#general are able to sense whenever someone is not being 100% authentic and i believe i've mentioned this before BUT barton does sometimes-

[mad-hunts]

barton being awkward at first or even completely throughout a whole interaction whenever he's trying to comfort people is so in character for him TBH and let me tell y'all why because i think it's important to his character:

he can fake a lot of things. barton can fake being nice to people, he can fake being innocent, and he can even fake having a much stronger sense of morality around people if he wants to — but whenever it comes to empathizing with someone on an emotional level... barton finds himself often struggling with faking it because of the nature of it. and this is due to it being different than whenever he's trying to feign something easily comprehensible like innocence. but empathy is something that's usually viewed as innate in us as humans and has to do with love, which doesn't depend on logic. it's something that comes from within, so it doesn't have clear parameters as to how you should do it, so whenever barton tries to fake it in the event that he's trying to make someone feel better; he'll stumble. and so although barton can cognitively empathize with someone, his efforts to actually put himself in other people's shoes fall flat, as he just can't physically imagine himself being in someone else's position probably more than half the time.

so if your muse were to ever come to him seeming upset, barton would likely not know what to do / how to comfort them, at least for a bit before referencing back on how he's seen other people do it. because i hate to say it (i don't, in reality, but y'all know what i mean LOL) but barton does actively mimic behaviors that he sees people do whenever he feels the absence of a certain emotion. he especially does this whenever he's trying to appear charming to other people, but like i said, he'll also try to use what he's seen his peers do as a guide as for what he should do in regards to empathy. and sometimes he may even seem a bit flustered before he's able to do this because he knows that it is expected of him to be able to empathize with people and can identify it in other people BUT knowing how to approach faking it has always been sort of hard for him even as an adult.

but yeahhh, that's just my own two cents about how barton sometimes break character that he is quote unquote ' normal, ' though he does try to mask this around people who aren't really familiar with him as simply being social awkwardness. however, it is part of a larger thing with him as despite the fact that he can blend in with the population REALLY well and also is pretty good at manipulating others, i suppose you could say that barton is still not an expert at ' constructing empathy ' because whenever someone is visibly hurt in front of him... he is more liable to act like he isn't sure what to do, than to put on an act immediately since he is likely to feel nothing first before anything else. and i realize that that is a rather unsettling thought, but i think that he is a lot more suspectible to doing this with people he doesn't know well / who he isn't particularly close to, as he's got a lot more practice with being falsely empathetic towards friends and/or sometimes even family members.

[davidmann95]

It seems Tyler Hoechlin is your favorite live-action Superman, but can you rank the actors from worst to best as you see it (of the current actors, I'm not sold on Hoechlin yet, but I think it has more to do with my dislike of his costume—particularly how the cape attaches—that it distracts me from the character, while Cavill seems to physically look perfect for the part and certainly is capable of the acting and charm, but the script he has to work with is lacking)?

Leaving out Kirk Alyn, John Haymes Newton and Gerard Christopher, since I’m not familiar with their performances:

7. Tom Welling

I feel kind of bad about this one. I grew up watching Smallville, y’know? And in terms of sheer man-hours devoted to the role, Welling has more of a claim to being Superman than anyone other than Bud Collyer. But he…wasn’t great, in retrospect. I suspect it was largely a matter of the material he was given; he did well whenever he actually had something to do, whether as dorky reporter Clark Kent intermittently throughout the final season, or various cases of amnesia/mind control/body-swapping/Red Kryptonite exposure. But outside maybe a sweet spot after he’d grown into the role and before he visibly started to get tired of it, and occasionally when getting to spar with (better) actors like Durance, Rosenbaum, and Glover, he had a weird stiffness when playing regular Clark Kent that for the most part didn’t translate into charm once he couldn’t bank on teen awkwardness anymore, and while that frankly made him a pretty honest depiction of the increasingly dicey version of the character he was written as, it didn’t make for a great take on Superman.

6. Henry Cavill

Cavill’s been more let down by the material than anything else - the unfortunate unifying factor of the bottom three here. When the movies let him be great, he really is great, whether promising Martha that he isn’t going anywhere even after learning the truth about Krypton or fighting for the stories he believes in against Perry White. For the most part though he just seems to be called on to look varying degrees of sad and solemn, asked to call on none of the charm he showed in, say, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Granted his Superman has a lot to be down about, but there’s no range on display here; I don’t doubt he’s got a great take on the character in him, but for now it’s being kept under wraps.

5. Brandon Routh

Of all the reasons Superman Returns was such a damn shame, maybe the biggest was that it buried any chance of seeing the performance out of Brandon Routh that he so clearly had to offer. He’s a great dorky Clark, a charming Superman, and when the stars line up just right, he really manages to capture the idea of Superman as a melancholy figure - his take doesn’t just seem to be bearing the weight of the world in the philosophical abstract, but much more palpably feels an entire planet crying out for him, knowing he can never save them all but always trying anyway out of unconditional love, very much in line with Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s take on him in Hitman. Unfortunately all that takes up maybe 10-15 minutes of runtime, spending the rest of the movie stalking his ex with a neutral expression until he gets shived by Kevin Spacey and regurgitates Brando at his secret kid. Superman Returns was weird, ya’ll.

4. Dean Cain

I was honestly surprised with myself when I decided Cain won out as the best of the rest outside the big three - I thought for sure it’d be Routh. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that while Routh’s take is definitely closer to the version of Superman I had in my head, it’s compromised in a way the Superman of Lois & Clark never was: like the take or not, this is a perfect realization of the Superman the creators of the show clearly had in mind. His Clark’s funny, clever, warm, and vulnerable, and while it feels weird for him to be acting that way in the glasses these were the Byrne years, so as an expression of his ‘real’ self it’s pretty on-point. His Superman’s the weaker end, stilted even given it’s supposed to be him putting on a performance in-universe, but there’s such an unironic earnestness there that it typically slid back into charming.

3. George Reeves

I thought for awhile about 2 and 3, ultimately concluding that what was asked of George Reeves was a fair deal simpler. He didn’t much differentiate between Superman and Clark, and his booming radio announcer voice made clear we weren’t supposed to be measuring his performance in terms of whether or not he seemed like a real person. What he was called on to show though, and what he had out the wazoo, was raw charisma. When Jimmy asks him why he burst through a wall rather than using a door and Superman replies with a grin “Well, this seemed a little more spectacular,” you’re 100% willing to buy into that explanation, because yeah, it was spectacular, because Superman’s fantastic. And he could more than hold his own with the best of them when asked to work with more serious material, whether wandering through an amnesic fog in Panic In The Sky with only his instinctive decency to guide him, or here, in the final scene of The Dog Who Knew Superman, where Clark has to deal with a dog not only adoring him, but recognizing him in both identities:

2. Christopher Reeve

I gave Tom Welling his well-earned due earlier, but if you really want to talk about a guy with a solid claim to being Superman, Christopher Reeve didn’t just embed himself on the psyche of a generation, but is still held up today as the unequivocal standard by which the role is set. In all likelihood he’ll always be ‘the’ Superman, in the same way as Sean Connery will always be James Bond, and Bela Lugosi will always be Dracula. He shone like the sun in the costume, he was believably such a wimpy klutz out of it that no one would guess they were the same even when it was staring them in the face, and if anyone has any lingering suspicions that he just had the easy task of playing two extremely arch roles to the hilt, they might be forgetting this bit:

Was it perfect? I don’t know about that - if nothing else there were one or two awkward line readings, and the identity division is so sharp that it’s hard to tell when you’re getting a glimpse of the real guy underneath all the identities. But while I definitely question how much of a positive impact on Superman those movies themselves really had in the long run, Reeve’s performance on its own was an undeniable revelation, everything he did reverberating with such a sincere and powerful sense of decency and love for his fellow man that it not only brought Superman to the life, but frankly changed him forever for the better.

1. Tyler Hoechlin

I expected nothing out of this guy. Not that I by any means thought he’d be bad, but when I heard some dude from Teen Wolf was gonna appear on an episode or two of Supergirl, my reaction was about as intense as…well, what you’d expect upon hearing that some dude from Teen Wolf was showing up on Supergirl, even given who he was playing (granted I’ve never seen Teen Wolf and don’t actually especially know what Teen Wolf is, beyond that it’s based on that werewolf-playing-basketball 80s movie written by…wait, Jeph Loeb?!). Looked fine - and it became clear he actually really did look the part once behind-the-scenes pictures started to come out, rather than that godawful original promo picture - and I figured he’d belt out his best Reeve/Animated Series/Cartoon-on-the-side-of-a-cereal-box brand Generic Superman Performance to cheer Kara on before vanishing into the sunset forever outside of the opening credits. I was plenty interested in the potential long-term ramifications of Superman being allowed on TV again in any capacity for the first time since the 90s, given the influence that suggested Geoff Johns had as the new DC President and what that could mean in terms of other characters showing up down the line, but I wasn’t inclined to think of this as anything other than a stepping stone, only notable in its own right because it meant someone would be wearing the s-shield.

Then we actually saw him.

Where the hell has this guy been all these years? Was he grown in a goddamn laboratory for the part? How did the best Superman ever end up in a minor recurring guest spot on the CW Supergirl show?

