#But now everyone has to move forward

[restlessthio]

I'm back into aldnoah fandom at the moment 😌 I'm a big Slaine enjoyer but as someone who struggled with feeling emotions until I was like 25, I've grown a soft spot for Inaho over the years- so he can struggle with his life choices and have chronic issues and ptsd, as a treat 😌

(If you recognize the ref I used for the 2nd pic, you have good taste in art)

[emoreooo]

every step forward is a step closer to home

[windcarvedlyre]

I've been following @druidposting's DR2 playthrough on discord and we just had a really good discussion about DR's Closing Arguments. Specifically the way the murderer is depicted as grey and featureless, which until now I found a bit annoying.

In Danganronpa it's repeatedly the case that we don't have the full picture until the talking actually stops- which always goes beyond the end of the trial. We generally vote first and come to understand what the murderer's actual motive was, sometimes filling in important pieces of the timeline in the process, afterwards.

But none of that matters for the killing game because characters' emotions aren't directly relevant to who was the 'blackened'- the only thing that matters to Monokuma- so it comes out afterwards and does nothing to change their execution. It doesn't matter how sympathetic they are (basically everyone) or whether other people share responsibility for the situation (eg. Hanamura, Pekoyama, Momota) or whether they intended to murder at all (Nanami). They objectively pulled the trigger and nothing else matters. Nothing about them as a person matters.

The Closing Argument mechanic might illustrate that problem- literally. They're a dramatic, conclusive summary of the entire case... constructed before the vote even happens, before we know if we're actually right, and they're missing something really important:

The actual perpetrator.

We quite literally don't even begin to see the real person behind the crime, any real exploration of their mental state, anything besides the cold, hard facts of the murder that are necessary to convict them, until the comic finishes and the protagonist makes their final accusation- replacing the grey figure with their real appearance in a shot that's often intensely emotional.

And these comics lack crucial parts of the case's timeline and sometimes important parts of the very scenes they depict that we only find out about afterwards. And those are what we know; characters may die with some pieces of the truth and prevent us from ever learning them. These aren't objective depictions of the murder, they're the protagonist's subjective attempt to connect the facts they have. A join-the-dots portrait of someone with missing dots and no colour.

Even characters' expressions may not match how they truly feel, with the grey placeholder potentially looking way more confident and sinister than they were in reality. Pasting Falter's commentary here since they put it well.

For obvious reasons this could especially be a problem for characters that die before the trial- the ones we never get a post-vote testimony from. DR1 chapter 4 really highlighted that in the way Asahina's huge misinterpretation of Oogami's feelings took up a lot of the post-trial discussion, only for Monokuma to reveal Oogami's real suicide note and recontextualise everything.

It might really be a problem for how Komaeda's depicted in DR2 chapter 5. While he isn't greyed out, we get panel after panel where he's either level-headed or maniacally evil, and even the depictions of his self-torture and death don't humanise him:

But we know that his real feelings were more complicated than that. We have his actual corpse to compare the last page to.

He died afraid.

If we approach the comic as Hinata's mental image of him instead of reality, he died without anyone truly understanding him. He was alarming, very hard to relate to, actively fought against people doing so, ensured even the killer didn't watch him die, and the survivors couldn't begin to understand his motive until a chapter later. The Closing Argument reflects that.

Early in DR1 Togami calls out the rest of his class for judging others by their own standards. However, he, too, is doing this, maybe more so than many other characters; his inability to view other people through anything but the cold, brutal logic of the killing game bites him in the ass in chapter 4. In DR2 chapter 2 voting without a good understanding of Pekoyama's motive or Kuzuryuu's involvement nearly got everyone killed. Komaeda's a walking embodiment of the problems with flattening people into caricatures and not empathising with them, suffered from people doing that back to him, and his case- the Closing Argument for which turned everyone else into grey placeholders- was impossible to solve with objective facts. It was only survivable because the survivors cooperated and one person tried to analyse things the way he would.

The games have always been a critique of the justice system and Japanese society and push us to care about others as individuals, not reduce them to- and judge their right to exist by- something they've done or their net impact on society. There are always consequences when someone neglects to do that, and the above might be yet another way the games explore that theme.

[habeascorpseus]

"just dont lose yourself, okay?"

"i cant. i've tried to."

"Don't forget to enjoy this, today. Cuz if you lose yourself in trying to hurt the people who took it, you might....just don't forget the good stuff, okay?"

