#bandit answers questions

[aparticularbandit]

Favorite Mugi hcs?

Also if ya need someone to talk to my DMs are always open

Thanks for the question (and the offer)! <3

My Tsumugi headcanon currently falls into two separate things, so I'll share a bit from both!

The Twist Does Not Exist:

Tsum-Tsum! ...because then even her nickname is a reference. >.>;; (Also some people make this zoom zoom to reference a certain Mazda commercial, but she hates that. It annoys her. The only person who gets away with this is probably Junko. Who also probably came up with the original nickname in the first place.)

Always has some sort of show on in the background while she's doing stuff (homework, cosplay, housework; Tsumugi is constantly tuned into something). Her favorite shows, she full in pays attention, she's not multitasking, she's analyzing, she's looking at art design, she's coming up with new cosplay ideas, but most shows are on in the background while she's doing something else. There's kind of a scale with this - the more she cares, the less she does. Creating cosplay during the show is top tier of multitasking before she goes full in.

Has definitely worked in a cosplay cafe. At least once. At least once. (She's not comfortable about being in the spotlight, but it's easier when she's in cosplay as a character who loves the spotlight. Because then she's not her.)

Is drawn to louder, more energetic characters.

If she sees someone cute, she immediately wants to put them in cosplay. Like full-on sparkle in her eyes, will drag them into a bathroom/changing room, need. (If you've seen/read Fruits Basket - like Mine, from Ayame's shop! But Tsumugi and cosplay.) Kind of like immediately dragging Kaede to the bathroom to show off her cospox. That same energy. But for a different reason.

Actually does not have a lot of friends. She knows that the intensity of her interests can turn people off, so she doesn't talk much. But this backfires because it makes her come across as shy. Boring. Plain. She's not very good at fitting in with people's expectations. So she's pretty lonely, actually.

Tsumugi was actually a LOT more popular when she was in elementary school because she could make pretty clothes and kids like pretty clothes so everybody wanted her pretty clothes because she always looked pretty. But there's an age where, like, you grow out of sparkles and frills and big bows and all of that and kind of shove that off into only costumes or only cosplay, and when that happened, Tsumugi just. became. a background NPC in her own life.

Without cosplay, Tsumugi would actually be severely depressed. Cosplay lets her life have color; without it, everything is grayscale and monochrome.

The Twist Exists:

Tsumugi Shirogane is not her real name. It's an alias.

Her real name is Yuki Tsukasa. Yuki - "snow" - because the fandom wiki says that one of the meanings for Shirogane is a metaphor for "snow" and Tsukasa because it means "director, boss".

Definitely dating the girl who got her into cosplay. They are together, they have been together for a long time, they've talked about kids, etc.

Most people don't know she works for Team Danganronpa, and even the ones who do don't know how high up she is in the company. Only her girlfriend knows she's one of the showrunners.

Yuki has gotten death threats from her work on Danganronpa. A lot of the people involved have. That's why her alias exists in the first place: everyone in the credits for a Danganronpa season uses one. Fans can be terrifying to Team Danganronpa, particularly the writers, which is why she just. doesn't talk about it. (She loves her job. She's scared of fans. Reasonably so.)

Would absolutely live in her office if she didn't have a girlfriend to go home to. She's a bit of a workaholic. (She and her girlfriend definitely have fought about this. It didn't change anything.)

Since her co-showrunner's passing, Yuki has been under a lot of stress. They were very good at covering each other's writing weaknesses, and now she's under a lot of pressure to make the show just as good on her own as it was when there were two of them. (She has refused to take on another partner. Danganronpa is theirs. She has very strong opinions about this.)

A lot of characters in the shows have references to people she knows in real life, whether that's personality quirks or traits, or appearances, or even using their names. Most of it is stuff you wouldn't know unless you know.

Despite, as a writer, hating the unknown of having an audience-controlled character, Yuki doesn't hate K1-B0 as a character concept. She just hates the potential for destruction he has. (So she baked it into him from the outset.)