It would be so, so easy to leap to the idea that he simply works as a jack-of-all-trades: he’s almost as charming as Reeve, just about as confident as Reeves, nearly as vulnerable as Cain. But that would be selling what he’s doing short - especially given that he probably hasn’t had the opportunity to stretch as far as he could in any of those directions, as his role so far has very much been as Supergirl’s backup dancer. What it comes down to is his general demeanor and how he incorporates those aspects into a whole that feels more fully-realized than any portrayal before him. His Superman and Kent are not only distinctive to the point that within the heightened reality the show occupies you can buy that people think of them as different people, but you can see threads from both of them connecting back to the real Clark you see around Kara. He’s open and warm and authentic in a way none of his predecessors quite were, and he’s able to turn on a dime into steely determination or outright fury while remaining recognizable. He’s above everyone’s heads and vaguely alien at times without ever seeming detached or less than entirely loving of the people around him, able to admit his fears and failings while staying strong and capable of changing for the better, utterly and palpably good without ever sliding into naivete or cartoonishness. In short he has range and nuance, and thanks to that along with the air of laid-back friendliness he brings with him, he more than anyone else to put on the suit feels like a real person. And somehow, that real person feels as much as anyone ever has like Superman. And that’s a hell of an achievement. So someone give him his own goddamn show already.

[murasaki-murasame]

Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 19 [Chapter 6 - Trial]

I was going to make some sort of a vague meme about this ending, but honestly I don’t even want to indirectly spoil anyone about what happens, so I’ll just say that this was fantastic.

This probably won’t actually be the end of my liveblog, since I have some post-game content to do, and some optional bonus things throughout the game I might just google and write about later whenever I get around to that. But this is the ending of the main game.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

[Fake edit: hahahaha holy fuck this ended up being 10.4k words long. Good fucking luck to anyone who wants to read all of it, I guess, lol]

Jesus christ, where do I even start with this??? There’s just . . . so much shit that went down. So much.

To start things off, I wasn’t kidding when I said that this was a fantastic ending, overall. I loved it a lot. It was so ambitious and intense and surreal that I couldn’t help but like it. I definitely have SOME issues with things, but I’ll get to them later.

I should at least say that, as you can all verify from my last post, I wasn’t exactly expecting Tsumugi of all people to be the mastermind. I guess it justified her continued existence in the story, after she felt so weirdly pointless.

Though before I talk about Tsumugi specifically, on the whole topic of pointless characters, Himiko was definitely . . . the weakest link by far. I don’t really hate her or anything, but she just had so little going for her as a character by the end. Even the whole thing with Tenko dying and giving her emotional strength and development and stuff felt like it didn’t really change much. So seeing her alive by the end, especially in the epilogue scene, felt . . . awkward. It’s not like I wanted her to die or anything, but I feel like the epilogue might have had a bit more . . . weight to it, if it was just Shuichi and Maki left. I dunno. I’ll talk about the epilogue later.

On the topic of Tsumugi, I honestly think I might prefer her as a villain over Junko. Mostly because this game’s entire ending and it’s overall theme feels way more interesting than everything Junko represented. I’ve said before that I really do like Junko as a villain, and that seeing her come back yet again would have been totally fine, but I think I liked Tsumugi as a villain even more than her. I’m aware that with how Tsumugi’s character works in general, there’s not much that actually sets her apart from Junko, but still. The things she represents on a thematic level are really interesting to me.

I also just appreciate that it was genuinely surprising to me that she was the mastermind. I really didn’t see it coming until they basically spelled it out for me.

I probably should have guessed where this trial was heading in advance. I said last time that the shot put ball and whatnot confused me, but it should have been obvious that it was hinting at Kaede not truly being the first killer. And the detail of the secret entrance to the hidden room being in the girl’s bathroom should have clued me in about Tsumugi. I could easily see someone else figuring it out if they had a good memory and also figured out that the chapter one case would be relevant again, but I didn’t remember the detail about Tsumugi having gone to the bathroom around the time Rantarou died, so that was a genuine surprise. I really like that they actually planted evidence pointing toward her at the start of the game, even though it didn’t really become apparent until you learn stuff much later in the game.

I also really liked the whole detail of how her talent as the Ultimate Cosplayer connected with her role as the mastermind. It really wasn’t what I was expecting at all.

To dive right into the Big Twists, it turns out that my guess about how this would end was basically the opposite of what I expected. I’ve said before that I expected the reveal to be that the world of V3 was a fictional story being broadcast to the ‘real’ DR world, but in the end, if we at least take the ending at face value, it was the entire DR franchise that was ‘fictional’ in the context of V3′s world. So that threw me off big-time. In general things escalated way more than I expected, and there were way more layers of meta going on than I thought there’d be.

But I love how that all tied into Tsumugi’s identity. Like, I totally believed that she was really Junko, or at least some kind of clone or descendant or whatever of Junko, and I accepted the idea that ‘Tsumugi’ was just a fake identity. But nope, Junko is just a character she’s cosplaying! I didn’t consider it at first because of the whole cospox plot point, but then the big twist happened and it became clear that she can cosplay as Junko because, in the world of V3, Junko is a fictional character.

The whole scenario of her continually switching between cosplays was, to be honest, genuinely disturbing. Especially since they got the original VAs to voice their appropriate lines. So it really felt as if all of the previous characters were coming in, which helped make the trial feel really fever dream-y, in a good way. It really hammered in that feeling of artificiality going on.

It’s interesting to me that, with how the whole ending worked, ‘Tsumugi’ was probably still a fake identity of sorts. Like how every other character’s identity was made up, to the point where it was heavily implied that even their names were fictional. So it’d make sense if Tsumugi’s whole identity was also fake. She called herself the Ultimate Cosplayer, but if we believe her story then the whole concept of Ultimates wouldn’t truly exist in their world anyway. But I like the implication that she was basically just pretending. It’s consistent with everything else, at least, and her talent didn’t really play into her actual plot role at all, just her ‘aesthetic’ as a character, if that makes sense. So I like the idea that she was just a random, ‘talentless’ member of Team Danganronpa who adopted a false identity in order to take part in the killing game. The idea that we might have never known her true identity at all beyond, well, her job position and her personality, makes me like her even more as a villain, somehow.

In general, I love how incredibly meta this ending was. I love how cynical it was. I love how it rejects itself as a franchise, and everyone playing it. It’s great. The fact that they openly talked about the Danganronpa franchise, Team Danganronpa, and the entire fandom, was just great. I totally get why the guilt-trip nature of it might bug people, but I like it. It’s certainly hard to argue against the point it’s making. This game only existed because people actively supported this series. Because they genuinely enjoyed experiencing the emotionally thrills and catharsis that the killing games gave them. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the series just keeps going like nothing happened.

I’m aware that the ending wasn’t really intended to be genuinely spiteful towards it’s audience, especially since the final moments of the game are all about the audience changing their minds and deciding that they want to stop the killing games, and to also save as many of the remaining characters as possible, but there’s definitely still a very clear element of spite going on that can’t really be ignored. It’s very vocally aware and critical of the way that people enjoy violent media, even if it also accepts the possibility of people being able to change for the better and be positively influenced by the stories they read.

It just fascinates me that they even went this far. That they took their franchise to such an absurd point. That they created the idea of this fictional future where their own franchise would grow so big and so popular that they’d start killing real people to continue it. That they made themselves, as the people who made this game, the villains. It’s such an incredibly risky move that I’ve basically never seen before, especially if we take into account that this franchise has been going on for like 5+ years already. It’s also part of why I don’t think this ending was 100% spiteful toward it’s audience. Because, at the very least, it also holds itself accountable in all this. The devs are aware that they’re the ones actually sitting down to make these games in the first place. So it’s not like they’re placing all of the blame on their consumers.

The whole back and forth spiral of emotional tension and cynicism and hopefulness and redemption and self-awareness made the whole ending part incredibly intense and emotional. It really did feel like the people making the game were laying themselves bare and engaging in a direct conversation with the people playing their game, to ask them to consider the idea of violent media, and the idea of the authenticity of lies/fiction vs truth/reality.

Weirdly enough, this whole ending reminds me a fair bit of Nier: Automata, and that game’s entire thematic point. They’re very different games, in obvious ways, but they’re weirdly similar.

I didn’t really see the whole Argument Armament section coming, but oh man that part sure was an experience. Thankfully I’ve been slowly getting better at them, but it was still really stressful. But what truly made it special was hearing the voices of the audience during it. I just love the entire concept of you literally arguing against the voices of people saying stuff like ‘ugh, I hate meta endings like this!’ or ‘I’ve invested too much time and money into this franchise for it to just end!’ or ‘I just want to see people kill each other, death is the entire point of Danganronpa!’. And then eventually it just became a bit of an unending scream of ‘HOPE DESPAIR DESPAIR HOPE HOPE HOPE DESPAIR HOPE’, which was honestly the most perfect way it could have ended. With how obsessed this franchise has been with the concepts of hope and despair, and with how more and more emotional weight and baggage has been placed on those concepts, it’s very fitting that this game basically ends with you facing down a horde of disembodied voices mindlessly shouting out that words, and you telling them that you plan to end the Danganronpa franchise.

And on the whole note of that part, I really liked how Keebo played into the ending. Maybe it would have had more impact if he’d been the protagonist this whole time, but the idea of him being ‘the audience surrogate’ was really cool, if only because it set up the aforementioned scene. I also liked that he wasn’t immediately validated in being obsessed with hope. He wasn’t necessarily in the wrong or anything, but he wasn’t able to argue for hope in the face of despair in the way he wanted to. They also didn’t try and suddenly ignore Shuichi in favour of having Keebo suddenly be the protagonist in the end, so that was nice.

