. But there would be an equal chance that he wouldn’t be in the right place at the right time without knowing, so the likelihood of Mr. Lever successfully going through with his plan is pretty high.”

Logan nodded. “And the risk of indeed telling him?”

“Well, best-case scenario, Thomas would choose to stop Mr. Lever, be successful, and not get hurt,” Virgil said with a sigh. “But I know better than to pin all my hopes on that happening. If he knew, and Mr. Lever was merciful on his own, then Thomas has been through a lot of worry and stress for nothing. Or, he could try to stop him and be unsuccessful and get hurt or killed in the process. Or he could be successful in stopping him and still get hurt or killed. Or he could choose to do nothing and feel like a coward for the rest of his life, or he could choose to do nothing and get killed along with the king anyway.” The speed of his words picked up as he listed possibilities, his perpetual internal monologue spilling out into the open like - well, like a runaway train. Those things were dangerous.

Patton put on hand on Virgil’s need and rubbed it reassuringly. “Hey, kiddo, take it easy, okay? Just let yourself relax. None of these things are happening just yet, it’s okay.”

Virgil nodded and took a deep breath, using meditation breathing to calm his elevated heart rate.

“It sounds like a big part of this question is you trying to decide what’s best for Thomas,” Patton continued. “But maybe, just maybe, that’s something he needs to decide for himself.”

Logan nodded in agreement. “Patton makes an excellent point. It seems like there many factors to consider, but only Thomas himself can accurately weigh their relative importance within his own life. The negative result of causing him unnecessary worry is far overshadowed by the other possible negative outcomes.”

Virgil looked at both his friends. Two serious yet supportive expressions looked back from behind matching black frames. “But…” he started

“Hehe, butt,” Patton snorted. “Sorry, go on, big guy!”

“But what if I, personally,” Virgil hesitated, “what if I care a lot for Thomas and don’t want to risk hurting him?”

Patton brightened, clapping his hands. “Awwww my son has a cruuushhhh.”

Logan cleared his throat, carefully looking directly at Virgil and nowhere else. “While I, ah, understand the heightened feelings of worry that go along with feelings of… affection… for someone, you can’t allow that to cloud your judgment here. Yes, you may cause Thomas some distress by telling him what you know, but imagine if the truth came out without your telling him. The most likely outcome would be a feeling of betrayal on his part.”

“You think so?” Virgil asked nervously.

“I know so, kiddo,” Patton answered. “If you really care about him and his well-being, you’ll let him make the choice himself. It may be hard, and yes, there’s a chance that you telling him will also make him feel betrayed. But if you speak from the heart and make it clear that you are only trying to help him to the best of your ability, I think you’ll find he’ll appreciate the effort.”

Virgil sighed, looking back and forth. “Thanks, guys. You’re right. I’m really glad I came to you both.”

Logan smiled. “Anytime, Virgil. And might I advise telling Roman sooner rather than later?”

Virgil blanched. “What? Who said anything about Roman? We were talking about, uh, Thomas, yeah. All hypothetical here.”

“You forget that I’m almost always in the cafe when Roman comes in. Particularly,” Logan smirked, “two days ago, when you spoke to him for several minutes and wrote your number on his coffee cup. I didn’t want to mention it earlier because it wasn’t relevant to the advice, but it was intuitively obvious even to the casual observer.”

Virgil heard a strange, strangled sound and turned to see Patton with both hands over his face, eyes shining with delight. “Ohhhhh that is so cute!!!” the paternal baker squealed.

“I. Um. It’s not really anything yet, and might not be ever, so don’t get your hopes up,” Virgil muttered. “Thanks again for the advice, I’m going to go… hide.”

He slid off the baker’s bench and slunk back to How You Brewin’ to start cleaning up for the night.

At least he knew what he needed to do now.

author’s note: This chapter brought to you by inspiration from Mind vs Heart and Alone on Valentine’s.

Also from my undying love for Logicality. Glasses love is the best love.