Her use of K1-B0 is actually really smart because Yuki had to accurately predict the way fans would react to any situation where they were given options to do things (I assume polls for major decisions or FTEs, and then those decisions set him on a specific script) - like she had to know they would spend all that time with Miu so that K1-B0 could get those upgrades, she had to make sure that those decisions wouldn't fuck up the script but instead lean into them and give him a good arc and involvement in the story regardless what the fans picked. Like Yuki has to have her thumb on the beating pulse of fandom to be able to do a good job with that, and I applaud her.

[multiversalstarlight]

Is this blog still active?

It's active in the sense that I occasionally think about the thread(s) I have waiting in my drafts and want to answer them, yes, but it's inactive in the sense that I haven't actually responded to anything since last December, unfortunately.

That said.

Check again tomorrow because Agatha might drag me back into MCU thoughts and etc. and if it does, then this account might be more actively active.

...why do you ask?

EDIT: APPARENTLY I ANSWERED SOMETHING IN MARCH???? THIS IS NEWS TO ME, TOO.

[aparticularbandit]

Microstories: 1 matsushima

Micro Story Prompts: don't leave

She breaks after Mukuro takes his heart.

(This is necessary; she tells herself this - she told herself this - and she will tell herself this again; this is necessary, this is part of the plan; but it didn't need to be part of the plan; she didn't need to--)

((She didn't need to do any of this, but she does it anyway - DID it anyway - WILL DO it anyway.))

After Mukuro takes his heart, after she leaves with the unspoken understanding that the other body will be addressed later (this is necessary, she tells herself, but there is literally another corpse right there), the part of herself that should be DEAD crumbles next to his body (the one you kicked until his perfect face was broken beyond recognition) and drags what is left of him to her, cradles it against her, the remnants of his head against her chest (brain matter on her skin mixed with blood the color of her hair, of her eyes)--

"Don't leave me," she whispers, brushing his hair back, pressing a kiss to what can't even be called a skull anymore. "You promised you would never leave me. So don't. Don't."

Strands of his hair wind, bloody, around her neck; she considers - people once made jewelry from hair, for mourning, for bonds eternal - and there is so much of it here.

(When she starts wearing the choker, no one notices, no one gets close enough to be able to tell that it's nothing more than hair, woven tight against her skin.)

((I'll never leave you, he'd promised her, and now he never will.))

[aparticularbandit]

22 matsushima plss

Micro Story Prompts: nap

The thing all of the magazines and articles and interviews will never tell you about Junko Enoshima is that she doesn't sleep. She runs herself ragged - always going, going, going; always high energy; always putting the whole of herself into everything all the time - until, inevitably, she drops. She calls them power naps; he calls her a living terror.

Yasuke remembers the first time he found her splayed out in the plastic tube on the playground, as though she'd hit a wall and abruptly stopped, like a cartoon character with her tongue splayed out; he'd poked her a few times, and when she hadn't responded, he dragged her out of the tunnel, terrified she was dead or suffering from heat stroke or something. She woke just as he'd set his ear over her chest, listening for a heartbeat, and laughed at him before holding him tight to her and giving him a sloppy kiss on his cheek - just the way children do when they've found something new and beloved and wonderful.

She doesn't rest as often now - maybe her body has gotten better at tearing itself apart or maybe her indomitable will pushes her further and further and further - but when she does, when he catches her, he pulls her onto his chest so that she can listen to the rhythm of his steadily beating heart, so it can lull her into relaxing, even if only for one solitary moment.

(Junko says it wakes her up, but he's pretty sure she's lying.)

[aparticularbandit]

sorry for putting her underwear in your askbox but I thought you would enjoy the description

I love her I love Tsumugi SO MUCH.

(I want to say they remind of me Junko's - the unused sprite! - but having gone back to look they really don't.)

[aparticularbandit]

How do your faith + trans support interlock with each other?

(This isn't me looking for a fight, I genuinely want to know.)

I don't want people to die.

I cannot share the love of Christ with someone if they are dead.

[aparticularbandit]

3

Micro Story Prompts: [i] trusted [you]

There's a thin line between how Junko will respond when she realizes what he's done and how Ryoko will respond.