Before I talk about the epilogue and some other assorted points, I should say that the part where they explained the game’s title was AMAZING. I loved it so much. The reveal of this being ‘Danganronpa 53′ was such an effective ‘wait what’ moment. And then we got the incredible parody logos for Danganronpa 4-10. That was an amazing scene. And in general I just love the sorta-dystopian future that whole scene sketched out, of the DR franchise going on for such a long time that they eventually decided to hold a ‘real-life killing game’. But anyway, it also completely validated how weird this game’s title is. I guess on some level it’s still a bit unnecessarily confusing for it to have ‘3′ in the title, but I like that they gave such a surprising yet effective explanation for the ‘V’ part. I may or may not have laughed out loud when one of the random lines of audience dialogue said ‘V is the roman numeral for 5′. I don’t know why that was so funny to me, but it was.

The audience dialogue thing was also an amazing concept that added a lot of unexpected comedy to the situation. It did a great job of encapsulating the attitudes of the fandom. It was hilarious to see random lines of text floating about that were complaining about the ending being boring and them wanting to see an exciting clash between hope and despair. There were too many lines for me to remember, or to have even noticed in time, but a lot of them were really hilarious. I kinda lost it when they started complaining about Shuichi, and when they randomly started insulting him over how he didn’t have his hat anymore. That was great. Then we got some random and hilarious lines like ‘Shuichi is so yummy <3′. I think my favourite one was probably ‘Danganronpa 25 was the best one’. That made me laugh. The writers of these games know us so well, lol.

Though, as I kinda said above, I do appreciate that the audience got their own redemptive moment in choosing to allow the franchise to end by not voting, while also asking Keebo to do what he can to save everyone other than Tsumugi. That was really nice.

Back on the topic of the game’s title, I wish they’d kept the ‘everyone’s new semester of mutual killing’, since they ended up name-dropping it during this trial, but they never really brought up the English game’s subtitle outside of the part where the game’s full name was said. I think that the name-drop would have just had more impact if they’d kept it as the game’s subtitle in English. It’s a minor issue, though.

I kinda want to leave my thoughts on the epilogue for as late in this post as I can, so I should talk about some other points first.

I talked a bit about how this trial went back over and re-did chapter one’s trial, but I didn’t go into much detail about it. I thought it was a really neat concept, to go back over such an old case and point out how the conclusion everyone came to was wrong. I thought that that whole trial was complicated enough as it was, but I really wasn’t expecting there to be a whole other layer to what went down in it that was being saved until the end of the game. But it actually made a lot of sense. As I said, we knew from the start that Tsumugi went to the bathroom around when the murder happened, but that didn’t seem to be an important detail until we found out later that that’s where the hidden entrance was. They even took the time back in chapter one to go over her cospox to explain how she couldn’t have possibly been the killer, which did a good job at getting us to stop suspecting her. But as it turns out, she was able to kill Rantarou in a way that avoided needing to use her talent at all.

It also addressed the one thing I disliked about the first trial, at least in terms of the in-universe logic and mechanics of it. At the time, I suspended my disbelief about it, but the idea of someone being successfully killed via a complicated Rube Goldberg machine felt a bit contrived. So I love that the big twist was that Kaede’s whole complicated set-up actually ended with her missing her shot, and so Tsumugi had to rush in and beat Rantarou to death with a spare shot put ball to make it look like Kaede’s idea had worked. I don’t quite know why, but the image of Rantarou just being absolutely baffled by the fact that a shot put ball just fell by his feet out of nowhere, and Tsumugi panicking in the background and rushing in to beat him to death with ANOTHER shot put ball was just the most hilarious thing ever to me. It was great. But I do feel genuinely bad for Rantarou. He must have been so confused about all the unexpected things that happened in the moments before he died.

I’m also very grateful that part of the twist was that Kaede was truly innocent [beyond having had the genuine motive and intent to kill, but you get my point], and that, specifically, she wasn’t even related to the mastermind. After the twin sister reveal, I expected that part of the twist would be that Kaede was in on the mastermind’s plan the entire time, or at best was unaware of it but still related to the mastermind. I immediately thought that it’d be too lame and out of the blue for anything along those lines to be the case, so I’m glad that the twin sister thing was just a red herring, and that Kaede was just a random, everyday person. I guess this also means that her moments of being cross-eyed weren’t some sort of a hint at some kind of ‘mental instability’ or whatever. That’s nice. I didn’t really mention it at the time, if I remember right, since it didn’t really feel important enough to talk about, but I’m very thankful that the game didn’t use something like that as any sort of a sign toward someone being ‘crazy’ or villainous or whatever. I mean on some level they still played into that trope to some degree, if only in order to use it as a red herring, but still. One of my own eyes is kind of crossed, a bit, so it would have been slightly depressing to see something like that be used as that sort of plot point. I sure didn’t expect a game like this to give me a reason to bring up that kind of a personal detail, but here we are!

This also gets me onto the topic of Rantarou himself, and . . . honestly, his entire deal ended up feeling really disappointing. He kinda just served to give an example that backed up what Tsumugi said about the state of the world. We didn’t really learn anything new about him. We just got a bit of context for what killing game he was a part of, and why he got roped into this one. Which is fine. I just kinda wanted something . . . more. I think he’s the kind of character who I might want to spend some time thinking about before I make a final decision on how I feel about his place in the story. I’m at least genuinely curious about how exactly his killing game ended up, for him to end up as the Ultimate Survivor. I’m still not entirely sure how that whole concept works, especially when they casually mentioned that if they executed Tsumugi, then Maki would become the new Ultimate Survivor, which I still don’t quite understand, since she was one of the ones volunteering to die in order to let everyone ELSE survive. Anyway, I think the basic implication is that he was the only survivor of his game, so I wonder if that means that he killed someone and successfully escaped. It’s the only way I could really see it ending up that way. I guess the alternative option is that maybe he and one other person survived and escaped because of the rule about the killing game ending at that point. I’m not sure, though, since it seems odd that only one of them would have been called the Ultimate Survivor and forced into this killing game, and not both of them. Then again there might also be something else to it, with how he implied in his video message that there was some trick to the ‘two survivors’ rule, but I still can’t quite work out what that would be. Either way, with what we know now, I feel like his whole thing of saying that he wanted this killing game to happen makes me think that he was taking some kind of genuine pleasure out of it. If it was just a matter of him saying that he needed to win, it might have just been out of a desire to survive, but in that case I don’t think he’s say that he wanted this game to happen. I dunno. His whole character feels weirdly confusing to me, but maybe it’ll make more sense once I spend some time going over things in my head.

And on a similar note, I said before that I expected the Monokubs to be somehow based upon other survivors from his game, but I guess that one didn’t pan out the way I expected. What WAS the point of the Monokubs, in the end? Was the entire running thing of them seemingly having repressed memories like everyone else a red herring? It felt like their characters just sorta stopped existing early on in this trial after they all got blown up and then never mentioned again. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they were genuinely pointless, but it’d still be a bit lame.

I guess I’m on a bit of a roll here with talking about specific characters, so I should take this time to say that I honestly feel kinda bad for Kokichi now. This trial didn’t really tell us anything new about him, but it spelled out a lot of the fairly obvious things being hinted at, and it made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t really a bad person at all. He didn’t have anything to do with this. He really was completely lying about being the mastermind in order to try and stop the game. Even his gang seems pretty harmless. So it’s pretty hard not to feel bad for him, even if he was still genuinely annoying and irritating as a person. Though now that we’ve gotten to the end of the game, I’m still a bit confused about all of the stuff that went down in chapter four that pointed toward him being obsessed with Shuichi, and jealous of Kaito’s closeness with him. I still feel like there were very deliberate hints pointing in that direction, but it never went anywhere. There’s at least the whole ‘when I find someone I like, I do anything I can to make them notice me, even if it means strangling them’ scene, which seems even more confusing to me now. I dunno. Maybe he DID have his own feelings for Shuichi, and it just didn’t get explicitly mentioned in the game itself. Maybe it’ll be elaborated on more in his free time events, and post-game stuff in general. Either way, it still feels like a bit of a strange loose end. Maybe I’m reading too much into things.

Though it’s hard to unironically call anyone in this game innocent or sympathetic after the whole plot twist about them all being Danganronpa fans who volunteered to take place in a killing game. That sure was a twist. A lot of the ending had a more comedic tone to it, even if basically all of it was genuinely kinda horrifying and emotional and involved the characters finding out that everything they knew was a lie, but that part in particular stuck out to me as being 100% horrifying. Although it was kinda amusing seeing the game point out via Shuichi that there’s already been several detectives in the franchise. Which I guess takes on a slightly different context when you think about this being the 53rd entry in the franchise, but you get what I mean. Everything else was just depressing and unexpected, though. Seeing Shuichi excitedly talk about having planned out an exciting murder AND execution for himself, and how neat it’d be to have a detective become a murderer, was really hard to sit through, especially since he still had that little moment of being flustered about not wanting to be too demanding toward the people running the games, that made it clear that it was still genuinely him saying it. Then we got the part of Kaede saying that she has no real faith in humanity, which just hurt a lot. And then they dragged Kaito of all people into it and I started to genuinely wish the scene would stop because I didn’t want to see what he had to say. But then he went and had the most terrifying audition of the three, where he talked excitedly about wanting to murder everyone else in the game. That really just twisted the knife that had already been stabbed into my heart after the first two auditions we saw.

So it’s hard to be TOO sympathetic of anyone when all of them genuinely wanted this. I guess, come to think of it, this also probably ties into what Rantarou said about him wanting this to happen. He probably did genuinely like the idea of taking part in these games. Which puts a really sinister twist on his character, and also every other character in the game.

