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tribow · 2 years

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Notes I took from the Grimoire of Usami

If you didn't know, a danmaku fireworks festival takes place in this book and the human playable characters act as judges for the spellcards of various characters. This is the most amount of dialogue we get out of Sakuya and Youmu for a while.

There's a lot of characters that show up so I took hella notes. Big post.

Reimu takes her judging fairly seriously. I didn't expect her to be that critical instead of being laid-back. She's very biased on money/food type spellcards tho.

Marisa had to use a flashlight and Machine Gun Sparkinstead of the actual Master Spark to keep the audience safe. It is what it is.

Three Fairies of Lights teamed up and got a spellcard disqualified as you must be solo

Youmu is allergic to butterflies???

Lily White apparently gets stressed when it isn't spring.

Who was Kagerou aiming at for her first spellcard? Also she's good at acting feral...it fooled Sakuya at least.

YOU CAN EAT MINORIKO'S SPELLCARD LMAO

Sanae is the most focused judge. Everyone else gets plenty distracted.

Characters that cause actual fires pre-hijack: Sunny Milk & Narumi

In an extremely Yuyuko move, she convinced Youmu to judge in her stead since she "couldn't make it" and then showed up at the competition anyway. She probably just wanted Youmu to enjoy a day at a festival. (Of course Youmu gives her a 10/10)

Marisa is a big fan of Benben's spellcards.

Raiko and Murasa are shredded I am taking that as canonical fact.

Nazrin uses gold from the kappa in her spellcard and gets her points deducted (the kappa are the management behind this event).

Satori's "Brain Fingerprint" spellcard uses fear to determine where the explosions happen. So the explosions happened in different locations for each individual viewer. That's cool as hell.

Marisa's good at determining the actual technique that goes into a spellcard. Her insight is in good constrast to Reimu's harsh critiques.

Futo let people ride her boat hell yeah

Tenshi comes swooping in and almost ruined the whole thing with a dangerous spellcard. To be fair, she didn't know what was going on.

The damage control efforts are really fun. It's cool seeing other characters like Nitori, Murasa, and Kanako step in to help out.

Iku, Miko, and Shou all got 9s in the competition before it got hijacked. I'm not counting Suwako cause Sanae is biased. Miko won though, two of her spellcards got a 9.

Surprised to see Hina show up during the hijack. She usually seems so friendly and kind despite the kind of goddess she is. Maybe she's putting on an act as this hijack does fit very well with her theme of misfortune....heck she could be gathering misfortune from the audience so they dont get struck by stray bullets? Hmm, there's layers to her appearance here.

Murasa sinking Shinmyoumaru is very funny

The humans in the audience are actually mostly onboard with the dangerous hijack...probably because they don't need to actually dodge anything thanks to damage control efforts.

For a moment I thought Byakuren would not join in on the hijack, but she had complete faith in the playable cast to deflect her spellcard. How dangerously reasonable.

Seija's backward comments on everyone is great. She mostly just settles on insulting whoever is up though.

Is this Momiji's first line of dialogue? I like how they comment on her spellcard breaking the 4th wall.

Okina and Yukari also show up as hijack judges. I doubt Shinmyoumaru was able to contact the two of them herself. They must have invited themselves in once they knew what was happening. Heck, Okina even instigated the hijack plan with her own support without the inchling knowing.

Hecatia and Okina are implied to have met in person now. Okina even invited her to the hijack.

Junko showing up is enough for Yukari to immediately join damage control. I wonder is she got any frustrated words from Reimu up there.

Surprisingly enough Yukari ends up asking Eirin to call down Sagume to bring the festival to an end. Once she knew Okina was instigating this it probably wouldn't stop unless something like this was done about it. Resourceful.

Sumireko's outside nerd perspective was nice to see and she didn't even react to poorly to the hijack. I guess that's a testament to the effectiveness of the damage control.

Before, reading this I thought I was going to be super disappointed by Shinmyoumaru's actions here. I got the feeling that she would contradict her own character development or something here.

Shinmyoumaru was (somewhat) the mastermind behind the hijack. To her, the fireworks festival was insulting to what danmaku is. Danmaku is a display of power. Removing the danger from it is just wrong. It's a way for the small to show off their strength! She labours on that point the most; about how danmaku shows the strength of the weak and small.

Shinmyoumaru's weakness as an inchling is a big source of conflict for her. Her species is weak. She gets used and manipulated only to get beat down by the strong danmaku of the playable characters. I wouldn't be surprised if Shinmyoumaru was became enamored by power. With power comes the ability to change the world around you, and even if it's something Seija instigated, it's what Shinmyoumaru desires.

She's a very passionate character too. Yeah, she's one of the more morally good characters in touhou, but it doesn't mean her passion can't lead her down the wrong path and well...that's exactly what happens here.

She's no idiot, her goal here wasn't to get humans in the audience killed. She saw that there's already plenty of power behind the damage control for this event. This hijack wouldn't work if the audience had to run away from it. They needed to witness it and if the playable cast was busy protecting the audience then she had full reign to takeover the judges position.

However, Shinmyoumaru was in over her head here. Okina getting involved made the hijack way more intense than what Shinmyoumaru even had in mind. Yukari even gotten herself involved solely to support damage control (and have some fun with the event of course).

In a way, Shinmyoumaru is completely right about fireworks festival not showing off the true nature of danmaku. I mean, you can feel the disappointment from everyone when Marisa never fires off a true Master Spark. However, the hijack was the wrong way to go about it and Reimu shows her just that.

I don't see the Grimoire of Usami as a bad look on Shinmyoumaru's character. If anything, it exemplified her inner conflicts and flaws. She gets jealous of the many powerful characters that show up because she wants that power. She needs it to be the hero the inchlings never got. Although, she never realizes how much she has already achieved with her own strength alone.

#touhou #the grimoire of usami #shinmyoumaru sukuna #I still haven't beaten Double Dealing Character yet #I should make some attempts today

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haleigh-sloth · 2 years

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I know people say Midoriya and Shigaraki "parallel" a lot, and in some ways they do. And I've said it plenty I believe back when I first started the story for sure.

But re-examining their arcs and incorporating Bakugo into the equation, because he's definitely a part of it, I think it's a lot less about paralleling, specifically with Midoriya and Shigaraki.

If the story was going to parallel them and surround their two arcs around that, then there'd be more similar backstories, similar experiences, just more things to put them on common ground to relate to one another. But there isn't a whole lot of that. And I don't think there was ever meant to be.

I think the paralleling is a bit more present between Shigaraki and Bakugo.

I could go into detail but I've done it a bit already in different ways at different times. Here is the most recent. Here is an older one.

I think both posts kind of get the point across, but really the most telling part of it all is how Shigaraki and Bakugo both have been subjected to getting their bodies hijacked, and how both incidents resulted in a shift in the MC's story.

(Also me just now realizing his mouth was covered for both of these incidents)

So Midoriya...I mean there are some parallels. Or imo it's more like lines are drawn at certain times to connect their arcs at specific points in the story, whether that be through visuals or dialogue. Their starting points aren't similar (nobody has a similar story to Shigaraki, so I mean ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

With these two I would describe it as instead of paralleling, it's more like one filling in a missing piece for the other.

What led to Bakugo being saved in the first chapter was a bunch of heroes on stand by, letting him suffocate, because they needed someone suitable for the job. And here comes Midoriya, definitely not suitable for the job (on principle), but jumps in anyway. And because of his actions, Bakugo lived.

Midoriya filled in the gap at that time.

With Tenko, it was kind of the same thing. Except instead of heroes waiting on someone suitable to do something, it was random bystanders waiting on heroes to do something. Except this time there was no Midoriya to jump in. Nobody to fill in the gap.

Because of what Midoriya did for Bakugo in chapter 1, he is now in a position to fill the gap for Shigaraki.

This is where I feel that Shigaraki is more placed alongside Bakugo in a way. Shigaraki never got what Bakugo got. And whoo hoo, that issue was just revisited recently a coupe of chapters ago. So the similarities must be important.

But I feel that Midoriya's place in Shigaraki's story is less about his arc running alongside his (it does at times, though) and more about him filling in a missing piece Shigaraki has been wanting.

Tenko was the kid everyone ignores so that a hero can take care of it.