[singingwordwright]

The #ShadowhuntersLegacy Theory--aka our Hail Mary throw #SaveShadowhunters

UPDATED as of 8/24/18 (see bottom of post)

I wasn’t sure if I had shared this theory on Tumblr or not, because sometimes I speculate on Twitter and then don’t remember to make a post over here. It turns out, I sort of did, a really long time ago, but the theory has evolved in light of a number of events in the past couple weeks, and most of the tinfoil-hat elements have been stripped out. Now it’s just sort of a Theory, as opposed to a Wacky Conspiracy Theory.

Before I begin, let me just say outright that this is not to give anyone false hope. Let’s be quite honest and admit that our chances don’t really look that great. But as I said in my post last night, there are reasons why I can’t bring myself to call a Time of Death on this whole thing yet. And this theory is a big part of it.

Let me also add a disclaimer that none of us knows what is happening behind the scenes. We don’t know the legal ins and outs that make up the Freeform/Constantin/Netflix Ménage à Torture so this is all just guesswork based on the pieces we have and a metric fuckton lot of supposition.

This could all totally be self-serving delusion. I’m not going to lie about that. But it’s already been put out there, so I’m going to stand by it until we see how this all shakes down in the end, if for no other reason than, on the off chance that some variation of this does end up happening, I have documented proof that I predicted it might.

Everyone okay with that? Then let’s go!

Where We Stand

Okay, look, we’ve been told, straight-up with no equivocation, that “it's not possible for this version of SHADOWHUNTERS to continue.” (Source: Constantin Press Release August 10) We have to accept that at face value. There is almost certainly not going to be a season 4. Something is in the way of that happening.

I don’t believe it’s lack of interest from potential buyers. I think it’s an unwillingness to reach a compromise on the part of the parties already involved so that someone else can pick up the show.

Chances are good that the obstacle is @freeform/Disney. The show was developed specifically for Freeform as part of ABC Family Channel rebranding itself. Netflix got involved later to snag the international distribution deal, yes, but it’s possible that the show goes nowhere unless Freeform/Disney is willing to relinquish their distribution deal on it, which they may not be willing to do.

Why? Well, there’s always my DisFlix theory, which is a little out of date in light of recent developments but not yet dead in the water.

But @netflix could also be to blame. I’ve heard rumblings, and I have no idea where they originated or if they’re true or not, that Netflix’s international distribution deal gives them rights to the show for seven years. They may not be willing to give that up, and picking the show up for season 4 without being able to stream/rerun seasons 1-3 is really not going to appeal to any potential takers.

It’s also possible that @constantinfilm isn’t willing to lower the license fee on the show enough to make someone else willing to pick it up, but I honestly don’t believe that’s the case. 100% of nothing is nothing, so keeping the price jacked up beyond what anyone is willing to pay makes Constantin no profit. I see no motive for them to prove intractable in that regard, especially if they thought they could bundle a pickup of Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments with development of a series based on The Infernal Devices and make even more money.

But, really, that is all sort of outside the scope of this post. Ultimately all we know is that something is standing in the way of the show being picked up by anyone who may be interested for season 4.

Which isn’t the same thing as saying all hope is lost. It’s just lost for “this version of SHADOWHUNTERS.”

Yeah, uh, What Other Version Is There?

We’re presently campaigning for Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments. But The Mortal Instruments is ending. And by that, I mean the six-book well of source material the plot has been borrowing its vague overall direction from is coming to an end. The 2-hour movie (which originally should have been the entire fourth season, but oh well, we can’t really dwell on that) is supposed to cover the final book, and after that it would be entirely original plots.

In other words, after season 4, we wouldn’t have had Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments ANYWAY. It would have effectively been a spin-off featuring the same characters, even if the title of the show had remained the same.

And I think most of us were perfectly okay with that, or would have been had we stopped to think about What Comes Next after the book-based material ended. @janoda has been talking for months about wanting a spin-off centered around the Downworld. I’ve thought all along that the tense relations that the Downworld and the New York Institute have with the Clave in Alicante would provide a wealth of plot material once book-based material ran out. @janoda and I have been calling this hypothetical spin-off “Downworld: Revolution” but whatever you call it, it’s not “this version of SHADOWHUNTERS.” It’s a new version, featuring many/most of the same characters.

But That Was Just Talk Right?