In general it’s kinda awkward to talk about any of the characters in the way they’re presented to us, now that we know that all of their backstories and talents and stuff are just lies, and that they’re actually just normal people who willingly took part in a death game. We probably don’t even know any of their real names. But it’s pretty clear that a big part of the game’s message is that just because these things might be lies, it doesn’t mean that they’re ‘not true’. These are still the characters we know and love. These are still the people that they genuinely believe themselves to be. At least after having their memories replaced, they became people who didn’t want to kill others, who were horrified by the idea of it, who banded together to stop it. For the most part. You get what I mean. So there’s still value in the characters as we knew them, even if they were the result of taking existing people and then replacing all of their memories and giving them new identities. There’s still value in the experiences they went through, the lessons they learned, the feelings that they experienced, and even the feelings that we experienced because of them. In spite of this trial’s set of reveals, it really was, in the end, a celebration of the power of fiction. It embraced the value and meaning of fictional characters and their stories. It validated the characters, and the experiences they had in this game. So I’m still allowing myself to see them as the people we knew them as, and to feel sympathy with them because of it.

It’s really disturbing to consider that the identities they were given were just . . . made-up identities that had barely anything to do with who they were before. It’s especially depressing to think about how all of their motives and whatnot were thus completely made-up and pointless. All of their backstories and traumas and whatnot were just fictional. Which makes it really depressing to think back on topics like Ryoma’s self-loathing because of his past, or Kirumi’s dedication to protecting the country even if it meant killing everyone else in the game, or Maki’s history with being trained as an assassin and how that basically broke her as a person. In a sense, those things still hold weight and validity because the characters at least BELIEVED them to be true, but it’s still just . . . depressing to think about how much pain was put onto these characters in the name of giving them interesting backstories and whatnot. This also presumably means that Kiyo wasn’t ACTUALLY a psychopathic serial-killer who had an incestuous relationship with his sister. Huh. He sure got the short end of the stick in terms of how his backstory reflected upon him as a person.

[Fake edit: I don’t know how I forgot about it, but there’s also the fact that apparently Kaito was just given a terminal illness as part of his backstory, which is a really fucking disturbing concept. To think that they just casually decided to make things more interesting by messing with his health like that. Especially since it’s pretty easy to guess that they gave it to him because of how enthusiastic he seemed to be about wanting to kill everyone. So it’s like they were giving him the illness as a sort of dramatic irony, to set up a scenario along the lines of him dying from his illness after he killed all of his friends, making everything he did pointless. And of course there would have been the additional angle of it becoming something that the audience at home could sympathize with him because of, which . . . definitely worked, I suppose.]

But obviously the characters weren’t exactly all clean and sinless individuals before this game, even if these depressing backstories and whatnot are fake. They clearly all had their own problems before the game started. And the characters we know now are probably at least nicer, on average, than the people we saw in those auditions.

And as I said above, Tsumugi was probably no different. She clearly knows all about what her life was like before this game, but Tsumugi as we knew her for 99% of the game was almost certainly a false identity. She was still the closest to her original self out of everyone in the game, but still.

At least we know that, on a visual level, it was only their outfits that got changed. So that’s nice to know, I guess, even if it’s not particularly important.

Now that I’ve gotten to the end of the game, I can finally talk about the last major thing I got spoiled about! Which didn’t even technically end up being completely accurate in it’s implication anyway! Yay!

Basically, a week or two before I started playing the game, I was just scrolling down my dash, and one of the recommended posts was a fucking DRV3 meme about Shuichi rejecting both hope and despair, in favour of dying. Of all the ways to be spoiled, I got spoiled via a goddamn meme, and of all the things to be spoiled about, I got spoiled about THAT. So throughout this ENTIRE game, I’ve had the vague idea of Shuichi dying stuck in my head. Which has been kinda agonizing. I’m so glad that it wasn’t actually accurate, and that he lived, but I still hate that I got spoiled about it. I suppose that I only had myself to blame for not having installed xkit by then in order to blacklist the DR tags, but still. Considering that I had never posted anything about DR before that point, I can’t really be blamed for assuming that Tumblr wouldn’t decide to just randomly suggest me a post about it.

That point, and the point of me having seen a screenshot from Kiyo’s execution, were the main things I got spoiled about. I also thought I got spoiled about someone [aka Kaito] killing because of their terminal illness, which ended up being technically untrue and probably just a made-up example of the sorts of motives in this game, even though it still lead me to the correct assumption of ‘Kaito ends up being a killer’. Those are the main things. I also knew in advance that this game has a really controversial ending, and that it has a bonus dating sim mode thing, but I didn’t know anything specific about those things, so the nature of the ending still surprised me, and honestly the existence of a dating sim mode isn’t really a spoiler to me.

So yeah, those are the things I knew about this game in advance. I wish I could have gone in COMPLETELY blind, but oh well. It didn’t end up affecting my enjoyment of the game as much as I was scared it might.

Anyway, the main character left who I want to talk about is Shuichi. I’ve already talked about basically everyone else, including Keebo and Himiko, and I don’t really think there’s much to say about Maki. I still love her a lot as a character, but this part didn’t really give me much to say about her that I haven’t said already, except for one detail [that I’ve kinda already talked about] that I guess I’ll mention again in a second.

Though I guess it’s also worth talking a little bit about the surviving cast. Which I’m more or less including Keebo and Tsumugi in, even though they died at the very end. The fact that Shuichi, Maki, and Keebo lived until [more or less] the very end was pretty predictable since they’re all so noteworthy, although as I said above I genuinely expected this to end with Shuichi dead, so I suppose it ended up being surprising that he actually lived to the very end. In that sense I guess Maki was the most predictable survivor. And obviously Tsumugi staying alive until at least the final trial made sense, in the end, since she was the mastermind. So other than Shuichi who was surprising for his own unique reasons, I’m still slightly baffled by Himiko surviving. Even in spite of her [relatively minimal] development and focus, she still felt really weird as part of the final three characters, next to much more important ones like Shuichi and Maki. But this sorta thing always happens in these games, and it’s probably a good thing that at least one of the survivors was someone who I would never have expected to survive.

Anyway, on the topic of Shuichi. I still adore this boy with all my heart and soul. He’s wonderful. At this point he probably beats out Hinata as my favourite DR protagonist. He’s such an incredibly good boy who deserved a much better life than what he got. I’m just kinda casually ignoring the stuff we learned in his audition, lol. But I kinda have to ignore that whole can of worms if I want to talk about what I like about any of the characters, really. I really felt horrible for him during this entire trial, especially after the reveals started kicking in. Seeing him go through so much emotional pain, until he decided to just accept death as a means to put an end to the killing games, just kinda broke my heart. There’s several points during the overall trial/ending that I nearly teared up at, and him talking about how in spite of the fact that everything he went through might have been a lie, the pain in his heart was still real, was definitely one of them. That really hit me hard. I loved seeing him be so resolute in saying that the concept of the killing games is horrific and deserve to be stopped even at the cost of his own life, but it was still hard to watch.

I hate to keep bringing this point up again, especially at this point, but I still at least like to believe that he had his own crush on Kaito. I’m very aware, especially now that the game’s definitively over [aside from the bonus stuff], that it’s probably not canon, but I still choose to believe it. I’m still choosing to believe in the way that his story and his thoughts and feelings toward Kaito came across to me. And hey, in spite of the guilt-trip-y nature of parts of this ending, it was ultimately still a celebration of the meaning of fiction and the validity of the things that fictional characters allow us to experience, so I don’t feel too bad about sticking to this interpretation. I know that the game made a pretty clear point to address Maki’s feelings for Kaito while not saying the same sort of thing about Shuichi’s feelings, but still. Though I should say that it’s not like any of this meant that I felt negatively about Maki’s feelings for Kaito and how they were portrayed. I still felt bad about seeing her find out that they were more or less a lie that had been written out as part of her character. I mean, it’s hard to call those feelings a lie when they were based upon the sorts of interactions and dynamics that would understandably lead to such a thing, so I won’t dismiss her feelings or call them fake or anything, but I can also see how the game was organized to force her to feel that way, which is still fucked up.

This is getting more into headcanon territory, there’s certainly something appealing about the idea of Shuichi developing feelings for Kaito without it having been ‘written out in advance’. Again, I’m not trying to imply that that whole deal makes this sorta thing less genuine, but still. There’s something both cute yet tragic in seeing things through this lens of Shuichi developing feelings that nobody had expected or planned for. Especially since, in hindsight, even if it might not be ‘canon’, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kaede was literally written by Tsumugi as being ‘Shuichi’s designated love interest’. They were even literally shoved into adjacent lockers, just to hammer in the fact that the game basically shoved them together. This isn’t some kind of ship hate, though. I actually still quite like Shuichi/Kaede as a ship, as I’ve said a few times before. But with how this ending works and what it says about the game in hindsight, it’s hard not to retroactively interpret these sorts of things through this kind of lens. With how many things Tsumugi specifically pointed out as being part of a pre-written script, it’s hard not to wonder just how many character points and relationship dynamics were similarly ‘part of the script’. And out of basically everything that didn’t get explicitly talked about, Shuichi and Kaede’s dynamic seems like the most likely think that was ‘forced’ to happen. Especially if we assume that Tsumugi might have expected her to survive for most of the game, whereas she died basically immediately and then Shuichi spent most of the game interacting with Kaito [and Maki, to a slightly lesser extent].