Midoriya is the person who jumps to help when everybody else is just waiting for the right hero to take care of it.

He's the one who fills in the gap.

So when people criticize the flat parallels between the two--I kind of get it. I get it because I don't think it was necessarily just parallels we were supposed to see this entire time.

I think we were supposed to catch onto the fact that Shigaraki needs something, and that there's someone who has been shown throughout the story to be that something.

The biggest parallels I see is Midoriya’s relationship to both characters separately. Each relationship is more similar to each other, rather than Midoriya being similar to Shigaraki, or Shigaraki being similar to Bakugo. There are the details listed above, in two posts linked to, and then there are visual similarities that make me view things this way too:

Strictly a prediction here, but I feel like this will repeat itself with Shigaraki in place of Bakugo:

Idk what this means for Bakugo’s role, but I’m feeling more excited for it when I look at it this way.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha meta #shigaraki tomura #shimura tenko #Bakugo katsuki #Midoriya izuku #Deku

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gloivy · 1 year

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glo my love can i have 7 36 and 94 for the ask game <3

thank you for the ask Anna bb <3

7 - tell us about the plot of the first fanfic you ever wrote

oh my god i’m not sure i actually remember the first? IT WAS SO LONG AGO!!! i’ve been writing fanfiction since i was 12/13??? i was a lil baby. but one plot i remember pretty vividly from around that time was a Hunger Games fix-it fic i wrote where Peeta was never hijacked by the capital and instead had a happy reunion with Katniss in District 13 🥲 and here i am over a decade later, still an everlark girlie

36 - do you base your characters off real people or not? If so, tell us about one.

yes, although usually unintentionally. i think i’m always in a state of observation, and when i meet someone who is especially quirky or expressive, they almost always inspire elements of my writing - their mannerisms, unusual habits, or fun little phrases/sayings.

a wee fun example i can give where one of my characters was inspired by a specific person, is Draco in The Muggle Telephone. a lot of his online fumbling was heavily inspired by my great aunt who uses facebook with great difficulty. she REGULARLY posts a series of statuses along the lines of “John smith” followed by “find John Smith” and then “Can you find John Smith from [the small town she lives in]”. sometimes! we get a random keysmash! one time she accidentally updated her profile picture to a zoomed in photo of her ear! and then in the comments of said photo said “delete it”. and no matter how many times we try to help her with social media, it never quite sticks hahaha.

so, yes, i based The Muggle Telephone Draco off an 84 year old woman.

94 - do you prefer dialogue or description?

DIALOGUE!!! nothing else flows for me like writing dialogue. once i get into a conversation between characters, i feel like i can’t type fast enough to keep up with it!

#asked and answered #annanother-thing #the muggle telephone

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albireogames · 2 years

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Ren’Py stuff part 2: phone tutorial

In the current version of Perihelion, we had a “phone” that functioned as a status screen for our fte system. Since the fte system went through an overhaul and the status screen is no longer needed, I decided to try and make a full-on text messaging screen for character dialogue. It turned out pretty well, although there’s definitely some room for better consistency and functionality. Here’s a breakdown of how I coded it, with a link to the full implementation at the end of the post.

(This guide assumes basic understanding of Renpy screens and python.)

Basic structure

The easiest way to do this is to hijack the NVL dialogue screen and make a phone-shaped variation of it. We can reuse NVL’s built-in features (such as continuing to show past dialogue to the player) to make a messaging screen that’s easy and intuitive to use.

As of version 8.0.3, the default NVL code that comes in screens.rpy has two components: nvl and nvl_dialogue. The nvl screen takes in a list of dialogue and a list of menu items (if given), and uses nvl_dialogue to display the dialogue text itself. We’ll be using the same structure for the phone screen, with an encapsulating screen that takes in the same parameters and uses a second screen to display the dialogue. (The exact format of the default NVL screen code may change with new versions of Renpy, but the basic idea is still the same.)

To start, the inside screen is made by copying the nvl_dialogue screen and trimming it down to only include the dialogue text:

(“id d.what_id” on line 58 is the only required id property—the game will actually crash without it. This presents an interesting problem with styling that will be covered in a later section.)

Likewise, the containing screen is based on the nvl screen:

Instead of just using a regular vbox (or vpgrid), we add a viewport to allow the player to scroll up to view previous texts. Set the “mousewheel” property to True and scrollbars to “vertical” to allow scrolling (unfortunately, you can’t set “draggable” or “arrowkeys” to True without preventing the player from being able to click inside the viewport itself to advance the text). Finally, set yinitial to 1.0 (not 1, because that indicates a 1 pixel offset instead of 100%) to keep the viewport at the bottom where the most recent messages will appear.

If you aren’t planning to use regular NVL anywhere else in your game, you can probably just replace the contents of the nvl and nvl_dialogue definitions entirely instead of making new ones (I won’t cover this option in depth in this post). Otherwise, you’ll need to add a few lines to the top of your nvl screen that tells it whether to use your new phone_display screen:

Because this depends on reading the state of a variable, a dict is (probably) the easiest way to do this since it’s automatically a global variable when declared in Renpy. For convenience, I put it in a dict named phone_display_header that also keeps track of other display elements I’ll add later:

(Using a simple “default phone_mode = False” and then toggling with “$ phone_mode = True” in your game script will only change the value of the variable in the local scope of your label, so the nvl screen will never read your variable as True. You could probably get around this with environment variables or something instead, but that’s a pain.)

Just set the dict value to True (and set the value for the visual elements you want) before a line of NVL dialogue, and it should use the phone_display screen instead. I put it all in a function for ease of use:

In short, to enable the phone mode, this function clears the NVL dialogue screen, sets the global phone toggle, disables rollback, and then shows the NVL window to bring up the phone. To disable it, it does the opposite in reverse.

This is also where I set the values for displayables that can change depending on the story scenario, like the phone clock, a user icon, and the name that displays at the top of the message screen by taking them as parameters and updating the global dict (lines 6~9). The phone_display screen will be able to read this dict and place these elements accordingly. You can add, change, or remove these as you need, since they’re just for visual customization and making the phone look more phone-y and have no impact on the functionality. (The dr parameter is a “dragon” object that keeps track of each character’s icon, name, story flags, etc)

If your game contains rollback, you might want to disable it while the phone interface is active, since it a) doesn’t make sense for texts to unsend themselves and b) the player can see all previous texts anyway so there’s not really a point. Blocking rollback after the phone screen is hidden is also optional. I’d recommend having a debug toggle that allows it to stay enabled though.

Lastly, you DO need “window show” (line 14) specifically. “window show” not only shows the nvl window but keeps it from being hidden during certain transitions such as when the game brings up dialogue menus. “nvl show” is technically redundant and not necessary but I’m keeping it in just in case. “$ nvl_hide(Pause(0))” (line 18) is kind of weird and will be explained later.

At this point your phone display should theoretically run without crashing, although it probably looks nothing like a phone yet…

Styling

I won’t go over all of the styles in detail, since most of it is pretty mundane and just setting stuff like xpos/ypos and background images, but there are definitely some weirdly difficult parts.

After adding style properties, the new phone_messages screen looks like this:

The if/else branch (lines 57~61) changes the spacing between messages depending on whether it is attributed to the same sender as the previous message—for instance, two consecutive messages sent by the player character will only have a 5px separation while a message from the player character followed by a message from Lark will have a 14px separation between them.

For the text message window style, if you want the message bubbles to look different depending on who is sending the message (you probably do), you can use the “who” attribute of the current dialogue object as a prefix to determine which style to apply to the window (line 65). The d.who is the string you passed as the “name” arg for the Character objects we defined above, so make sure it’ll make the name of your style. (It took me forever to realize that the name of a style to apply doesn’t have to just be a string literal, it can be an expression as long as it evaluates to a string lol…) As a side note, I like to add a check for the value of d.who for convenience during development—if you reload/autoreload while on the phone screen, d.who will initialize to None which can’t be concatenated with a string, so the game crashes. To handle this I just set the global phone toggle to False so that it loads in the dialogue on the regular NVL screen instead of crashing, and then I rollback to when the toggle gets set to True again to bring the phone back up. If you’ve replaced the NVL screen with your phone code, uhhhhhhhh I guess you could set the style to a default value or something.