Well, yes. Sort of. At first I thought (in my original Conspiracy Theory post) that what we might be seeing with this cancellation is a slightly more contentious scenario originating with Freeform’s recent strategy of ending shows after 3-4 seasons or so, and then spinning them off before they lose their audience through attrition, to keep them fresh and shiny. (see also: PLL and The Fosters.)

Then, once it seemed like it might be Freeform’s claim to Shadowhunters distribution rights that was preventing anyone else from picking the show up, I started side-eyeing the notion of a spin-off as a way of working AROUND Freeform. Because Constantin still owns the adaptation rights. Even if Constantin can’t continue making Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments, they CAN make a new show, even one featuring the Shadowhunters characters and even with those characters played by the same actors. They just can’t continue making THIS VERSION of the show.

Which, again, is okay, because effectively this version of the show was going to come to an end anyway, and a new show was going to begin.

But I sort of pushed this notion of a spin-off to the back of my mind once all the talk about Constantin developing The Infernal Devices began. Because honestly I didn’t want to muddy the waters with the words “spin off” when we were trying to send such a definite, iron-clad message that The Infernal Devices was not an acceptable substitute for Shadowhunters. I did start trying to word my emails with terms like “our characters” and “our actors” while leaving those concepts open to the possibility of those characters and actors being in a new show.

(Now, however, in light of Constantin’s statement that hope is lost for “this version” of Shadowhunters, we have nothing to lose.)

And then, two weeks ago, something happened.

Starting the night before the Last Day on Set (August 2nd), the cast introduced a new hashtag--#ShadowhuntersLegacy. It never really caught on or trended, but Kat and Emeraude in particular were pretty aggressive about using it. Most of the main cast, with the exception of Isaiah, Matt, and I think Alisha, used it at least once, and I know Jade, Nicola, and some of the other supporting cast members did as well.

It struck me as a little strange. And, yes, it may very well be just a nice way to thank the fans by reassuring us that the ways in which we’ve touched their lives won’t be forgotten. But what was pinging me about it was the way it was adopted among the cast had clearly been coordinated. This wasn’t just happenstance that they all began using it at once.

And the word “legacy” implies continuation. A legacy is sort of the opposite of something ending. It’s something that carries on.

I bit my tongue about this for a few hours, and then when I was talking about it in DMs on Twitter to avoid tweeting publicly about it, @saadiestuff pointed out something I had known in the back of my head but hadn’t actually connected.

The Originals is getting a spin-off called Legacies.

(A spin-off that--I believe--will be bringing back a lot of the original characters even going back to The Vampire Diaries.)

So those messages and a bunch of tweets using the hashtag were trickling in from Thursday night onward. Then, on Saturday morning, Kat posted this:

I mean...look at those last few lines? “The story doesn’t end here” and that parting shot, complete with a picture of her with her hand on a door?

But the cast doesn’t know anything about negotiations, right? Usually that’s true. However...

IF a hypothetical spin-off were being discussed, obviously the cast wouldn’t be part of the negotiations. But one of the first things those discussions would entail is inquiring (probably through their agents) about the casts’ interest and availability to return for the new series.

So the usual wisdom about the cast not knowing anything until shortly before we do doesn’t apply here. They would almost certainly know this was at least being discussed as a possibility, even if they didn’t know whether or not it would end up being a done deal.

There is also the live that Jade did a day or two before filming wrapped. I didn’t get to watch the whole thing because I lost my place when I was about 20 minutes in, so all I knew was that people got upset by some of the things he said which they felt indicated he didn’t feel there was any hope. @TheJessy34 on Twitter found it for me, and starting about 29:45, Jade talks about how the show in “this form” is over and how things can happen, yes, but he didn’t think if it continued it would continue in the way it has. (BEWARE OF POTENTIAL BOOK-BASED SPOILERS AT AROUND 33:00)

I’m tempted to include this tweet of Harry’s (the Monday after filming wrapped) for consideration as evidence of this possibility. Because Harry is the guy who likes to dole out clues for us to piece together (see also, 2x12 and the season 3 renewal livechat.)

However it would be dishonest of me to do so without also including the fact that he denied this tweet had anything to do with anything:

That said, boy, Kat sure was all over it, both on Instagram and Twitter:

And it should be noted that Kat is STILL occasionally using the #ShadowhuntersLegacy hashtag. As is Jade, I believe.