Junko, regaining her memories, will laugh, punch him in the arm a little too hard, and say something like, "Nice betrayal, Yasuke! Just the right amount of despair for a midday snack!" before grinning him like he's the snack and she's a wolf set to devour him, like maybe Fenrir was wrong to take her sister when they wanted was here the whole time.

Ryoko, halfway there, will look up at him with those big doe eyes filled with blood and, crying, say, "I trusted you! You were just...you were just...." before considering it with a sniffle, eyes growing bright, innocent, honest, and smiling up at him like the sun at dawn - "You wanted to keep me with you forever! You really love me!" like she's some sort of bird whose wings he can clip to keep in a cage forever, like the cage won't someday fall and break her neck.

He can't know which one he will get, so he never takes the risk.

[aparticularbandit]

Junko "Anime Sucks" Enoshima with her bf who never puts down his manga, predecessor who is also an otaku, and the Ultimate Cosplayer who is obsessed with her...

Ok Junko, sure

But like. If I remember correctly, that's when she first meets Ryota, right?

It's got nothing to do with whether or not she personally believes that and everything to do with what is the most despair she can cause Ryota.

Like, look, super hot fashionista sees you, calls your meeting a fateful encounter (or something similar), grabs you and gives you a big hug, and then asks you what you do/like? And then immediately gets disgusted and says the equivalent of fuck you?

Junko just says that to get a rise out of Ryota. And it works.

She doesn't mean it seriously.

[aparticularbandit]

immortal witch riding hood this week please!

WIP Wednesday Game

can do and have done! thanks so much for asking!!

Then you skip off further into the woods.  You succeeded at this, so you’ll succeed at finding the herbs.  No problem!

(Amazing, how such a simple success can change your whole worldview, your whole outlook on life.  You’d say that it doesn’t still happen, but you would be lying.)

You don’t find the herbs.

In fact, you walk around the woods for so long that you’re not sure you can find your way out.  The sun starts to set; the sky overhead grows a little darker; and you start to walk back.  But you’re tired – even with Fay, even when you spend the full day with her, you don’t do this much walking.  And even if you didn’t get hurt, you did climb a tree, and you did fall from the tree.

And….

And….

You’re…lost.

[aparticularbandit]

Micro story: 33 Matsushima for the birthday boy!!

Micro Story Prompts: Saccharine

It's five o'clock on a Thursday afternoon when Yasuke writes in what will be Ryoko's notebook and hopes that Junko won't notice. Then, later, he goes to the ice cream shoppe and waits. Ten years ago to the day, his mother took him here and bought him the biggest, most extravagant something in the entire shop; he thought it was a reward for being good, but it was really a distraction from something bad. Junko stopped eating here when she became a model - something about needing to maintain her figure - but he remembers cotton candy stuck in bright red hair, chocolate smudged around saccharine lips. He waits four hours; when he despairs and stands to leave, hands shoved into his pocket, the bell dings at the door, and those old red eyes find his with a bright smile. (She'll stain her shirt. He doesn't care.)

[aparticularbandit]

I know you talk about struggling with certain media containing spirits and such, but are you ok with describing specific triggers and topics that make you uncomfortable? (I want to make sure I dont recommend media that doesn't hurt you and add specific content warnings for Code-Lav since it deals with afterlife topics)

I'm okay with it mostly? I just don't really want to get into specifics publicly because I went through a slew of hate anon at the end of 2022-the beginning of 2023 and I don't want those sorts of things available for them to use if they come back.

I know that the general content of Rain Code is something I don't have a problem with; I can read it, but due to the nature of Yuma's contract with Shinigami, I would have trouble trying to play the game. (Undertale and Madoka I also had to be careful with due to how they use souls; I cannot play the full Genocide route because of its ending, because if I got to that point, I would never be able to restart the game. (This is also why I haven't played Doki Doki Literature Club, despite loving the game, because it has a couple of throwaway lines that make references made even stronger due to Monika's fourth wall breaks.))

I've gotten pretty good at like. checking for the specific triggers if I know that there's a general idea they might be there, and most of the time, as long as I know about them ahead of time, I can be okay because I can set up for good mindspace and etc. to be able to engage if I really want to. I tend to run into trouble when I try to push when I wasn't aware ahead of time. (There's a couple of movies I actively avoid as a result of this, actually.)