You may have noticed the text itself (line 69... nice) doesn’t have any style properties applied to it. This is because the required id property overrides any style properties you put on the displayable, so…

We have to define Character objects to specify which style we want through the what_style argument (more info here). Because of the id property on the dialogue text, the phone_messages screen will (more or less) look at the “speaking” character associated with the current dialogue object and apply that character’s what_style to the text. As always, when you modify an object while your game is running, remember to close your game completely and relaunch it, as the changes won’t be detected by autoreload.

The callback is optional—it’s just a function to play a sound every time a message is “sent” or “received” (when the player clicks to advance).

The phone_display screen is relatively simple—here’s where I added the clock, icon, and name displayables, and added a frame around the menu choices (if they exist).

For the frame, we decided we wanted the background color to match the character’s text bubbles for some visual cohesion, so I used the same method as the text message window styles to determine which style to apply (lines 127 and 172).

For the menu buttons, I like to add a hover background image and maybe hover and activate sounds to make it feel responsive (line 176). As always, putting your background images into Frames will save you some grief.

At this point, you can run the screen code by calling the nvl_phone function to enable the phone mode and then using the newly defined NVL characters as you would for normal NVL dialogue:

Your phone should now look like a phone! However, there’s still more we can add.

Animations

We can use some simple ATL to add small animations and make the interface really pop. I have two transforms to show and hide the phone screen, and two to show and… continue to show the message bubbles.

The animations themselves are very simple—the first two transforms slide the phone on and off the screen for a clean, diegetic-ish transition to and from the usual ADV mode. The third one places the message on the left or right side of the phone screen depending on who sent it and does a quick fade-in for it to appear smoothly, while the fourth keeps the message at the appropriate location on the screen without doing a fade-in.

With the transforms applied, the phone_messages screen looks like this:

The “at” property can be put inside an if/else (lines 64~67) block to determine which transform to use. If the message is the most recent one in the list of NVL dialogue objects, as indicated by d.current, the message_appear transform that does the fade-in is applied. If not, the message is shown using the message_stay transform without a fade-in, otherwise the animation would replay on every message with each new line of dialogue that appears.

(It might be possible to move the check into a choice block within the transform and pass d.current as an arg, but I had trouble getting the choice blocks to function the way I wanted when combined with the choice blocks that determine whether to place the message on the left or right, so it’s easier to have it in two separately defined transforms.)

Additionally, the function signature has been changed to include “items”, the list of menu choices if provided to the NVL screen, and added to the check for the transform (line 64). This is because (when you don’t put a menu caption, at least) the line of dialogue before the menu will have its fade-in animation replay because its d.current is still True, so we have to check if a menu is being displayed when determining which transform to apply.

Adding the transforms to the phone_display screen is pretty similar:

The check this time is for the length of the list of dialogue objects (lines 108~109). If the length is 1, that means that the current message is the first one and will bring up the phone screen, so it should apply the phone_slide transform that gives it the slide-in animation. Otherwise, it’ll use the phone_stay transform that just keeps it on the screen without any animations, and slides it off the screen when returning to ADV mode. (Combining the two transforms into one won’t work—it’ll run the “on show” block every time and the phone will slide onscreen repeatedly, I’m assuming because the NVL screen re-shows itself every time a new line of dialogue appears on screen.)

I also added the message fade-in to the frame holding the menu choices to make it look nicer (line 129).

Now that we have animations, I can explain a certain line in my nvl_phone function that I mentioned earlier:

For some reason, “window hide” and “nvl hide” will hide the screen without running the ATL in the “on hide” block in the phone_stay transform, so the phone will just blip out of existence jarringly. However, the python equivalent, nvl_hide(), does not have the same problem and I don’t know why!!! It needs one argument, the transition to use to hide the window, and since we already have an animation defined in phone_stay, we can just pass Pause(0) so that it doesn’t do any additional transitions, and the “on hide” animation will play so that the phone will slide off the screen nicely. (Unfortunately, passing easeoutbottom as the transition doesn’t work, even though transitions such as dissolve and fade work fine…)

Another side note: if you have a function that filters your dialogue text and adds pauses after punctuation like periods and ellipses, you probably don’t want that to apply to your text messages, since the screen will re-display the message with its fade-in animation after every pause. To get around this, you can add a special character to the beginning of every text message and then catch them in your text filtering function:

You can also send images with the {image} text tag! You’ll have to make sure the image fits within the maximum size you set for the message window, otherwise it’ll clip past the edges. An alternative is to define a separate NVL character for sending images to allow them to take up the width of the phone “screen” and not have the colored text bubble as the background, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

And that’s it! Your phone should look like the gif at the beginning.

Room for improvement

While this phone screen is totally functional and works for my purposes, there are a few small things I’d like to fix or add at some point.

It’s not super noticeable so I’ve decided to leave it for now, but when the phone slides off the screen, the last message has its message_appear animation play again because it’s still the “current” message. Not sure how to approach this one besides maybe untangling the weird spaghetti of how the NVL screen gets shown and hidden lol.

The other thing that would be nice to have is a way to preload messages before showing the screen or be able to keep previous messages without having to clear the screen between NVL phone segments (the nvl clear is required in order for the phone_display to use the phone_slide animation). This would be really useful for when one character sends a text and the other doesn’t respond until later, since having the previous messages already on the screen when the phone appears would keep the context of the conversation.

Links

Thanks for checking this out! You can find the full screen code here.

I referenced this phone screen implementation a few times while trying to figure out my own, which was really helpful, especially for how to replace the nvl screen with the phone.

Thank god for the Lemmasoft Forums, without which I would never have seen this really good thread and figured out that I should use the python function nvl_hide() and would still be tearing my hair out trying to get the animation to work. I still don’t know why it works!!

And finally, please check out our game here!

#game dev #renpy #visual novel #perihelion vn

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bestbonnist · 3 years

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Chapters 154.1 and 154.2

Since I was late last week (and this week too I guess), I decided to consolidate my meta for Chapter 154.1 and 154.2 into one post. It shouldn't be too much longer than usual since both parts of the chapter had less dialogue and more action!

The entire first part of the chapter was dedicated to Tonari's character arc from Jananda to the present era so forgive me if I reference it any chance I get. Actually, let's start with a summary of her development so far because I reread the Jananda arc for this and I need to show off.

When she was introduced into the story, Tonari's selfishness and pride were amplified by the perspective of Fushi—who hates those negative, human qualities. Fushi and the readers began to see her selfishness and pride weren't inherently bad, as the arc went on. For example, locking up Pioran and lying to Fushi was selfish, but it was so she could leave the island with her friends and every kid who would otherwise grow up to be corrupted like she did. A desire based on her own experience that would make things better for her, her friends, and the person she used to be, but one that ended up helping others.

Similarly, Tonari would have never been able to get as far as she did if she didn't know she was right. That pride in her own abilities and her friends made her confident enough to extend a hand to the people she wanted to help, like when she and her friends helped Fushi take down the first knocker that came to Jananda.

However, the death of her friends forced her to acknowledge the negative consequences of her selfishness and pride. After the events of the Jananda arc, Tonari wanted to live selflessly as a way of taking responsibility for her actions. To that end, she became the chief of the criminals she hated so much in order to reform them, and dedicated her body to Fushi. Her motto, "many arrows are better than one," applies to everyone except herself, because she selfishly dragged her friends into the mess she created, and not relying on other people is another way that she's punishing herself.

More recently, Tonari's struggled to define the line between selfishly controlling Fushi's relationship with Mizuha and selflessly protecting them from one of Hayase's successors. Ooima contrasts her decision to back off with Mizuha's growing attachment to Fushi, but it's not like Tonari restricting her own feelings is good for her. In fact, if she'd continued to insist on handling everything herself then she would have died in this chapter.

But she didn't :)

Tonari was in a situation where she pretty much had to accept help if she didn't want to die, and that's very different from accepting it of her own volition. But it's still a step forward, and she acknowledges it as such when she says "many arrows are better than one" again. Ooima compares Tonari's acceptance of someone else's help to Mizuha's, but while Tonari putting herself in the hands of others is the key to her survival, Mizuha doing the same seals her fate.