I’m also tempted to offer into evidence this article from TVLine earlier this week:

However, I think the evidence supporting that is sketchy at best. All the medical puns point to a medical drama, and the cast is obviously not reassembling yet (though that verbiage could be figurative, as in “they’re signing the contracts” rather than literal, as in “they’re gathering to begin filming.) Public opinion seems to hold that the show in question is likely CBS’s Code Black and I have no concrete reason to assert otherwise.

I will say that in the event of a hypothetical spin-off, there would be some new cast involved (which could explain the “returning and new cast” line.) The book the 2-hour movie is based on, City of Heavenly Fire, has a fairly high body count. Chances are good that at least some of our fave supporting characters won’t be returning.

So. The TVLine article could be about us, but I’m not holding my breath.

UPDATED 8/24/18: 

So it looks like the TVLine blind item may not be about Code Black after all.

Others, not me, did some sleuthing.

This tweet from Seitzman is dated 8/22/18. The TVLine blind item was posted 8/13/18. I would say (and others have said) this could mean that whatever deal TVLine was referring was Code Black but then it fell through, except that tonight, TVLine assured us that once the show in question is revealed, the initial article would be marked as UPDATED.

That has not happened with the TVLine article. If it had been about Code Black and the deal fell through, TVLine would have updated. Therefore, it’s looking fairly sure that TVLine isn’t referring to Code Black. 

Which still doesn’t mean it’s referring to us. Let’s be very clear about that. There have been a lot of shows cancelled in the last six months. One other show that has been rumored to be on the verge of rescue is Designated Survivor, I believe (back in May or so, there was talk that Netflix might pick it up.)

All this means is that we’re a little more solidly in the running with regards to our chances that TVLine was, in fact, referring to us. That’s it. It’s not much, but it’s something.

I have reached out to TVLine to request that if it ISN’T us, they let us know. Because I really want us to be as realistic about our chances here as possible. As I said at the beginning of this post, this is a Hail Mary throw. Our chances are microscopically slim. But they do still exist.

(End UPDATED portion)

Which brings me to Isaiah’s post on Instagram yesterday:

Again, right now we are looking at the one situation where the cast probably really would have an early clue of what is going on. Before any deal is inked, someone would have to go around and ask the cast (again, probably through their agents) “this is a possibility, if we can make it happen, are you in?” And if it was a done deal, the cast would DEFINITELY know, even if they weren’t at liberty to say anything yet. They would have already signed their contracts.

Isaiah doesn’t believe hope is lost. I have to believe he has a reason for thinking that. But we know “this version” of the show isn’t coming back. Where does that leave us?

A new version of the show, featuring most or all of our characters and cast.

So What Now?

Now, we wait. We maintain our presence. We hope. I meant what I said last night, at this stage there is nothing we can do to influence the outcome that we haven’t already done. We keep the hashtag alive. We keep emailing and sending postcards and letters and maybe the occasional gift, just to remind them we’re here.

But mostly we wait. And we find our joy in the show again. Because in the words of a certain warlock we all know and love, “if you don’t take time for the things you care about, you’ll forget why you’re even fighting at all.”

But Do We Know Who Will Be Carrying This Hypothetical Spin-Off So We Can Let Them Know We’re Interested?

Nope. Not a clue. Sorry. Unfortunately this means we should probably treat everyone as though we’re courting them. Even *gack* Freeform.

When Do You Think They’ll Announce It, If It’s Happening?

Well, *if* the TVLine blind article is about us (and again, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that I really have no reason to believe it is) it says filming could begin as early as this fall. Which means we’d have to have an announcement by then because no way is our cast--with so many social media junkies in their ranks--is going to keep that under wraps for long. So we’d know by then.

And maybe I’m being whimsical, but let’s look at Isaiah’s post from yesterday again:

See where they are?

That’s the Jade Wolf mock-up that was featured at New York ComicCon last year.

Why would Isaiah use that picture, of any of the cast that he could have used, to send us the message “don’t give up”?

I think if this thing is going to happen, we may hear it announced at NYCC.