So even if I won’t really be as bold as to call any of this canon, there’s definitely room to make some interesting interpretations regarding concepts like the sometimes ‘forced’ nature of love interest scenarios in media. In spite of my warm feelings toward Shuichi/Kaede as a ship, I can’t help but me very intrigued by the idea of him not following along with that whole dynamic that was set up from the start, and instead getting cut off from her almost immediately, and instead spending most of the rest of the game with Kaito, in a way that might not have been planned for. I like the idea of a character like Shuichi indirectly rejecting the heterosexual romance set-up that he was basically shoved into, and instead developing feelings for another boy in a way that nobody planned for, entirely of his own volition. It’s just an appealing idea to me. I guess along these sames lines it’d be hard not to also look at Maki’s romantic feelings for Kaito that were explicitly fabricated, but as I said above I have no interest in engaging in ship hate, or denying her feelings. You get what I mean, though. I also can’t help but think back to that one scene where Maki asked Shuichi if he liked Kaede or not, and he just kinda vaguely said that it’d be normal to like someone even in a situation like this, and after that his hypothetical feelings for her pretty much never came up again. Not explicitly, at least. I figured at the time that he ‘obviously’ had to have been in love with her, because that’s how these things work, but after the concept of romantic feelings being fabricated came up explicitly in canon, it’s hard not to look back on that scene and wonder if there was anything more to it.

Another thing along these lines that’s kinda interesting to think about in hindsight was that it was Tsumugi who had that one off-hand line about asking Shuichi if he, Maki, and Kaito, were part of a ‘reverse love triangle’, which he hurriedly denied. At the time I was kinda intrigued by that line’s existence since it, in addition to Shuichi’s whole ‘I shouldn’t talk about another boy like that’ line, made it explicitly clear that the game was at least aware of how romantic his feelings for Shuichi come off as being, but that line certainly gains an interesting new context when you know that Tsumugi is the mastermind who knows everything, including the ‘settings’ of every character. I can’t tell if this somehow supports my whole aforementioned interpretation of events, or if it implies that this whole set-up in my head might have been intentionally planned by Tsumugi. I’m not really sure. It’s hard to tell just based on that one line if this might have been something she specifically wrote into Shuichi’s character. Though the fact that she goes out of her way to basically mock Maki over her fabricated feelings for Kaito, while not doing the same for Shuichi, makes me think that she only wrote Maki as being in love with him.

So for now I’m sticking to this whole headcanon interpretation, partly because I just fundamentally ship Shuichi and Kaito, and partly because I like this hypothetical meta-narrative subversion of romantic tropes in media.

Anyway I think that’s basically everything I feel like saying about the characters, and most of the story beats. Before I talk about the epilogue, and my feelings on the game as a whole, I should probably talk about a few more of my issues with the game.

I think we can all agree that the mini-games were, and always have been, largely pointless and unnecessary. They’re just not very great. They’re definitely more stream-lined and not as clunky as they used to be, but they sometimes feel SO ‘stream-lined’ and simplistic in design that I start to question why they even exist. The Psyche Taxi is probably the biggest offender of that. It’s such a waste of time. It never tells you anything new. It’s just this painfully drawn out procedure of the game spelling out stuff that it just went over a minute ago, and there’s not even any way to make it go by any faster because there’s a limit to how fast the car can go. I never felt like it did anything to help me solve any mysteries, at least from what I can remember. I think that the Mind Mine thing also felt pretty unnecessary, with there being only like one time where I had to think about which option to choose. I also never ran out of time in it or anything. The Hangman’s Gambit was also pretty bad, but mostly just an exercise in frustration where I either know what the answer is but have to figure out what exact wording the game wants from me, or I have no clue what it wants, and I have to awkwardly stumble my way into a solution. Which at least got a bit more manageable when I got the skill that shows the first letter of the answer immediately.

The sword rebuttal game was fine. It’s a neat representation of arguing with someone, though it usually wasn’t too difficult to figure out the logic of what to do, and sometimes the slicing mechanic just felt a bit clunky and hard to control. There were definitely a few moments where I felt stumped by the logic of them, though. The Mass Panic Debates were also OK, though they ended up never being anywhere near as difficult as I expected. I think that they were afraid of them overwhelming people, so they never made the logic of them too difficult. I don’t even think I needed to get that one skill that lets you focus on one conversation at a time. I’m glad I got the skill that silences loud voices, but that wasn’t really part of the inherent difficulty of those parts, and more just an annoyance that I got a skill to get rid of. The Scrum Debates were a really neat concept, but they felt woefully shallow and under-used. It basically always felt like the logic of them was just another Psyche Taxi-esque scenario of the characters rehashing an argument they’d already gone over before, with it just sometimes being guesswork to figure out which keyword was meant to argue against each statement. I really wish that they could have re-worked it so that new sorts of arguments and debates came up during them, that made me think about it from different angles. I also wish that there could have been more than one of them per trial, since that just lead to them feeling really minor, especially since we didn’t even get one in chapter six, so there were only five in the entire game. I think that there was also only one Mass Panic Debate per trial, which similarly made those parts feel kinda shallow and forgettable in spite of how both of them were hyped up as the new mini-game types. I guess I’m glad that they never tripped me up too hard, but it was also a bit disappointing that they never felt very exciting or meaningful.

Also, even though it wasn’t really a ‘mini-game’, I was never a huge fan of the sections where you have to browse your entire list of truth bullets and pick one. Those parts nearly always fell into being either so easy that it wasn’t any kind of a challenge, or so weird in their logic that I almost had to brute-force the answer.

In general the best part of the trials gameplay-wise were just the regular non-stop debates. Nearly everything else feels kinda unnecessary. But the regular debates were really good. They obviously varied a whole lot in difficulty, but that’s fine.

And even though this isn’t a complaint, I should round this section off by saying that the Argument Armament parts were really good and I have no real issues with them, other than that I kinda suck at rhythm games, so it took like half the game before I started getting actually good at them. I can’t really say that they were TOO difficult as rhythm games in spite of my inherent lack of skills at the genre, since I’ve seen a lot worse from regular rhythm games, and I’ve also witnessed the absolute insane nightmare known as Drakengard 3′s final boss, but still, it probably would have been had if they were genuinely difficult as rhythm games, and in practice they were at least difficult enough for me to struggle with them, and they made the finales of each trial appropriately climactic. Plus, as I said before, the one with Keebo was absolutely great as a way of representing the idea of arguing against the entire DR fandom.

The closing arguments have also always been a really neat idea, and I’ve always loved the aesthetic of them. Including the music. They’re always a neat way to end things off in a trial. The puzzle element of them still does feel a little pointless since the entire mystery’s already been solved and so it feels a bit like padding, but it’s not a big deal.

I guess I’m getting off-track in terms of talking about my complaints about the game, but other than the mini-games being largely boring or obnoxious, there’s not much else to go on. Maybe I should go back and quickly give my thoughts on each case’s murder mystery, just to end things off.

Chapter 1′s case is still a major highlight of the game, if not the entire franchise. I love it a lot. I guess it’s probably the most interesting case in the entire game, but most of the rest of them are still very good too, and this wasn’t the one I had the most difficulty with, even if I didn’t see the identity of the culprit coming. I still have general issues with the basic concept of setting up a female protagonist only to replace them almost immediately with a male one, but it still played out in a really compelling and emotional way, and at least fulfilled my desire to see a DR protagonist become a murderer, in a way that I didn’t even see coming even though they laid out hints for it in advance. Though obviously it’s impossible to talk about it without talking about the chapter six twist about how her plan actually failed, even though Kaede herself thought it did. That was a really neat extra layer to that whole mystery. I’m also still kinda sad that they killed off Rantarou immediately, especially since I feel like the endgame did a bit less to develop his character than I wanted it to. He’s definitely someone who I want to learn the most about via free time events and stuff.

Chapter 2′s case was probably the one that at least felt the most difficult to me, at least when I was actually sitting down and going through the trial. It was probably because I was playing it later at night than I should have, but as I talked about earlier in this liveblog, it just kicked my ass. It was the only trial in the game that I had to take a break from and come back to a day later to finish it, though a big part of that was due to me misunderstanding how retrying parts of the trial worked. Either way, I can’t help but commend Kirumi for setting up a mystery that, at least to me, was very difficult to solve. I’m also still sad that they killed off Ryoma early on as well, since he was another favourite of mine, but I liked his role in this chapter so I’m fine with it. This chapter in particular is one of the more depressing ones when you know in hindsight that everyone’s backstories were completely fabricated and forced upon them.

Chapter 3′s case was weird and I think most people also probably see it as a low point of the game. I loved the whole occult aesthetic of it, and the plot twist of killing someone off during an investigation, but it ended up feeling too easy. It was weird, though. Like, the identity of the culprit was obvious from the start, even ignoring that I’d been spoiled about it, but the actual logic behind how the murders happened, mostly Tenko’s, felt surprisingly difficult to me. It was basically at the same level as Kirumi’s case in that sense, but maybe even higher than that since I distinctly remember dying in this trial like five times, but I didn’t need to stop and come back to it later since by this point I knew that retrying parts of a trial if you die isn’t really a big problem. The motive in this case was definitely the most bizarre, not to mention the most unsympathetic. It’s almost weird how in a game filled with mostly sympathetic and understandable killers like Kaede, Kirumi, Gonta, and Kaito, you have Mr. Psychopathic Incestuous Serial Killer thrown right into the middle. It was just bizarre. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the game for killing off Tenko, a lesbian, in a way that was explicitly described as being ‘a pointless waste’. But whatever. I quite liked Angie’s whole sub-plot in this chapter as well, though I’m glad she got killed off.