Not a happy conclusion, but a satisfying one that the reader is familiar with. The villain is redeemed through death. The end.

Except it's not. Instead of letting her sink out of sight and out of mind, Ooima dedicates a whole page to Mizuha's fall from her perspective as her body slams against the walls until she can't move. Even after she enters Paradise, her dream is hijacked by Hayase and the rest of the successors, the very people who claim that death brings freedom. Her story from the beginning to end was the opposite of Kahaku's—she was surrounded by people who loved her, she was raised separate from the Defense Corps., she had Fushi for herself, she lived selfishly, and she accepted help from her friends when they offered it—but her death was remarkably similar to his anyways. Whatever choices Mizuha made prior to this moment didn't matter, she was predestined to return to the Defense Corps. and die with them.

Going back to the Jananda arc again, Fushi was introduced to Tonari as someone who was capable of changing fate, and they met her expectations when they saved her from the death she decided was her destiny. But they failed to save Mizuha from her destined death, even though they knew she wanted to die, even though they were willing to do anything to make sure that don’t happen, even though they knew the left hand was untrustworthy. If they wanted to they could have dragged Mizuha out of the shelter kicking and screaming, but they didn’t. Why?

Fushi’s ability to change fate comes at a cost: the denial of a person’s will. They dictated Tonari’s fate for her instead of accepting her choice, much like the left hand did in this chapter. In the present era, their desire to save their friends and children from the fate of all living things—death—reaches a breaking point when they realize they’re willing to override their friends’ wishes to fulfill their own. Just like how Hayase took away Fushi's free will, they felt like if they continued to insist they knew best, they would become the same kind of person that she was. We saw them reverse course with their friends by making an effort to adjust to the present era and sending Gugu to Takunaha, but they’ve also taken a step back from the codependent clusterfuck that was their relationship with Mizuha and refrained from making her choices for her.

Ever since they got to the shelter they’ve continued to insist that Izumi loves her and that they’ll do whatever she wants, which sounds exactly like what they were doing this whole time, except they’ve gotten less intense about it, because they don’t feel like they need to manage the whole situation like they did before. They’re only giving her information they feel like she needs, and leaving the rest to her. In addition they’re also trusting Tonari to solve the problem at the school for them.

Unfortunately, Fushi’s appearance over the body of Izumi’s knocker and Mizuha is a reminder that by deciding to observe (or behold if you will) instead of act, they also lost their ability to change fate. Sucks for them to finally cut their hair and decide to be completely selfless instead of selfish only for it to immediately be proven that one extreme isn’t any better than the other.

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stachehand · 3 years

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Sonic Forces Positives Appreciation - Top 5

Okay, so, it's been 4 years since the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC saw the release of what is, as of this writing, the latest mainline entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series. A little mess of a game that couldn't named Sonic Forces.

We've all heard the complaints to death by now, i'm pretty sure. It's too short and light on content, the controls and level design are sloppy compared to the previous Boost-centric games, Unleashed, Colours and Generations, the story takes little advantage of the "Eggman rules the world" premise, which should've been treated like the huge deal it is, Infinite is an underwhelming new antagonist, Classic Sonic is just there to be sale bait, nothing more, and the extended cast of Sonic characters, while they do provide some radio chatter, don't really contribute much to the plot or the experience. Not to mention the horrendously deceptive advertising we got in it's pre-release period, and Eggman's boring portrayal.

In lieu of more detailed complaining and critiquing about this disappointing title, I can make a big post where we sit back, chill out and take some time to appreciate the Lights of Hope that also came with the package; the good among the bad that I believe is worth mentioning and remembering for years to come. Feel free to disagree, but hopefully you can enjoy this on some level anyway.

Here be Stache Hand the Clutcher, presenting 5 shining spots about Sonic Forces for Post #600!

IDW Publishing's Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series!

This is what this post was originally going to be dedicated to, before I decided that it'd fit easily into a single entry here. I know, some of you may laugh at this because you think this comic utterly butchered the Sonic universe and has highly cringe-worthy dialogue. The way I see it, though, there's enough good with the bad that IDW Sonic does it for me personally. To get the blemishes out of the way quickly: Sonic's compassion to exaggerated to unreasonable lenience, Eggman's lunacy is misconstrued as idiocy, the Metal Virus arc has a painfully weak final act thanks to a hijacking scenario, the original villains, barring Doctor Starline and (currently) his Imposter creations, aren't very interesting, if i'm being honest, supporting characters act in ways that don't make sense sometimes, and they did Blaze's world dirty.

For all of those questionable qualities, there's plenty of bits in this comic line that i'm afraid are being overlooked nowadays. Early on, the entire Mr. Tinker thing was a pretty surprising development in more ways in one. Not only was it a preview of a world where the never-ending fight between Sonic and Eggman was finally over, but also one where the doctor lived a new life using his talents to benefit anthrokind. And it was legitimate, which made the status quo enforcement hit harder than it normally would in this franchise. While it was, of course, super rash of Sonic to let Metal Sonic go free, which only gave him the opportunity to complete his search for the doctor, just this once it felt like a natural end result, because as far as the situation seemed, a giant step to a new age of peace was within reach.

As far as character portrayals are concerned, most act as you'd expect. Tails, Amy, the Chaotix, Gemerl, Omega, Blaze, Silver and the Babylon Rogues are spot-on. Rouge's fondness of jewelery has gotten kind of bad, but otherwise she's fine, and Knuckles is okay aside from his apathy about consulting with his Resistance partners. And then we have the original heroes. Tangle the Lemur has such a sunny presence, taking in everything as a fun video game with an inevitable positive conclusion, you can't dislike her no matter how much trouble she winds up in. Belle the Tinkerer's not too bad, either. The idea of a Badnik with a warm, near-lifelike appearance to use to their advantage is adorable, and it's compelling to read about this lost child wanting to make friends and escape her association with a tyrannical supergenius.

And then, there's her. Whisper the Wolf. I love this gal so much. Not only is her design beautiful and her gimmick a clever expansion on the Wispon concept from Sonic Forces, but she's also a literal lone wolf with a pleasant personality and a very interesting backstory, with heavy drama to boot. While her archenemy is rather plain (and his appearance has "of course i'm a traitorus butthole" written all over it), he left a significant effect on the girl, and that truama, in my opinion, has been handled tactfully. She has ways of handling it going forward, but it's going to influence her decisions for a long, long time. She's been consistently smart and lovable through all of the directions the comic has taken. Yes, even with all the turmoil.

What else is there to mention? Continuity nods that show how the heroes have adapted to reocurring encounters with previously defeated enemies? The engaging teamwork action? The way the comic becomes more well-paced once Evan Stanley comes in and we get more small arcs? The way they recycle old ideas from the past games and make new challenges out of them? The small bits of symbolism here and there? Doctor Starline suddenly becoming a hilarious (though perhaps unintentional) representation of the rise of Sonic fandom material one-upping Sega's output?

Well, I don't want this entry to go on for too long. In short, Sonic Forces was a launch pad for a comic book with much to digest and enjoy (or pick apart relentlessly: because clown nose).

Character customization!

Sonic Forces was the game that introduced the neat idea of adding a custom look to the player character. Well, in this case, the actual character avatar with a name of the player's choosing. It was such a neat idea that it carried over to Sonic the Hedgehog himself in the Sonic Colours remaster. You can choose from just about anything. Your headgear, your shirt, your gloves, your colours, your species, your voice, the works.

Even better, there was a selection of costumes based on other characters, as limited as they were. This is definitely the most notable inclusion in the entire game, because it feels like a natural addition that should be included in every future installment, original or remake. It may just be the biggest source of replay value.

Personally, I like a female magenta dog with purple gloves and boots and a blue bodysuit.

Noice music!

Some folks may say this is one of the weaker OSTS in the Sonic series, but you never know when you may find a diamond in the rough. I don't think Forces' musical selection is devoid of gems worth listening to. I mean, Sunset Heights, Mortar Canyon, Metropolitan Highway, Egg Gate, the remixes of Zavok's battle theme and U.S. Stardust Speedway - Bad Future, the game's main theme, the tune accompanying the final boss' final form, the remixes in Episode Shadow, and the vocal songs, Fist Bump, Light of Hope and Infinite's theme are a flavourful set of ear candy that help this OST stand out amongst the rest spectacularly.