EDIT: 8/24/18

There has been some interesting activity that has sort of slipped under the radar this week, but I’ve been watching and noting. I haven’t been making a big deal about it, because I don’t want to give people false hope, but I’ve already shared this theory so it really can’t hurt to keep it up to date. Just remember that all of this is really the stretchiest reaching of all stretchy reaching. It’s flimsy and probably entirely in my imagination. 

On August 13, after the Teen Choice Awards victory, Bryan Q. Miller tweeted this:

I didn’t notice it until about a week later, when I noticed that Todd Slavkin had liked it. When queried, Bryan confirmed that the reference was exactly what I thought it was:

So...something about the TCA victory triggered thoughts of the lyric, “I can feel it coming in the air tonight.” It had him feeling either anticipation (or possibly foreboding, and possibly of someone who had done something wrong getting a come-uppance.)

Then there’s this: 

On Monday, August 20, Matt Hastings used the tag #ShadowhuntersLives.

On Thursday the 23rd, he was unusually active and pretty much ALL about the show, except for one tweet: 

Why spend the morning making Shadowhunters tweets, drop in a single mention of The Originals, then go back to making more SH tweets?

Obviously Paul Wesley has a Shadowhunters connection (didn’t he direct an episode ;-P ?) but if he was just wanting to share memories of Paul Wesley and Shadowhunters, there was plenty of material to choose from.

Again, I have to reiterate that this is flimsy, because Matt doesn’t really need a reason to delve into nostalgia for ALL the shows he’s been involved with. It may not go any deeper than that.

But he wasn’t being nostalgic about ALL his shows. He was being nostalgic about THIS one.

So it immediately made me think of the connection @saadiestuff made when I was talking about the #ShadowhuntersLegacy tag, which is that it could be that Shadowhunters is getting a spin-off featuring the same characters, the way The Originals is getting the Legacies spin-off.

Because, as @malecficlibrary just said to me, #ShadowhuntersLives is a REALLY strange hashtag to use for for a cancelled show that has no hope. Like...?

Maybe Matt Hastings didn’t know about the #ShadowhuntersLegacy hashtag on Monday, so he used #ShadowhuntersLives. Then someone clued him in, so he dropped a The Originals/Legacies hint. 

Like I said, flimsy, but I’m putting it out there anyway. Because why not?

[hellotvv]

Small Realizations

I guess I just wanted to get these thoughts out somewhere to maybe look back one day.

When I become a parent (or if I do), hopefully I learn from some mistakes my parents made. My parents are good people, they genuinely love me, and they definitely provided for me. I can’t truly complain that much, since I know other people had it much worst. But my parents are human and they tbh have made some mistakes with me. OBVIOUSLY I am my own person, and I can always ‘fix’ these mistakes they made, but I feel like how a person is raised has a huge impact on their life lol. It shapes their world around them, what they believe in, what they value, what they like/dislike, and etc. I’m definitely not saying my parents are bad parents, I’m just saying that they’re human. We all make mistakes, have moments of anger, sadness, happiness, etc. Also, it’s genuinely hard raising a kid. Kids are tough, they’re their own person at the end of the day, they might not listen to you, each need to be taught differently, and etc etc etc. 

But somethings I promise myself that I would do differently than my parents: I would never hit my kid. Honestly I disliked being hit so much as a kid, and I personally idk would never hit my kid. I’d ground them, scold them, etc all before hitting them. I could see maybe just MAYBE spanking them at a LAST CASE scenario. But I don’t think it should be the first or even second option when it comes to punishment. I personally (I’m not saying spanking is bad/good) just would not do it myself. 

I think it’s good to be able to be friends with your kids. You’re more likely to actually know who they are as a person. I have some friends who could tell their parents anything and are good friends with them. Honestly I love my parents, but I can’t say their my friends. It’s just they valued respect (which I understand), being in idk a high superior position (I called them guys once, just as a short way to refer to both of them and I got heavily scolded and yelled at, saying they’re not my friends/etc can’t address them that way), and I’d like it if my kids can genuinely talk to me about their faults/mistakes/problems. I was so scared of failure or telling my problems to my parents, since I KNEW I’d get punished/hit/etc. Like I legit feel bad about this, but if I ever got into trouble at school or struggled, I hated to even tell them. Since they’d criticize me/etc/etc. When all I would like is maybe a gentle conversation where they just go, well we could do x and x to help you fix your problem. Like if I do bad in math, I got scolded, blah blah blah, then eventually I get my tutor to help me succeed. But I wish I was able to just talk to them about my idk problems without getting in trouble. I legit got in trouble for the most ridiculous things that I don’t even wanna write about them. 