...that's more information than you asked for. ><;;;;;

[aparticularbandit]

Idk if you write yandere but if it is okay. Maybe yandere Claire and reader

Thank u

Rating: M for mature themes.

IDK if this is what you wanted, Nonnie, but I tried.

You first ran into Claire Debella during your junior year of college. Every now and again, a guest speaker would be called on for one of the upper level classes, and you'd come into college with a bunch of early credits, putting you well in range to take that class, even though you shouldn't have been able to take it until senior year. You'd thought, well, it would be nice to hear from people in the actual field more often than not and had set yourself up to take it once your junior year and once your senior year - perhaps more, if you could get your credits to align.

Claire was the first speaker, a Democrat from Connecticut on the campaign trail, stopping to encourage the next generation. To vote, primarily. Especially to vote for her.

Halfway through her speech, she asked a question, something tricky, and while she didn't call on you first, you were the one who had the correct answer. You'd seen it in her eyes then, the glimmer of approval followed by the gentle lift of her lips in the barest hint of a smile that she'd all too quickly suppressed as she continued speaking.

Afterwards, Claire stopped you. "No other student has ever answered that correctly."

"It wasn't hard," you said without thinking. "It follows logic and the patterns of the masses. Any intelligent person should have been able to come up with the answer." You smirked. "Eventually."

Claire gave you a look that you didn't notice and then one that you did, her arms crossing under her chest. "I have an opening on my team."

You glanced up at her. "An internship?"

"Paid."

Your brows raised.

"Experience on the campaign trail will do wonders for you," Claire continued, looking away from you. Or, as you realize later, pretending to do so, not wanting you to catch her at it.

You considered it. You wanted it. But--

"I can't," you said and hating yourself for saying it. "I can't miss that much school--"

"A mentorship, then." Claire's eyes flicked over to you, and as soon as you noticed her gaze, they trailed up to meet your eyes. "Zoom meetings on the trail, in person afterwards. How does that sound?"

You could arrange for that. You could make time. It would help you tremendously in the future, when you started looking for jobs after college, to say you'd been mentored by someone like Claire. Perhaps she would have that opening again next summer and you could be an intern then--

Then you gave her a slight nod. "Sounds good to me."

Claire smiled then, but you didn't notice the darkness in it until much later. "Any intelligent person would have come to that answer eventually." She met your eyes again hungrily. "We'll talk soon."

~

Claire had seemed like a normal mentor. Even more than that, she'd seemed normal over that summer when you did intern for her - and she paid you well above minimum wage, well above maybe what you should have been paid - but that hadn't seemed bad. Or wrong.

Sure, she'd never approved of any of your dates, and usually they broke up with you very, very shortly after being alone with her, but you never put two and two together until later.

Not until after you graduated.

Not until after she gave you a real job.

~

It's an event that maybe you shouldn't have been at.

No, you definitely shouldn't have been there, but Claire invited you. Said you were the best assistant she'd ever had and you deserved to go, so you had. Dressed your best, but still not quite enough to fit in with the other elites around you.

Claire rubbed shoulders with a lot of people given her influence, got invited to a lot of parties. This is just one of them - a birthday party for the not entirely well-esteemed Birdie Jay. Claire assured you she was just an old friend, but you're still not sure.

Still. Standing here among models and fashion elites, you feel...out of place. Like you shouldn't be here.

And it doesn't make you feel any better that Claire is conspicuously not paying you any attention. It's like...like she invited you, but she....

Maybe she hadn't really expected you to come.

So you end up at the open bar, drinking a little too much, feeling like Cinderella might have felt at the ball if she'd stayed past midnight, until one of Claire's other old friends - Jen Barkley, who you'd spent plenty of time with during your internship and who had frequently interrupted your Zoom meetings. Not always with very good reasons.

....

Actually, never with good reason.

If you're honest with yourself, you don't like Jen. But you're drunk, and she's...not quite drunk, actually, but close enough, and if you look at her in just the right light, she almost looks like Claire.