The Avatar stage themes also accomplish their job to telling the story of the Avatar's rise to glory. The Classic Sonic stage themes, while they could've benefitted from not going far into Genesis soundchip replication, the melodies are well constructed and fit with the desolate setting of the game.

If only the soundtrack didn't leave sour first impressions back in 2017, but what can you do?

Metropolis reinterpreted!

Ah, Metropolis. The capital city of the Eggman Empire, if Eggmanland isn't standing proudly at the moment. Besides the character customization, this may be my favourite thing they added to the Sonic world through Forces. Even with the rest of the game having a brown and grey, apocalyptic aesthetic, they made this place a futuristic, chrome, bustling robot paradise armed to the teeth with weaponry and traps. This is just the kind of urban settlement I would expect Eggman to build and station his factories in. The guy's got an eye for design.

Looking at images of Forces' Metropolis, I just want Sonic and company to break the boundaries of the game design and explore this bright, busy, metal hellscape. It looks far more interesting than the dark, gloomy cities we've seen in past media, like SatAM and the OVA. Best of all, no sign of Asterons, Shellcrackers or Slicers.

Here's hoping we get another Eggman dystopia like this in a future game.

Character justice!

Yeah yeah, we have Eggman being shockingly boring in a game about his global takeover, Infinite being so much less than what he could've been, and Tails cowering and crying out for Sonic, but for all of those, the character writing for the cast is quite spot-on, even with the odd localization decisions here and there by Ken Pontac and Warren Graff. Eitaro Toyoda and this Makoto Goya person, for the most part, have a grasp on who Sonic and company are supposed to be. The former has proven his understanding strong enough to write cover stories for the Japanese Sonic Channel website. Sonic, Amy, Knuckles, the Chaotix, Rouge, Silver and Shadow stay in-character and don't get caught up in pointless comedian routines.

I'll even admit, at least, that as subdued as Eggman's personality is in this game, he does show an intimidating amount of savviness and awareness that helps him pose a legitimate challenge to Sonic, so his ultimate defeat and humiliation feels all the more earned. You get the sense the years of rivalry have been paying off in spades.

Toyoda-san, I think you have the potential to do some more great character work in franchise entries yet to come, restoring the cast to it's former glory.

And that'll be all for this big post. I hope you've had a fun ride reminiscing of the good things that came out of this otherwise 'meh' game. If there are others I should also list, tell me what I missed, folks. Here be Stache Hand the Clutcher, i'm out and about!

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic forces #video games #sonic team #sega #positives appreciation #top 5 #lists #idw sonic #character customization #music #metropolis #character writing #thoughts #fun #stachehand stuff

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pyreo · 3 years

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deltarune megapost

I wanted to make a Deltarune post about the lore and the things that aren’t obvious. And once I do that I wanna focus on why Mettaton is incredibly important to this setting

And also why he poses a problem

Why did Toriel and Asgore get divorced?

Without the setting of Undertale, Asgore and Toriel’s marriage still broke up after they had Asriel. There needs to be a reason though. In UT it was Asgore’s ‘worst of both worlds’ decision regarding killing anybody that fell from the human world, including children. We saw how close they were before this happened. Only something deep and serious caused that rift. In Deltarune, what on earth did Asgore do?

What happened to Dess?

Mentioned a handful of times by Noelle, Dess was her older sister and is mentioned In Undertale.... in that Xbox exclusing casino thing. The way Noelle talks about her, the conspicuous way Noelle gets locked out of her big house - it implies Dess is gone or deceased. Berdly recalls a spelling bee when he and Noelle were younger where she, despite being smarter than him, misspelled ‘December’, allowing him to win.

In the two-player spelling puzzle, it also spells out ‘December’ as Noelle recalls the past and her silhouette regresses to a child while she does so. Being distracted by her sister’s disappearance, rather than pure shyness, could account for her misspelling her name on stage, and it clearly left a big psychological mark for her to have this visual regression in the Dark World.

However, there’s a graveyard in Hometown with no Dess. I heard another theory that she has been missing for years, because where each character’s personal room is made by Queen to reflect their tastes via their search results, Noelle has a calendar where every day is December 25th. This could imply that Noelle continually searches the internet for ‘December Holiday’, her sister’s name, to see if there are clues to her disappearance, but of course the only result you would get is the date of Christmas.

Who is the Knight?

It’s now implied to be Kris, who has been forcibly removing the player’s influence to act on their own. By all accounts the Knight is the game’s main antagonist. Spade King and Queen both mention the Knight as someone who influenced their position - they brought Spade King to absolute power, and showed Queen that creation of new worlds was possible.

We’re led to believe that Kris was doing this, because they’ve been acting outside of the player’s control. Eating the entire pie between chapter 1 and 2 might have been a red herring to cover that they also went to the library and used that knife to slash open a dark fountain there.

However. This has issues. How would they even manage to shuffle slowly all the way to the library and get in the computer lab? The Knight is also the one creating the hidden bosses. They talked to Jevil until he realised he was in a game and he lost his mind; they ruined Spamton’s life by elevating him to success and then crushing him. Whatever the Knight is doing seems to be deliberately planned with key players in mind.

Kris opening the fountain at home at the end of ch.2 can be explained in that you just figured out in Cyber World that anyone determined enough can do this, and so, Kris decided to. So a better question might even be...

What does Kris want?

We have no idea. They are capable of removing the SOUL, ‘us’, temporarily, and putting things in motion we cannot influence. But they also keep putting us back in control afterward. This is hinted at right when ch.2 starts, where if you inspect the cage in Kris’s bedroom they threw us into, the description says it’s inescapable. Meaning Kris came back and took us out, willingly.

They allow us to pilot them through the game. Why? Because they cannot live without the SOUL for long for some reason? Because they’re bad at bullet hell? Why did they slash Toriel’s tyres before opening the fountain, making sure nobody could drive away?? Why did they specifically open the door?

You can find out details about Kris through the creepy way you interact with the townsfolk, who think you are Kris. They play the piano at the hospital waiting room - better than you. They used to go to church just to get the special church juice. It’s all normal, relatable things, not like someone who’s trying to plunge the world into darkness. Judging by their search history portrayed in their Queen’s castle room, they really want to see their brother again. However the castle has a room based on Asriel’s search history too, and Kris (not you) closes their eyes and won’t look at it.

What is Ralsei?

His name is an anagram of Asriel. Is he an extension of Asriel? The slightly flirtier dialogue in ch.2 would point to no. Is he an extension of Kris themselves, given the link between Kris’s childhood habit of wearing a headband with red horns on it, to pretend to be a monster like their family?

Ralsei knows exactly where the Dark World in the school is located, and unlike regular Darkners, knows the world is folded up inside the ‘real world’. There’s a certain whiplash to Ralsei telling you to hop out of his reality into yours and go down the hallway to retrieve all the board game items.

How does he jump from one Dark World to another, without assistance? How does he not get petrified like Lancer and Rouxls? Is this a power level thing because he’s a prince or something else? We definitely do not know enough about Ralsei.

He also says this incredibly suspicious thing after you spare Spamton NEO. Susie was also curious but accepts that maybe it ‘didn’t mean anything’, which is a sure tell that these optional bosses do mean something.

Someone is orchestrating what’s happening, opening fountains, manipulating the rulers, and influencing NPCs to become the optional bosses. Why? I suspect Ralsei for both knowing too much, and pretending something doesn’t matter when it clearly does. Until Asriel actually comes home from college I’m going to suspect he’s involved in this too.

How much does Seam know?

Seam on the other hand knows a lot about what’s going on but is openly withholding information while helping you. He’s nihilistic. He says things like:

One day soon... You too, will begin to realize the futility of your actions. Ha ha ha... At that time, feel free to come back here. I'll make you tea... And we can toast... to the end of the world!

Either this ‘end of the world’ is a reference to The Roaring, where opening too many dark fountains dooms the Dark World and the real one... or, I can’t get out of my head the idea that Deltarune takes place in a fake, or weird reconstruction of Undertale where things don’t match up, and eventually it will have to disappear. After all, powers of determination and creating and manipulating universes are Undertale’s basic bread and butter. How can we look at an Alternate Universe containing the characters we already know and not suspect that? Seam also uses Gaster’s key words, ‘darker, yet darker’, seemingly to clue us in that he’s not off track here.