A huge thing that deserves it’s own paragraph is something I realized as I got older. I’m decently well off, and I came to realize that fk money. I don’t disagree that money can bring happiness, I think it could (at least temporarily). I don’t disagree that money would help someone’s standard of living, possibly have less stress, and etc. But fk, I never want to raise a kid where I make them think money is everything or it’s important to be rich or wealthy. I think my parents did a lot of thing well in raising me (besides uh spoiling me/other stuff I listed above), and this is a big stereotype but I think some white ppl parenting methods are pretty smart. I think it’s important to just let the kid do what they want (in terms of career choices) and just let them be happy with whatever they pick. Since, it’s their life at the end of the day. I am NOT saying that a parent shouldn’t try to inspire kids to dream big or to push them to succeed/have high aspirations. I wanted to be a doctor for the longest time tbh. Even up to 2nd year in college and somewhat 3rd year, I really wanted to be a doctor. But did I really want to be a doctor, since I LOVED to help people? Since I saw myself slaving the next 8 years of my life at school, studying, cram studying till early mornings, possibly making tons of sacrifices, and etc just to become a doctor? Honestly no, but I was stubborn and kind of willing to do it for the $$$. The reason why is, my parents genuinely wanted me to be wealthy (understandable), being a doctor has prestige/they can flex/I can flex, and yeah. I realized far too late that my motives were retarded. I’ve obviously read that someone won’t succeed at becoming a doctor unless they’re truly passionate about it or motivated. I’m genuinely not, and it took me far too long to realize that. I really wouldn’t be happy being a doctor. I talk about career passion and hobby passion, how they can be separate, and etc. But honestly giving up that many years + god knows how many sacrifices (relationships, friendships, sleep, stress, mental/physical health in general, etc) of my life to school/late shifts just for some $$$, I would genuinely question if I really made this 1 life of mine in this world amazing. I guess around this point in my life, I realize that yes, I enjoy money. Would it be nice to have money? Yeah, ofc. But I realized that I could be genuinely happy with less. Hypothetically, if I had only a decent 1 bedroom apartment (like I do rn), have a good relationship with a sweet SO, enough money to go on vacations now and then, treat myself to nice food here, and hang out with friends on the weekend with a stable job. I think I could genuinely be really happy. I don’t think I need a mansion, a huge house, lavish furniture, or whatever the fk I would do with the money. The most I could see myself using a bunch of $$$ is on dumb material things. Yeah, I loved fashion, but honestly I don’t need a wardrobe full of Saint Laurent. I bought my grailed Robert Geller sweater, and I legit wore it once (partially since it was summer) and I was happy for like 2 minutes TOPS after I got it. Idk, I hope I find a SO with a similar view. Being in a social media position where I meet a lot of models nowadays, shot with an actress recently, popular IGers too, and etc. Holy fk, I grew to hate gold diggers, juice diggers, and people who only give a fk about being popular. Yes, it’s nice having followers and etc, but ppl who make it their lives geez... I’m not saying I would hate being wealthy, but I just realize that I don’t need it. My parents still want me to do something in the medical field/etc, but fk man... I kind of just want a stable job that pays alright, and I’ll be really happy. If it’s enough $$ to pay bills, get me my own place, able to afford a cute dog, some spending $$ to hang out with friends on weekends, and occasional vacation on holidays then I’m truly content/happy. Maybe some people aspire more, which is perfectly fine. I would too (after I at least have what I just asked for). But idk I just realized that’s all I really need nowadays. But back to the whole parenting thing. I don’t want to push my kids towards any jobs just for the sake of money. I’d aspire them to dream big ofc, but at the end of the day, I just want them to be happy. I shadowed a doctor last year, and he after making huge sacrifices with his wife for his monetary success, doesn’t even want his kid to be a doctor (unless he for some reason wants to). His kid might major in psych and be clueless about what he wants to do (according to the doctor), but he just wants his son to be happy. Honestly I think that’s what I would want to (maybe not the clueless part). If my kid has good aspirations, doesn’t want to be some degen and not work, is honest/kid, then who the fk cares what career my kid chooses. If he/she wants to become a doctor, cool. If she wants to be an artist, I’d support that. If she wants to be idk an actress, go for it. A teacher? Sure, go for it. Idk, I just know that I would be a lot happier right now, if I didn’t waste so much time wanting/chasing after a career path that I ultimately would not be happy doing.