Chapter 4′s case is still . . . iffy to me. I know that it was intentionally unsatisfying and kinda depressing and out of the blue, but it just really threw me off and felt really disappointing. It’s probably my least favourite case in the game, but maybe chapter three is worse than it. It doesn’t help that this whole chapter happened before Kokichi started getting any degree of redeeming or even particularly interesting qualities, at least in my opinion. I also still feel a bit let down by how the whole climax felt so weird and unexpected that I wasn’t even as depressed by Gonta’s death as I should have been, considering how much I liked him as a character. There were definitely a few parts that got to me, but not too many. I really liked the whole virtual world concept, though, even if most of the mysteries related to it felt painfully easy to guess. This chapter also made me like Miu a fair bit more, and it was pretty neat getting a case about someone’s murder attempt getting turned against them, even if it’s not a completely original concept in this franchise. I also still feel a bit confused about certain aspects of Kokichi’s feelings and motives in this chapter in particular, as I went over before, but it’s not a big deal. [Honestly, my favourite part of chapter four was probably just finishing off Kaito’s free time events.]

Chapter 5′s case was really depressing, and also way more complicated than I expected it would be. I at least remember it feeling pretty difficult, though the effect was lessened a bit because of the weird detail of me kinda-sorta-not-really-but-technically being spoiled about Kaito being a killer, which made the outcome of this case pretty obvious. But it was more about the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ than the ‘who’, in the end. This is where I started liking Kokichi a lot more as a character, which also makes me think back about this chapter positively. And obviously I love every part of the game that has Kaito in it [except for the one obvious exception, lol], so that made it a really emotional ride as well. Having to actively pick him in the vote and have him get executed was incredibly painful.

I guess there’s not much to say about Chapter 6′s case that I haven’t said already, so . . . yeah. It’s obviously not a murder mystery trial like the others so I can’t compare it to those ones in that sense, but it was probably still my favourite trial just due to how incredibly intense it was, and how much of an emotional roller-coaster it put me through. It’s at least easily my favourite chapter six trial in the series.

I don’t think there’s much else to say about the characters, other than that they’re probably my favourite cast in the series, as a whole. It’s hard to compare them to the casts of DR1 and DR2, since they all feel like they’re going for slightly different things, but still. I just love this game’s cast a lot. It probably helps that this was the first game I actually played for myself rather than reading/watching an LP of. There were definitely a few characters I felt ambivalent about to the very end, like Himiko, but for the most part I liked them. And chapter six definitely made me like Keebo and Tsumugi a lot more, in very different ways. I’m still kinda ambivalent toward Keebo, but he at least ended up being more than just pure comic relief, though I still dislike how his ‘persecution complex’ is framed by the narrative, with how he gets treated by everyone in practice. I liked the vague idea brought up of him learning to embrace the things that make him unique, but it fell kinda flat because of how badly his character as a whole was executed. And as I said above, I really like Tsumugi now, after having seen her as boring and pointless up until this point, even though she definitely feels less like her own unique character, and more of a representation of ‘the ending of DRV3′, and all that entails. I still think that I might prefer her as a villain to Junko, but it’s hard to compare them. Again, it’s kinda less about them as individuals, and more about them as the concepts they represent. Anyway, the characters I liked least were almost definitely Himiko and Kiyo. At least with Kokichi he was still a genuinely interesting and complex character who I slowly warmed up to, Rantarou was just sorta disappointing rather than actively bad, and Angie served an interesting plot purpose even if she was hard to like as a person, and pretty flat. Himiko and Kiyo were the ones with least going for them. Mostly Kiyo, whose entire purpose was just to be really creepy and off-putting. I’m more ambivalent about Himiko. I just wish that she felt more . . . interesting, I guess, or had more development. But in general I actively liked the majority of the cast, by the end.

Anyway, I suppose I should finally talk about the epilogue, although there’s not really much to say about it at this point. It was just really good. I was initially skeptical of the idea of the ending ‘backpedaling’ on actually killing everyone off, but at least Tsumugi and Keebo genuinely died, and I really liked the way that everyone else surviving played into the element of the audience themselves having their own redemption moment of sorts. The part where Shuichi says something along the lines of ‘maybe they wanted this lie to become the truth’ was one of the moments in this part that nearly made me cry. I think it put me the closest to actually crying, honestly. It was just a really effective way of tying together this game’s lies vs truth theme in with the whole theme of the power of fiction and the redemption of the audience. The idea of us, as the audience, loving these characters enough to want them to live, to want their ‘lie’ to become a new sort of ‘truth’, really got to me. And on that whole note, I forgot to mention it, but I really loved Shuichi’s whole speech about the love between all of them, and how the love passed onto them from everyone that died has meaning, and can even change the world itself if it could successfully get through to the audience and change their minds. That was a really nice scene. I also couldn’t help but like it when Maki pointed out how much Shuichi was sounding like Kaito, and how obviously Shuichi could do something like change the world, since he’s Kaito’s sidekick. And, of course, the part where Shuichi used Kaito’s catch-phrase about the impossible being possible also really got to me.

It’s interesting that, right at the end, the game basically calls into question everything that Tsumugi said, and made it unclear what the outside world will truly be like. I can see why that might seem unsatisfying and wishy-washy to people, but I like it. I like that, to the very end, you can never tell for sure what the truth is. It really gets across what the game is trying to say about the concept of truth vs lies. And on that whole note, I loved Shuichi’s whole part of saying that you can’t really call either truth or lies ‘bad’, and that lies can be just another way of telling the truth. It’s a simple concept, but it hit pretty hard as the culmination of this entire game. And I quite liked the final line of [from what I remember] ‘If the world can change to even a small degree, then this story won’t end’. That was a nice way to end things off. The whole ambiguity of this ending does make me wonder if they’ll decide to genuinely continue the series. I honestly hope they don’t. Partly just because I really resonated with the whole point about the killing games being inherently evil and needing to be stopped, but also partly because it’d kinda destroy the ambiguity of this ending. We’ll see. I’ll probably be fine either way.

I feel like Tsumugi’s final words about her being a ‘cosplaycat killer’, and her seemingly disappointed or annoyed expression before she died, will nag at my brain for a while. But I think that’s a good thing, that the game’s leaving me wondering about what her deal is, even to the end.

I think I’ve finally, finally run out of things to say, so all I can do is just say that this was a fantastic game. I get why a lot of people disliked it, but I really loved it a lot, even if it had some issues. It was undoubtedly my favourite game in the series, though. I certainly prefer it over DR3 as a conclusion to the franchise. I’m kinda sad that this is the sort of game where you can’t really explain why it’s so good without spoiling people. That sucks. And it’s also the sort of game that only really has it’s full impact if you’ve experienced the franchise up to this point, so I couldn’t suggest that someone go into it blind.

As I’ve said before, I’ll check out whatever post-game bonus stuff there is to do, so that’ll be the rest of this liveblog. I’m not sure how many posts it’ll take to finish it all off, and how much time it’ll take, but we’ll see. I think I might take a bit of a break from the game for a day or two in order to let my thoughts on it simmer for a while, and also so I can do some other things I need to do. Once I’m done with the entire game, that’ll probably be when I allow myself to dive into the fandom, finally. That’ll be interesting. I’m not entirely sure if I’ll reblog fanart and stuff, though, in case I want to keep my followers unspoiled. I dunno. There’s probably a good amount of stuff that’s not TOO spoiler-y that I can reblog. And to be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if I even end up making some of my own fanart. I at least really want to draw Shuichi and Kaito, for obvious reasons. But this franchise in general tends to have the sorts of characters that make me want to draw them, so who knows what I’ll do.

Anyway I need to forcibly stop myself from continuing this post because my brain is starting to melt a little bit and I need to go to sleep, lol.

[awesomecvworldblog]

What You Should Become aware of Texting along with Dating

What You Should Become aware of Texting along with Dating

Within the past few years obviously almost every partnership dilemma I actually hear from my coaching buyers and former mate girlfriends has linked with texting. Texting and online dating services definitely it does not just for 2 decade olds any further. These girls are all connection after 40… some inside their 60s plus 70s.

“Sue” connected with the male on Tinder, they had some emails, after which he started sending text messages. He given her photographs of the soccer game these people attended. They told her about his crappy day at function. She commanded him about her automobile trouble and responded ‘ why did not you ask us to come support? ‘

Chances are they had a new coffee moment. It was well. The particular texting proceeded. They “talked” on and off for hours on end. He complimented her to generate her possess a good laugh. He distributed to her how filled he was and also she inquired about flattered which he was looking to keep in touch.

The following week often the texts tapered, and then this individual stopped response. She requirements me “I thought having been so into me. Exactly what should I accomplish??? ”

“Lila’s” guy informed her all these remarkable things and also poured the actual heart out via texts for two days. But they never applied through having an actual in person date. The lady wants to really know what that means.

“Melissa” stayed until eventually 3 EARLY IN THE DAY texting completely ready dude. That were there one date three weeks prior, and as it’s only been texting. But it is very romantic! She has falling to find him. In excess of wants to know how to stop disquieting over your pet being The primary.

There are noticeable signs if he IS directly into you… CLICK THIS KIND OF and find out exactly how!

Texting boasts certainly difficult dating in addition to relationships. No later than this give you a number of straight information about what text messages really indicates and will never mean. In addition to, most importantly, tips about how to take control of your circumstances – like a grownup!

The only thing you should suppose when you’re looking for a bunch of created word is that the young lady is having exciting flirting along. He’s feeling entertained and also he’s increasing your responsiveness.