Why haven’t we seen Papyrus?

This is a bright neon flashing ‘something’s not right’ sign. It’s not like Papyrus’s voice actor was too busy or anything. His absence is noticable and for a reason. Nice of Sans to promise we could meet him despite being aware we’re piloting a child’s body around, though, even if he didn’t follow through.

What locations in town could be used for dark fountains in the next 4 chapters?

If the sequence continues, we have chapter 1 in the school games room, chapter 2 in a computer lab, and chapter 3 in front of Kris’s television, where the aesthetic of each setting influences the world, characters, and enemies in the Dark World created there. Future possibilities include the church, the hospital, sans’s grocery store, Noelle’s house, and the closed bunker.

What the hell’s in the closed bunker

This one’s too obvious, honestly. I think it’ll open for no reason in chapter 7 and a little white dog will bounce out and steal one of your key items and nothing else happens.

Why does Asgore have these

Unlike the bunker feeling like a joke teaser, I gotta believe this is foreshadowing something weird. For example, what does opening a dark fountain in here with the seven flowers do? Does it just take you into Undertale?

Each chapter will have a hidden boss with a ‘soul mode’ from Undertale

Chapter 1 let you stay red, but I think each subsequent chapter is going to change your soul mode to one of the seven colours and design the encounter around that. Purple, yellow, green and blue were used in Undertale, leaving the light blue and orange modes yet to be revealed.

How does Spamton emulate Mettaton Neo’s name, body, and incorporate his battle theme, and the ‘Dummy!’ theme, with no actual connection between them ingame?

This is a really fun one that’s explained over in this post here. Swatch is the Dark World creation from the paint program on the library computers, so he’s able to explain that a Lightner made the robot body decaying in the castle basement that way.

Mettaton went to the library and drew his ideal form, Mettaton NEO, in MS Paint, and the Dark World formed that into a puppet body which Spamton was able to hijack temporarily. So by doing that Spamton was able to channel Mettaton’s appearance, attacks, music, and SOUL mode for the fight.

This might mean that the future hidden bosses, each with their own SOUL mode, might be based on the associated character for that mode (Muffet, Undyne, and Sans or Papyrus), and the boss will take on some aspect of them from their world to leech their fight mechanics.

The Problem With Mettaton

We don’t exactly know what Deltarune is about. It’s an alternate universe where the characters from Undertale already live on the surface, have completely normal lives, but diverge from the storyline of Undertale and, crucially, have not lived through the changes Frisk brought to their lives.

Remember how Undertale had a dozen different ending routes depending on who you befriended? The constant reinforcement in Undertale was that your choices mattered. Through Frisk, you chose to bring Alphys closure about her mistakes, you chose to befriend papyrus instead of attacking him, you chose to help Alphys and Undyne realise their feelings for each other and it’s only doing that that leads to the golden ending and escape to the surface.

Deltarune is the opposite, your choices do not matter. The only thing you can do to force the route of the game to change is to force Noelle into a No Mercy run, which is indirect, and also, a total desperation to mess with an otherwise set course. This version of the characters have not been helped by Frisk - Undyne and Alphys are not together, Papyrus has no friends, Asgore cannot get over himself, and they’re clearly the worse for it, but potentially, you COULD still do these things. In fact it’s hinted that you already are.

But there’s Mettaton.

He’s still a ghost and does not leave his house. In Frisk’s world, Gaster deleted himself, promoting Alphys to royal scientist by bluffing with Mettaton, and she then build him his ideal body. In Kris’s world... Alphys is a school teacher. There’s no barrier to break, no reason to experiment on souls, no Flowey mistake, and no body for Mettaton.

It was sad in Ch.1, but now with the Spamton NEO fight in ch.2, it’s unmissable. Mettaton wants that body and he cannot get it. Alphys in this universe is not going to leave her teaching job and suddenly be able to build a robot. Mettaton is just... screwed out of his happy ending and cannot get it.

So what resolution could this have? If it wasn’t for Mettaton I might believe in the vaildity of Deltarune and Hometown. But. How can you doom this character? If Undertale was the only way Mettaton could be befriended, then Undertale is Primary Universe A and Seam is right - the world of Deltarune is doomed as some kind of aberration. It all relies on how this gets explained in the future, but the core mystery of Deltarune is how exactly this universe intersects with Undertale and whether one is an offshoot of the other. How the Dark World links into that is another complication. But even as we get more fun characters and neat stuff in the Dark Worlds, let’s not forget we have absolutely no idea why Undertale’s characters are living here with no mention of underground or why there are no other humans beside Kris.

#undertale #deltarune #welcome to my giant essay post

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sou-ver-2-0 · 4 years

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I was thinking of an AU, where the death game is created by Sou and set up in Shin's favor. I don't have it well developed yet, but I thought it might be something you'd find interesting!

I definitely find that idea interesting!! I wish you luck in developing that idea further!

For canon, I’m attached to the theory that the Man from the Memorandum is the mastermind of the Death Game, and that his favored candidate is Sara, leaving Shin in the dust. But I really love the idea that Sou could parallel the Memorandum Man in this regard, and that his favored candidate is Shin! An AU where Sou is the mastermind himself sounds delicious as candy to me.

I’ll leave it to you to work out the finer details of your AU. But, maybe it will inspire you if I share some of the ideas @novatoast and I have come up with for our:

“Sou/Midori wants Shin to live” Theory

This theory is a villain stan’s fever dream, but we do have some evidence for it. The basic principles of this theory are that:

Sou might have died for Shin, or else, that he died knowing that his death would give Shin a fighting chance.

Midori is leaving gifts for Shin, and so the “weakest candidate” ends up having a shocking number of advantages.

I already discussed some ways the first point could work in my “Midori is Meister’s Son Theory” post. The basic argument for it is that Original Sou parallels Kai, and if Kai died entrusting his “hopes and regrets” to Sara, it is possible that Sou died entrusting his own name to Shin. Midori the doll even claims, “I gave Sou to Shin.”

The obvious counterargument against this theory is that Midori also states that he wanted to kill Shin himself! You know, “since he was going to die anyway.” To explain this contradiction, I previously speculated that Midori could have lost his “positive emotions” for Shin, to parallel how Rio Ranger lost his own “positive emotions.” Recently, I thought of a different explanation: notably, Midori only says this line in the “Kanna lives” route. It’s possible that Nankidai is setting up a surprise in this route that the person Midori really wants to kill is Kanna, for taking “his Shin” away from him. Another explanation is that Midori is furious at Shin for throwing away all his chances at survival, and this line reflects his anger.

Am I reaching? Obviously, yes. This is the theory where I dial up my self-indulgence to eleven.

Anyway! Isn’t it funny how Shin keeps getting all these gifts and advantages? What if Midori was giving them to him??

1. The name ‘Sou Hiyori’: Midori claims that he gave Sou to Shin! Sou is the name of a villain who lies and uses people. It’s the name of a strong man who has the potential to win. The previous Death Game winner may have even been the role of “The Villain,” so it can be done!

2. The laptop: Shin finds the Hidden Room with the laptop, and he even comments that it may be a gift from the kidnappers. To me, Shin’s dialogue sounds like someone who is used to being toyed with. However, the laptop is undeniably useful to Shin. Firstly, it contains incriminating evidence against Kai, helping to ensure Kai’s death in the First Main Game instead of Shin. Secondly, the laptop proves Shin’s usefulness to the group as a computer hacker, giving him a lifeline he could seize…if he so desired.

3. The gift of knowledge: Before the First Main Game, Shin somehow knew about the Sacrifice Card! And other details about the Main Game! He uses this knowledge to isolate Kanna and trick her—underhanded tactics he surely picked up from his relationship with Sou. Shin also uses this knowledge to devise a strategy to draw out the Sage, while protecting himself and Kanna by acting outrageous enough that they could have each been the Sacrifice.

4. The laptop charger: Wowowow isn’t that convenient?? Isn’t that just what we all needed to keep using the laptop, that precious item which highlights Shin’s invaluable skillset? And Shin just found a charger lying around? Wow!