It’s at least good I realized now before med school or something, since then it might genuinely be too late. I do truly respect doctors after knowing how hard it is to become one. I can’t imagine idk what sacrifices I might have to make in the future to become one. Since while I’m young, I really just want to be able to travel the world, live a life with minimal stress for a while, hang out with friends, spend time with a SO, and etc. If I was in med school/doing residency training/etc, I’m sure you can live a decently balanced life. But it would be hard to find time to vacation, spend time with a SO when studying for INCREDIBLY hard med school exams that determines how good of a job you’ll get as a doctor, spending time with friends/family when studying most of your days away, and so much more. 

While I’m still young. I do want to go to concerts and shows with friends. I want to travel to places and enjoy them. I want to be a degen lol for a bit and be as carefree as long as I could. I don’t see myself happy slaving away the next years of my life in school/studying/etc. I could be stubborn, push myself, and etc but at what cost tho? Idk, you really do only live once. I’ve spent honestly my whole life always wanting to be older, thinking it’ll be better. Like omg how cool would hs be, how cool would it be to have a car and drive, going to college, being 21, and etc. I’m finally at a point in my life, where I’m content and don’t necessarily want to get any older haha. I am tired of always chasing a brighter future. If I was in med school, I’d be chasing the future where I’m finally an intern at a hospital, then I’d be chasing finally finishing residency, I’d then chase idk finishing specialized training, then before I know it I’m 30+ years old, and been constantly chasing the future my entire youth. Fk that. This girl I have a date with next week wrote this, “I was so scared not being able to do everything I want in my life that I couldn't be happy about the current achievements I was making. (Like getting yoga certified) I'm taking a break from hobbies and life goals/dreams to train my mind to be content with where I am in the PRESENT. Funny how life goals, as motivating as they are, can make you discontent with who you are. One step at a time” on her recent ig post. I realized that’s so true. I’m so scared of not achieving being a doctor, letting my parents down, not being wealthy, etc etc. I always want to be this amazing perfect dude, no flaws/imperfection, and was never happy with success. Any success I’ve had, Idk if I really took the time to appreciate it THAT much (i obv appreciated to an extent), and I was always focused on these life goals/dreams of mind like being a doctor. I always chased the future, and never just lived in the present. I do want to be a better me, I will always strive to be a better version of me, but all these goals sometimes can make me discontent with who I am. Like fk, I am not insanely ripped/fit, so I’m unhappy with myself. I’m not a successful wealthy boy at just 21, so I’m not happy with myself. I’m not a doctor blah blah, and when I think about how I haven’t achieved certain goals, I’d just feel sad. What’s the point in being sad about what I don’t have? I have goals, but I can’t endlessly chase after them/endlessly chase after the future.

My plans to make the present better and be more present: don’t stress about what might happen ALL the time. If things doesn’t work out, it doesn’t (kind of thinking about uh my upcoming date primarily when writing this). It’s okay if you’re not where you want, as long as you’re at least trying, then it’s okay. Don’t constantly think about the future, just take things one day at a time. You’ll be a lot happier, more productive, and more likely to have a beautiful future too. Just fking live your life Theo. Go work out, go hang out with friends, go to those concerts/clubs, go and spend time on your hobbies (who gives a fk if you’re not good, just do it for fun and for yourself), don’t go wild and not give a fk about responsibilities/school work, but I can’t live my life/plan my career for other ppl, and just do whatever I love. I don’t really believe in reincarnation or anything, so this is my one and only life. Why the fk waste time thinking about the future all the time, stressing about ‘succeeding’, and why not just make sure that I’m happy. If I have family, friends, and wonderful memories, then I think I’d be happy with the time I spent in this world. :)