1 . Texting is NOT online dating. Never assume that obtaining a bunch of published word from a guy means you will be having a relationship. You’re not quite possibly dating. When a person is selecting to only textual content or primarily text, he has not showing signs of wishing to get to know you really in a important way.

The sole thing you should expect when you’re getting a bunch of messaging text is that ukraine woman the young lady is having entertaining flirting along. He’s encountering entertained as well as he’s enjoying your responsiveness.

Sure, they wouldn’t end up being spending when ever if they wasn’t serious about you, when he’s just texting, they will doesn’t think about you for the potential wife or husband. Expecting the dog to move on something far more serious isn’t normal. In fact , this specific usually means only the opposite. These guys cool.

Why that they can disappear just isn’t going to matter. Whether it is because they located someone else, were just participating in or since they got scared — that is 100% minimal. You know what you must understand: he isn’t a good, older man really worth your time.

There are lots of ways to acknowledge if a man is a serious guy who is thinking about getting to know somebody. He methods up by just calling and also settings in place dates. He or she tries to positive aspects you and your life. He / she makes an attempt to spend time with you. Many people does almost no things to try to make you information.

If you are for example Sue, Violeta or Melissa, here is what you should know: Continuous text messages, when with no in-person visit, creates a false sense associated with connection. A person sense like you get to know another, but that’s not what’s happening.

Just about any text ‘ relationship’ is in fact like being a player within a game. From the type of false connection which often sets up extremely unrealistic presumptions and targets. I’ve discovered countless young ladies create detailed fantasies and obtain drawn in — often before they probably meet adult males.

And the enemy happens also. With no tonality in communications, texting to and fro creates great opportunities to misread and believe wrongly intent. I am unable to tell you the amount of emails We’ve received by way of coaching purchasers with a written text conversation pasted in together with question: Issues you think they will means (aka WTF)????

(Honestly, half time frame I need ideas what a guy means dependant on twelve keywords on a show. And even easily think I know, I’m loathe to think. I suggest in excess of asks your furry friend to call her.

Be aware, keep your thoughts in check and as well stay in fact. You don’t understand him. To have reading in this post to learn techniques for finding the websida to move to the phone and also an real-time date.

(Want to learn more about how you can know whenever a man is absolutely interested? You can view my available webcast How one can Know If He’s In to You. )

2 . A few men make full use of texting to aid string anyone along… time period. If you are acquiring texts combined with calls as well as dates, subsequently excellent! She has interested in observing you in addition to sure looking for a collaboration.

But if there is absolutely no actual real-time contact — beware!

Probably you are aware the guy who texts once in a while like a kind of sign-up. He notifys you how much this individual likes you really and even works super contemplating your life. She / he flirts. They says the way busy one is and how he / she previously really love to determine you rapidly. And it finishes there.

This guy are what I call up a “pinger. ”

Pingers want a good ego enhance. They prepared text you in conjunction with, when you respond positively, have high of while using knowledge that you’re keep a geared up option when (and if) he desires to actually day you.

As well as just a few minutes along with a few properly chosen keystrokes, a good pinger can keep a person interested for ages, even years… without a great deal as one distinct date. (This happens with phone calls too. )

If you are linked to a pinger, girlfriend, you have to end which will so-called romantic relationship right now. You can more about pingers and learn what you can do with them by means of reading this publish: Why Does She or he Keep Evaporating and Reappearing?

3. Sending text messages as a way connected with dating is mostly for males, not adult men. If you have no met your canine friend yet as well as he’s sending texts to see if it is possible to obtain together upon short diagnose, don’t be flattered. He’s both equally impulsive in addition to, more likely, trying you being back-up woman when his or her other packages fell by means of.

If you like often the pup and are able to give the dog a chance, in this case respond getting a positive ‘ thank you nevertheless no thanks a lot. ” It is advisable to say this kind of thing:

“It is going to be great to enjoy you, Greg, but We have plans this evening. Love to gathering with a extra notice while. Enjoy your special evening. ”

Put it out there and see how are you affected. A grownup dude who absolutely wants to recognize you will get often the message and acquire you at a distance ahead of time. A new farmer or purchaser guy will text any individual again in a few weeks attempting to see you in the evening. Take it so it is – he’s most likely not serious about online dating and your puppy is going down their list, in hopes you chew. Don’t reply.

4. Text messaging does have an optimistic place in internet dating. Texting can be a superb complement for you to real dating. For instance, may great way so as to clarify plans or develop last minute improvements to the program.

A man do people want a healthy, more mature connection can easily make every power to show you will he’s curious and to quite simply see you instantly. Why? Mainly because that’s the best way men determine whether they as you. It’s all about how she or he FEELS while he’s to your account, and he is aware of it. Whenever he’s looking for something more than one fun nighttime, a good guy will do exactly what he can to impress you by way of asking you offered, and then use your event.

Texting is usually good for a simple “had a great time” or maybe “sleep well” note after having a nice moment. Or a “looking forward to slurping spaghetti in addition to you Friday. ” Let him know if you are thinking of him / her and valuation him. Make it14972 simple, as well as leave it generally there. If you don’t grab back, proceed.

Here’s what to perform next to ensure you don’t get ensnared on the inappropriate guy again… You can find clear impulses when he IS CERTAINLY into any person… CLICK THIS and see how!

several. If she has a grownup fantastic guy, you are able to kindly purchase him along texting. I will see why perhaps good, reliable, single people love texting. If they sees your overall picture along with profile together with wants to meet up with you, the particular hunter along with him would want to get up on the result: discussion you. This is especially valid of some women I understand. They think chatting 1st just interrupts the routine and will need to skip the unit and/or email.

But No later than this say that again, executing a bunch of texting first can make an naive sense relating to connection. Like a little more, being a phone call at first, it’s your final choice to get over texting treadmill and ask for what you want. So when he is focused on9491 meeting a female for a authentic relationship, he will probably step up.

How would you do that? Just simply say this type of thing if this individual seems to be swept up on sending texts:

“It may be great to listen the modulation of voice connected to all these great written word and email. I’d love a telephone call when you’ve got period. Hope that works for you! 555-1212. ”

OR PERHAPS

“Thanks to get in touch. Allow me to get to know anyone but I find sending text messages isn’t an ideal way. But receiving up with you actually over coffee beans might be; ). ”

So… the bottom line in texting in addition to dating are these claims: use txt messaging sparingly, effectively and, above all, don’t study too much by it. Remember, true and genuine love come about in person, grin to laugh, touch to the touch. Not around the phone or if your computer.

I may LOVE to pick up your sending text messages stories in addition to answer this question about how to really make it work for you though dating or maybe in your marriage. Leave us your responses below.

from WordPress https://cvworld.io/blog/what-you-should-become-aware-of-texting-along-with-12/

[eightlegbuilders]

Honesty: Well if I had to choose the #1 reason, I would have myself taken this one. As someone who has a website called honestastrologer.com and email ID honestastrologer@gmail.com it shows my allegiance to honesty. In fact I was surprised when I was able to find the domain and mail ID which was free, guess I was blessed, and guess most astrologers did not value honesty enough to create a mail ID that would have been free. But I do.

I have bluntly told people what they did NOT want to hear, but that was for their own good. Here are a few examples:

I tell them to forget about a government job if they are from General Category no yantra or gemstone can get them one. (I lose several clients who have this as their major question. I could have earned consultancy fee and could have sold them a lot of things assuring them of a government job, but I don’t)

I tell people that I can’t get their “Lost Love Back”. I have disappointed many desperate people who were willing to pay any price. I guess exploiting them would have got me several lakhs but I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night, so honesty is the best policy.

I tell them there is no magic bullet. Again some people feel disappointed when I say remedies would show effect after 21-40 days and it would be a slow recovery. I believe they would have been happy to buy a costly item if I tell them some crap lie “100% result in 4 hours”. Imagine the money I could have made. Ah the honesty…!

Money Back Guarantee: I put my money where my mouth is, I give a preliminary reading and if that NOT 80% or more accurate, I give them their money back. No questions asked. I guess I am the only one in the world who does that. Let me know if there is one.

I do all consultations myself: I don’t have a team of half baked astrologers who would impersonate being “G. Vijay Kumar” and would consult many people daily, making me rich while I sleep. For the record, many big names in the market do that. This is the worst kept secret of astrology business. I don’t do this.

Limited Number of Consultations: I do only 4-5 consultations a day. More than that and it becomes a mechanical process. I give my 100% to every consultation and I DON’T look at the watch when I consult.

NOT YOUR TYPICAL PUNDIT JI: I am not your typical pundit ji who has never been to an office in life and has no clue how things go on in the real world. I have been a student, a government job aspirant (yeah), and a corporate guy. By education I am MBA and L.Lb. My corporate career culminated at a Senior Management position in Human Resources with a reputed multinational. So, been there done that. I know how things work in the real world knowledge and human resources experience comes in hand So I am more of a FRIEND PHILOSOPHER GUIDE…!

Putting LOGICAL in Astrological: I take pride in putting LOGICAL back in Astrological. I would tell you what you need to do in the real world as well. For example I can tell you to improve your diet and exercise, if I see chances of diabetes or weight gain in your chart. I would tell you to stop preparing for UPSC if you are a general category person (yes). I would tell you to see a doctor if I see chances of depression in your chart. So I blend the real world solutions with astrological remedies. Ideally, that’s what an astrologer should do.