5. The stun gun: Shin mysteriously got himself a weapon!! Where the hell did you get that, Shin? That’s clearly an unfair advantage!

6. Kugie’s smartphone: I love the implications that Midori may have intended Kugie’s smartphone—with the cruel message—to be a present for Shin, to corner Kanna even further. Notably, Shin and Kanna found the room first, but they were too scared to go inside, and so Sara ended up picking up the phone. Ultimately, Shin used the smartphone to try to boost Kanna’s self-esteem, and he tried to hide the fact that he cared about her. (Though Kanna figured it out anyway.)

With these gifts falling into his lap, Shin entered the Second Main Game with a Strong Persona; a henchman who was willing to die for him; and with everyone recognizing how indispensable his computer hacking skills were. He had so many advantages.

And then he throws them all away.

He gives up on lying about his name, because he wants to be able to trust people again.

He uses all his wiles to try to save Kanna, even at the cost of his own life.

He argues that you should not vote for the “useless” child, and that you should instead vote for the “hated” villain, himself.

If Shin had simply kept up the selfish Sou Hiyori persona, he could have survived!

Wouldn’t it be interesting if Sou/Midori had also given up everything for Shin? That he may have had logical reasons for being so cruel to Shin, to try to make Shin a “strong” person? Because he thought that was the only way his kind-hearted, “weak” friend could live?

Who had the motivation to give the weakest candidate so many advantages? Might Shin have had his own “hero in the shadows,” similar to how Kai was looking out for Sara…but more like a “devil in the shadows” looking out for him?

…On the one hand, I don’t want to get my hopes up too high for Midori. He’s honestly a flat character so far. But he has so much potential!!

The way I’m envisioning this theory, Sou/Midori could be trying to foil Meister’s hopes that Sara will win. (Though it’s certainly possible that Sou/Midori is simply playing into Meister’s hands, or else that he’s dutifully following instructions. We just don’t know.) What makes this theory so fun to me is that I love rebellious villains trying to overthrow the system. I also like the idea that Sou/Midori could turn out to be shockingly “concerned for Shin’s welfare,” but without ever understanding what Shin really needed from him as a friend. That Sou could have approached “saving Shin” from a point of view that is still selfish and cruel. That his actions still harmed Shin, because he never cared what Shin himself wanted.

Going back to your AU though!! If Sou Hiyori is the Mastermind himself? I feel like he could give Shin even more advantages! That sounds like such a cool premise to me. I’m sorry that I hijacked your ask to talk about this theory, haha, but I hope you found it interesting. Good luck!

#yttd #your turn to die #kimi ga shine #your turn to die spoilers #sou hiyori #shin tsukimi #sou and midori #asks #meta #mine #theories

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justlightlysedated · 3 years

Text

20 Questions

20 questions, writer's edition, I was tagged by @lambourngb 😊❤❤

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

71! 70 for roswell and one for vagrant queen

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

468, 583!!

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

not entirely sure tbh, but let's count now:

timkon, bandom, glee, specifically pukurt, but some other ships too, merlin, doctor who, torchwood, teen wolf, agents of shield, runaways, the old guard, vagrant queen, and obviously, roswell new mexico

i think there might be more, but i don’t remember rn

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

the cost of greatness, which i cowrote with marlo

a cure i know that soothes the soul (does so impossibly), the first pwp i wrote for this fandom lol

the person that you’d take a bullet for is behind the trigger, which i wrote for marlo

for better or for worse (til death do us part), which i also cowrote with marlo lol

it might be your wound but they’re my sutures, which i also wrote for marlo

so the pattern im sensing here is that my most popular fics were written with/for marlo which sounds about right lol

5. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

i am not sure tbh, i write some pretty angsty one shots and longer fics, but i TRY to at least give a slightly hopeful ending, tho now that i’m thinking about it, i think the angstiest thing i’ve written was that prompt fill based on the song, for island fires and family, i remember SOBBING the entire time that i wrote it (there is miluca in that one), but ALSO there is the fic i wrote in reaction to the season one finale, which also made me cry, which was called, we both know how this story ends

6. What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

once again i’m not sure, like i said before, i try to give my fics hopeful endings if they’re really angsty, and i love me some hurt/comfort, but i’m not entirely known for writing happy, fluffy fics, tho i do TRY sometimes for certain people

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've written?

yes!! i do love me some crossovers, and i guess i would have to say the malex, sort of doctor who au, i’m technically still writing for tove

8. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yes??? but i’m not sure if i could classify it, like i’ll write pretty much anything within reason and if it doesn’t squick me out

9. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

okay, so like don’t hate me, but no, i rarely, if ever respond to comments, i just don’t know what to say at all, like i’m the type of person that really wants every single message to be unique and special, but there are only so many ways to thank someone for reading your fic, so i just tend to post things and then thank everyone for reading afterwards, if there is someone that shows up often on my notifications, or if someone asks me a specific question pertaining to the story, then i will answer, i also answer back if i wrote the fic for someone and they left a comment, and if i’m sent an ask on here about something that i wrote, but i am simultaneously the world's most shy and confident person ever, when it comes to my writing, so i’m so sorry

this doesnt mean that i dont appreciate every comment that i get because i really do, im just super shy and awkward and i may write good-ish, but i do NOT have the same way with words in person

10. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

not really?? if i have i don’t remember it, usually i’m the one who talks the worse about my own writing

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes, the only kurtbastian fic i’ve ever written was translated into russian

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

yep!! as y’all probably saw from my top five fics up there somewhere, marlo @bestillmyslashyheart is basically my fic writing soulmate, we just really click when it comes to writing

14. What's your all time favourite ship? to write for?

atm it’s malex, which is more than obvious, BUT before they hijacked my brain and made their home within my neurons, it was skimmons!!! i wrote fic for them for YEARS, even after i stopped watching aos

15. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, i’m just gonna talk about fics that i’ve posted and haven’t updated and not any of the hundreds of wips that have never seen the light of day, my original witch au tbh, i just, roswell made maria and isobel somehow related, and just made me really uncomfortable with the ship, which is the main reason that i’m not gonna finish the fic if i’m being perfectly honest, there is ALSO that au i had where michael’s daughter from the future comes back to the past and she had been raised by alex, because of reasons that are petty, probably my space opera au as well, and only because i just want to write other things MORE

16. What are your writing strengths?

i think i’m good at describing things, especially kisses, i LOVE writing kisses, it’s one of my favorite things, that and my fight scenes are two of the things i pride myself the most on

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

dialogue, sometimes i feel the characters are ridiculously out of character, but then i don’t care because sometimes in canon characters are also ridiculously out of characters, also describing things, because sometimes i just feel like scenes don’t flow right, i am definitely a comma whore, and use dashes and hyphens in places they definitely shouldn’t be used, run-on sentences are my best friends, also english isn't my first language, so, sometimes the way i phrase things just come out wrong

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

tbh completely honest, i follow the nora sakavic method where you just write the dialogue in english like, “hey there love,” they said in perfect french, and i only break this rule if i actually know the language because just translating straight from english always makes things sound stilted and weird

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

dc comics, i wrote several timkon fics which i posted on livejournal

20. What's your favourite fic you've written?

oh, i know that love is all about the wind, how it can hold me up and kill me in the end (still i loved it), no specific reason why, i just love it with my entire heart!!

and that's it!! im not gonna tag anyone cause I saw that most ppl were already tagged, but if you want to do this just say that I tagged you!!

#thank you for tagging me!! this was super fun!!

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panharmonium · 4 years

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“now you can still make that happen.”

just a few thoughts prompted by this awesome post by @clotpolesonly, which i did not want to hijack - it is fantastic on its own and does not need my thoughts attached to it. and you should definitely go read it before you proceed here, because a) it’s great, and b) this particular post of mine is not going to make a lot of sense without it.