(You will never tell anyone that you find Claire attractive. At least not again. Your old roommate did not approve of your crush. You don't know what happened to her either. She just stopped talking to you after graduation. Which is odd because you'd thought you were really good friends.)

Which is how you end up in one of the hallways off of the main room with Jen's tongue down your throat, and to be honest, she's not that great of a kisser, but she's warm and she's there and you're definitely more than a little bit drunk and--

All of a sudden, Jen stops. You think about asking her why, but then you see the hand on her shoulder and Claire standing behind her with daggers for eyes. It doesn't matter that you're drunk; you swallow hard and find yourself saying, "Sorry, sorry, we shouldn't have," in a slur, avoiding Claire's eyes.

Claire's hand tenses on Jen's shoulder. "Jen, can I talk to you for a minute?" She guides Jen away from you, offers you something that looks halfway between a smile and halfway between bared teeth, and then says, "You should go on home. Drunk isn't a good look on you."

You bite your lower lip and nod.

Except.

You want to apologize to Claire again. You want to know that she isn't going to fire you for being so unprofessional. This might not be a professional event, but Claire invited you, and if you made her look bad, then....

This is why you don't drink at these sorts of things.

So you wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

And then people start leaving but Claire hasn't shown up again, and you're pretty certain that people can't leave down the hallway where you'd been with Jen, so Claire should be coming back this way. Or should have. And hasn't. Isn't.

Claire's your boss. You should probably go check and make sure she's okay. Not that Jen would do anything to her. Ew, gross, wait, maybe they're together and that's why Jen kept barging in on your Zoom streams while Claire was campaigning. Maybe Claire was mad at Jen because she shouldn't have been making out with you, she should have been with Claire--

All of this you think while you walk down the hallway, checking out every door you find, and then you think you see Claire, so you push open the door and--

Oh.

Oh.

"Claire?"

The room is dark, but you can tell that she's covered in something red and wet and shining, and you're drunk and really hope that isn't blood.

You also hope that isn't a body on the floor in front of her. Really hope that isn't Jen.

Claire turns to you. "You...weren't supposed to see this."

Suddenly, your heart starts beating faster. Claire just killed someone. Claire just killed someone and you walked in on it. Claire is going to kill you.

But before you can make it to the door, Claire is there, a hand on your wrist, and when you open your mouth to scream, she kisses you instead. You still scream, at first, but she muffles you, and then you kind of forget that you're supposed to be screaming because for all that Jen was a bad kisser, Claire is. well. wow. Before you know it, you're kissing her back, and then your hand is in her hair, and then her hair is sticky because blood, and then you're screaming again, but it doesn't last as long this time.

Claire parts just enough to say, "I'm not going to hurt you," and you hate it, but you're drunk, and you believe her. But that doesn't stop your heart from beating fast in your chest. She glares over her shoulder at the body. "Jen knew better than to touch you."

You should ask.

You swallow hard.

You don't ask.

[aparticularbandit]

Monaca: Screw the rules, I have green hair!

[aparticularbandit]

Plus I appreciated that one moment of genuine confusion from Alter Ego Junko when Hajime basically went all Goku at the end there, like some actual concern, just for a moment: I’d like to imagine internally she was thinking ‘Izuru, you okay there buddy?’ because what happened with Hajime then was kind of like if a fountain pen decided it was a water fountain, like you do a double take at that.

I feel like there was another ask that was meant to go before this one? This feels like a continuation of something else I didn't get? So sorry if I don't...have the other one?

Alter Ego Junko out here waiting for Izuru to show up after having never even once met Hajime and instead of Izuru breaking through and being her bestie again, Hajime goes all Super Saiyan and there's no Izuru at all.

How unfort. She would have liked to see the two Hopes meet each other. Hajime's just. not the same. (Junko pouting.)

[aparticularbandit]

The kyoko panel I mentioned from drkk, because she killed it.

I NO LIE HONESTLY LOVE KYOKO'S FUTURE FOUNDATION OUTFIT.

LIKE. MY GIRL DONE GREW UP AND BECAME AN ACTUAL ADULT LOOK AT HER!

[aparticularbandit]

uh uh uh Junko about Mikan or something

ABSOLUTELY. 100%. IT IS THEM.