Affordable: My clients keep telling me that I charge less, many have made donations using my site in order to make it up to me. My team is after my life to push rates further but 501/- is where I have decided to put the stop. I want to reach out to people who really need my help. Doing limited numbers of consultations a day, I have to charge enough in order to pay the bills.

Expertise on BIG 3-Rahu-Ketu and Saturn: I know my game and know it well. I can guarantee that there are 90% chances that if you are looking forward to a consultation, you are undergoing a Rahu-Ketu or a Saturn period. I have spent years reading about them and am about to release a book on these 3. I have done my homework well, and have done it for years. I have done my research and have prepared special yantras for these 3 as per scriptures for Rahu-Ketu and Saturn. I could have made thousands daily by selling gemstones for these three, but I have decided NOT to as their side effects can literally kill a person.

Logical, Sattvic, Cost-effective and EEFECTIVE Remedies: The remedies I suggest have been prepared after a lot of study, contemplation and experiments. I don’t get into tamasic remedies (I don’t use even Lal Kitab the book most astrologers swear by, as it is full of Tamasik Remedies). The remedies I suggest are without side effects, and often very pocket friendly (I don’t want to skin you alive if you are already in trouble). E.g. I would suggest you to polish boots in a Gurudwara, or chant a mantra, instead of paying 21000 for a special puja.

Authentic Stones/Yantras: I sell Silver Yantras for 301 only. These are not pieces of tin imported from china @ Rs. 10 and sold for 299. These are silver pieces made in India as per the dimensions specified in scriptures. Guess that says something about my integrity. In addition, I sell gemstones like Opal, Emerald, Yellow Sapphire, etc. at a very-very reasonable rate. Honestly, it helps being based in Jaipur-the Gems capital of India and having a father who has decades of goodwill and a deep supply chain behind him. I am about to launch an online shop that would sell authentic stuff at a very competitive price.

No Fear Tactics: Have you ever tried calling most of the “astrological services”? Here’s what they do: They scare the hell out of you in the first 3 minutes telling you all that’s wrong in your chart and telling you how you are doomed if you do not get some “Puja” done or don’t wear some particularly costly gemstone. I would tell you upfront that I don’t do any puja for my clients and I would never do it. I understand that if you have called me, you are going through a tough time already. I would try to help you, give you cheaper alternatives, guide you properly and logically and often ENCOURAGE YOU like a guide. I have a sense of humor and most of my clients end the call with a smile.

I Know My Job-Well: This one I have put in place after a lot of contemplation, almost decided to do away with it. But then it turned out to be a prominent point. If you go to a doctor, you expect him to know his job. I am confident enough to put a money back guarantee in place, that should tell you something. Moreover, I am someone who spent time since childhood in astrology, I don’t go blindly by scriptures, I CHALLENGE them.

Let me say two things most astrologers won’t dare say:

SADE SAATI IS A HOAX-It is always your dasha that matters. Go check your charts, whenever you have been in trouble it would have been typically a dasha of Saturn, Rahu and Ketu, never mind if it was or wasn’t a Sade-Saati.

GUNA MILAN IS A SCAM: If this rubbish worked, there would have been no divorces in Hindu arranged marriage. This is a FLAWED technique that is ruining people’s lives. I have knowledge of the rare art of horoscope to horoscope compatibility reading that most people don’t have, and can help people get better mat

[theinstantblog]

Why be “Religious?”

I tried to think of some parable or analogy that would best express the situation of religion in modern society. Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) in Either/Or and Harvey Cox (b. 1929) in The Secular City both point to the parable of a clown being mocked off stage after a failed attempt to warn the audience of a fire which erupted backstage. They dismiss the warning and proceed to laugh at the clown and his “misfortune.” And so, modernity, “the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke” (Oden 1978, 3).

The idea behind the parable suggests that the clown represents the contemporary theologian; strutting about in his makeup and clothes, no real danger or urgency behind what he is saying. Amidst the theologian’s “seriousness” and “urgency,” the public still knows better that he is all that he is – just a clown (Ratzinger 2000, 39-42). What makes this parable (and others like it) so significant is that it prompts us to ask ourselves not merely “Am I apart of the applauding audience?” but rather “What is the condition of man?”

What does it mean to be a man? What does man’s world consist of? What is man’s relation to other things (the universe, other people, etc.)? While these questions do not immediately prompt an irreligious person to spew a “religious answer” for them, they by all means demand an answer. 

In my experience, these are the sort of questions which the general public (Christians included!) disregard as needless exercises in abstract thought. However, at the same time, there are some who recognize the legitimacy of these questions, but only in the realm of “individual human lives, human creativity, human interactions, and human institutions” (Nagel 2010, 7).

Atheism Today

Let’s flip the conversation a little bit and move on to disbelief in religion. Typically, whenever I personally encounter disbelief it’s expressed by someone in an irreverent or sarcastic tone, which I later will interject and ask what they meant by the claim (if, of course, the statement was directed towards me or I am otherwise involved in the conversation; I am not interested in being a dog that jumps on anti-religious remarks when I am not welcome). To my surprise, this takes place almost %100 of the time in my workplace – never anywhere else.

I make jokes quite often that restaurants (I myself have worked three restaurants in a three years time – I rather prefer working restaurants than retail or elsewhere) are perhaps the most godless places on earth because of the “down-time” chatter that takes place. What I noticed over time is that I was up against people and experiences that 

I was not prepared to address as a Christian at such and such time. The intellectual objections that were raised against my beliefs were never exactly the problem, but being burdened by these people’s situations was what caused the real problems for me. The lack of joylessness, the lack of passion and child-likeness, the pride and despair that I was more interested in addressing than the incorrect beliefs which these people held.

Now, what these people would often try to explain to me (implicitly, sometimes) is that they know better to invest time and belief in things which they were taught to believe growing up. Hence, they emphasize a religion which is directed toward personal spirituality rather than a dogmatic faith that points to right belief and right practice. 

Religion in their eyes is a spontaneous event which they take up at the moment of existential insight; not a spirituality that is based in realism (i.e., best accounts for the totality of one’s being in reality). The great teacher Abraham Heschel, speaking of Kierkegaard and faith, once wrote:

Kierkegaard expressed his repudiation of a smooth transition to new concepts through meditation, or of the arrival at new concepts by a progressive process of thought. Faith is attained, not by continuous and gradual approximations, but by a resolution of the will. (Heschel 2004, 185).

Understood in this light, the questions I mentioned before are not to be intended as meditations for the unbelieving mind in themselves. That is, like Heschel mentioned, to adopt these questions into one’s worldview and gradually, through various approximations, come to religion arm’s wide open. These questions are in a sense like sign posts, giving one the appropriate directions for “take off,” and which, if answered honestly and openly, will lead one to a “religious temperament” if not the Lord Himself.

However, atheism today takes these questions for granted. Like Socrates in ancient Greece, the people of Athens when upon further questioning of their most fundamental beliefs, they rebelled and reacted offensively against Socrates. 

When their ignorance began to surface – and not just ignorance of X and Y but ignorance of themselves – this would later come back and cost Socrates his life. The same could be said for Jesus, who instead of searching for the wisest of men was looking for “fishers of men,” (cf. Matt. 4:19) and also for an authentic religion that was oriented towards love; love towards God, oneself and ones neighbor.

Atheism Continued

A modern account of atheism may perhaps look to the famous philosophical triad: Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx (typically scholars will throw in Ludwig Feuerbach as a candidate for “important atheists”). Friedrich Nietzsche, who lived from 1844 to 1900, constructed a “passionate criticism” of Christianity which would live on and resurrect (somewhat superficially) in later mid 20th-century Protestant circles (see “Death of God” movement).

Sigmund Freud’s critique of the “god concept” would surmount a psychological criticism for belief in God, and Marx’s society involves a conception of religion which views it as a hindrance (“opium”) for social revolution among the lower working class.

Later we come across an interesting, but highly influential literary group of atheists who express their skepticism and secularism in (more or less) their political activism as well as on the pages of their best literary works. Here I have in mind books like Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit, Albert Camus’ The Plague, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and so forth. For Camus, the greatest struggle for human existence is death. Otherwise better put, the fact of death shows man’s existence to be meaningless. Man must rebel against this “ultimate negation” by putting before himself a series of deliberate choices that constantly challenge his vain circumstances. We must be free, says Camus.

More contemporaneously, the so-called “new atheists” such as Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and others, pose a new radically-defensive position against religion. These atheists are unique in that they move to a new critique of religion never before precedented in religious thought: religion is not only delusional (Freud and Dawkins), but it is in fact socially harmful or “poisonous” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris all affirm this).

But again, what do any of these men have to say about what it means to be a man? Plenty, to be sure. However, where these men differ from their religious counterparts is the realism I had mentioned earlier. That is to say, whatever critiques may be offered for adopting religious belief one must consider the totality of what it is they are rejecting. To remember, Christianity is realism.

The religious outlook combines truth and spirituality in a totally encompassing way. We are talking about the infinite hole that fills the hearts of men, the laboring and filling of this hole with one pleasure after another and never being satisfied. We do not only mean emotional or spiritual satisfaction but also a robust intellect satisfaction. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom. 12:2).

I doubt very seriously, friend or reader, that your disbelief is the result of a series of humble reflections that treat the question of man’s nature seriously and honestly. An honest seeking of God will not leave one “floating along the ocean of nihilism” with the “salt water of doubt constantly entering the mouth.” 

God has told Moses, if you remember, “I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen” (Exodus 33:23). In this life we are only given glimpses of the Divine. Yet, the Apostle Paul has encouraged us with the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).