"i cant. i've tried."

godddd cellbits recurring motif of "i cant. ive tried." whenever someone tells him not to lose himself, both the bad and the good is so.. the implication of a perpetual fruitless spiral of turning man to monster and monster to man, and failing at both because loves too deeply and instinct is ingrained into him deeper than the carvings in his knife. he cant fucking stand himself. he can't stand how he can't be normal and has to rely on drinking copius amounts of coffee to stay awake enough to not lose it. he can't stand how even in the depths of his desire for vengeance, he hears the pain in his loved ones' voices and still stops to listen. these two parts of him have to be incongruous, because he knows he was happier when he was one without the other. and yet, time and time again the people who care about him tell him not to lose himself like they view him as whole. and again and again, he tells them that he can't. because he's tried to break himself in half and it doesnt fucking work like that. and he'll continue until he destroys himself because hes fucking Tired of being whole.

[katierosefun]

this moment was insane to me personally

[roydick]

Stop putting the other Robins down to prop up your fave as the sole "right" Robin.

Some people are so so obvious when talking about the Robins in that they clearly don't care to think about the different ways Robin is important to all of them. My personal favorite wanted it more so therefore they are more entitled and how dare people say that maybe moving on to something else would be good for them.

Going out of your way to detail all the ways they understand it's meaning better and deserve Robin more than the others (with no real consideration given to the meaning behind it i.e. the Graysons) while minimizing everyone else to "for selfish reasons" is not the win you seem to think it is.

It's just so clear that you don't actually care about any of the others and you don't truly care about the meaning behind it (while claiming that that is your motivation). How dare the 10 year old with an extremely narrow world view who just lost his sole connection to Gotham (his father) want to be Robin, he clearly doesn't understand what it means and he's just being selfish. Like I don't know, maybe he's just 10? I think everyone could stand to approach early Damian with more grace and consideration for just how awful his situation truly was. And he moved on from the "selfish" motivations very quickly, he was a child looking for something to belong to and viewed Robin as a way to get that!

[junkissed]

Hi! Where did you go for the past couple weeks? Are things okay for you rn?

hi! i put junkissed on private for a while so i could take a break since there is a lot going on for me rn. it's very unlikely that i will write on here anymore but i haven't decided for certain yet. i won't delete this blog, but it's possible i might private it again. if i do, i'll repost some of my fics on ao3 (i think it's linked in my pinned post - but the username is also junkissed there). i'm also still active on my main blog @wenjunehui but it's only for gifs.

[spellsparkler]

writing elias is fun for, i expect, the same reason a lot of people find the dark urge fun: I know more or less what's going on with her and she's got no fucking clue. she's a very information-driven person, and as soon as she realises that there is some largely indefinable difference between her and the rest of them she immediately starts trying to catalogue it and narrow it down. it's interesting to write someone who is so deliberately aware of themself and observing themself all the time

[youremyonlyhope]

Who gave Sondheim the right to write a song as bittersweetly perfect as Sorry-Grateful?

[existentialcrisis-24-7]

Godddddd it’s such a pain to be hyperfixating on your own ocs. It’s a fucking nightmare. I just want these guys to do their thing and tell people their stories but nOOooOoOooo I have to write it first! But that’s not the medium I want to tell it through so I have to learn how to make comics! Or animate! Liek anfucking idirot

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[arolesbianism]

Doodle I did of my girl Juliet earlier

[lumidark166]

should i post of my scrapped aus/ideas/hcs of kamen rider cause i have tons of crossover/aus in my head but its kinda messy af, also you can ask this in my ask box btw cause i am bored af (THE KR DRESS ASK THING IS STILL OKAY TO ASK TOO!!!)

[wickershells]

god i feel so stupid all the time like i am far too unintelligent for every discussion i have and i am such a crybaby over it. people mildly and fairly correct me or word something much more eloquently and concise and beautiful than i ever could or even just read something id been meaning to for a long time and instantly i spiral into self-worthlessness. and years ago this feeling motivated me into reading more, researching more, writing more etc. so that i was always aspiring to level with people & be an equal but now i feel paralysed by it!!! all i want to do is curl up into a ball and weep and never talk to anyone ever again. am i destined forever to be a small vulnerable wounded child. who is just so so so dumb. how do i get over this

[cryptvokeeper]

Man. I wanna talk abt Rise Leo again now

[zemnarihah]

hm. my dad is now aware that i have slept over at eriks when i visit him.