(a preview, for those who haven’t already clicked through: the linked post above is a terrific analysis of why the second part of will’s line “you’re a good man, merlin. a great man. and one day you’re going to be servant to a great king” feels a little bizarre in comparison to the rest of his dialogue, and how it seems contradictory to what we’ve learned about will’s character previously.)

i LOVED hearing somebody pull this moment out and question it, because this is a moment that i have also thought about a LOT, and while i personally have ended up in a place where i do understand why will might say something like this in this particular context, i ALSO fully agree that this is the most muddled line he has, characterization-wise, because i don’t think the average viewer is going to sit around thinking about how to fit this slightly unusual moment into will’s established characterization, or even recognize that’s it’s unusual at all; they’re just going to CHANGE will’s established characterization to align with this line. and what i mean by that is that i'm pretty sure this line is solely responsible for every fic i’ve ever seen where will’s reaction to arthur is portrayed as either a mistake, an overreaction, or anything other than a legitimate, valid concern about merlin’s safety/well-being, and for that reason alone i’d be happy to have it modified.

but despite this (because i HAVE sat around thinking about how to fit this moment into will’s established characterization), i actually do look at this line in a way that makes it feel natural to me in context, and now that somebody else has brought it up, i figured i’d just write my own thoughts down, in case anybody else has ever spent any time thinking about this. (an unlikely possibility, I realize, given that will only shows up in one episode, but i have given up pretending that i am not super over-invested in this character, so - here i am, once again offering you yet another very long post about a very niche thing.)

so.

first of all, the absolute most important takeaway from the whole “you’re going to be servant to a great king” moment is exactly what OP says (and it’s also exactly the same thing that this particular line is in danger of obscuring, for folks who aren’t thinking carefully about it) - just because will realizes that arthur wasn’t going to let the villagers die without risking his own neck doesn’t mean that will is now riding the arthur pendragon bandwagon. will doesn’t save arthur because he’s suddenly become arthur’s biggest fan; he saves arthur because it’s the right thing to do. will doesn’t have time to sit around and think about it and debate with himself like ‘hm i don’t like this guy but merlin thinks he’s ok and the man did risk himself for our village so maybe i should still help him out.’ he just jumps. instinctively, automatically. he sees somebody in danger and his unthinking reflex is to get in the way. it’s just who he is. he would have done that for anybody who was standing in front of him.

will has not suddenly turned into an arthur stan just because arthur did one okay thing. will still witnesses arthur aggressively interrogating merlin about sorcery, and, like OP says, will still lies. he still doesn’t trust arthur, not with merlin’s life. he still doesn’t think camelot is a good place for merlin. and he still doesn’t think merlin’s “friendship” with arthur is real or safe or healthy or anything equal to what merlin deserves.

so the question then becomes - why on earth does will say what he says???

you’re a good man, merlin. a great man. and one day you’re going to be servant to a great king. now you can still make that happen.

(i’ll be honest, before i get into this - i think OP is right. i don’t think the writers really thought about it this hard. i think it probably was, in fact, just meant to be our customary reaffirmation that arthur is cool and merlin is on the right path, even though that fact looks kind of...questionable by any logical assessment of the situation.)

HOWEVER, i am stubborn, and i’m personally committed to making as much of the show’s canon work for me as possible, so back when i was doing a bunch of characterization work on will last year, i thought about this line a lot. because the linked post above is RIGHT; it doesn’t fit, at first glance, and it would be easy to draw the wrong conclusion from it, if you weren’t paying attention.

and ultimately, after i thought about it for a long time, i ended up in a place where i felt like i understood where this line was coming from, and i no longer felt that it was necessarily out of character (though again, let’s be real - you shouldn’t have to do that much thinking about something to figure out how it could fit with someone’s characterization. the writers could have been a bit clearer.)

but anyway, that said - the following is how i conceive of that bit, if it helps anybody feel better about that scene. this isn’t the only way to think about it, by any means, or the “correct” way (as i said earlier, i do think it’s completely reasonable to say “this wasn’t a super well-thought out line” and discard it). this is just the interpretation that feels most natural to me.

i think, ultimately, what helps me understand this line is acknowledging that will, in this scene, is giving merlin a gift. by lying for merlin, will protects the Big Secret from being discovered, but when he does so, he’s giving merlin back more than just his physical safety. he’s giving merlin the freedom to pursue all of the things that will himself was so adamantly against for the entirety of this episode, all of the things that will repeatedly told merlin it wasn’t good for him to want. his lie saves merlin’s life, yes, but it also ensures that merlin can return to camelot, continue to work as arthur’s servant, go back to the very life that will himself thinks is stunningly unworthy for merlin, but which merlin, for some inexplicable, unfathomable reason, feels is bafflingly important.

will gives merlin a gift, in this scene, despite his own misgivings. and when he says “one day you’re going to be servant to a great king,” that is a gift of another kind: trust. merlin is the one who first described arthur with those particular words, up in the hedgerow, when he and will were arguing with each other. “one day arthur will be a great king, but he needs my help.” and what will is doing here, by using those words, isn’t so much him declaring his own support for arthur as a ruler; it’s him saying to merlin, “i heard you. i listened to you. i don’t know why you’re so convinced of this, and i know we were having a row, but i was still listening to you. i trust you.”

will says this to merlin, in his last few moments, even though will himself isn’t sure about arthur, or camelot, or any of it. it doesn’t matter that will isn’t sure. will doesn’t want to dole out more warnings right now. he doesn’t want the last thing merlin hears from him to be another admonishment, another critique, another “you don’t know what you’re doing and this is going to blow up in your face.” will wants the last thing merlin hears from him to be i want you to have what you want, even if i don’t understand why you want it. i'm giving you what you asked for, just because you asked for it. i’m choosing to trust you.

will has already said everything he needs to say about arthur. he’s already told merlin what he thinks of this whole camelot situation. but sometimes, when you love somebody, you have to take your hands off the wheel. will tells merlin “one day you’re going to be servant to a great king” (repeating something merlin specifically said to him, something merlin said in the middle of a heated argument, something merlin prefaced with “i don’t expect you to understand”), because will is telling him “i heard you when you told me this, even if you didn’t think i was listening.” he’s telling merlin “i have faith in you, even if i don’t have faith in him.” it’s him relinquishing control over the situation.

will has absolutely no reason to trust arthur. he doesn’t trust arthur, truly. he says what he says for merlin. it’s something he offers to merlin, as a gift. it’s part of their reconciliation. it’s why merlin immediately follows will’s now you can still make that happen with “thanks to you.” merlin acknowledges everything will is giving him, in that moment, brushing past the mention of arthur like it’s not even there, immediately re-centering will in the discussion. “thanks to you.” you did this for me. you’re giving this to me.

“one day you’re going to be servant to a great king.” just this line, itself, is a gift. for will to say that to merlin - it’s a gift. it’s an acknowledgment that merlin’s convictions are worthy, even if will doesn’t understand them. it’s will apologizing for saying that merlin doesn’t know what’s best for his own life, it’s will handing merlin the reins, it’s will saying i don’t trust him on his own merits; i trust you. i’m trusting what you told me. i trust you to know what you need, so i’m going to give you everything you want, even if i don’t know why you want it.

and i do think that this is absolutely, 100% influenced by the timing. in a different situation, will wouldn’t have backed down like that. he would have continued to give merlin grief, to ask hard questions, to criticize, to say “why are you being like this; you can do better than this; why are you making bad choices; why are you settling for so much less than you deserve?”

but will is dying, and i don’t think he wants to leave merlin on that note. merlin has already lived his entire life almost completely unsupported by the people around him, mistrusted by his neighbors, hunted by the ruling powers of multiple nations, prevented from pursuing any answers that might have helped him accept himself, always mired down in a bog of self-doubt. will can’t bring himself to leave merlin that same way. he doesn’t want to leave merlin with more ‘i don’t trust you and i don’t support you and i don’t think you should do the things you think you need to do,’ even if it’s offered in the spirit of “i just want the best for you.” he can’t bring himself to do that. so instead he makes a concession, for merlin’s sake, and chooses to offer merlin complete, radical trust, in spite of his own doubts.

it’s...this is a trust fall. this is will saying i trust you to drive this car, even though it looks like you’re about to drive us off a cliff. and merlin, for his part, knows full well that will probably would have pushed harder, under different circumstances, but he also recognizes will’s concession for the gift that it is. he understands that will’s personal opinions may not have changed, but that will is saying ‘i believe in you, despite everything.’ he understands that will is stepping off a bridge with nothing but merlin’s word to assure him that the drop is survivable.

i do still think it’s totally reasonable to feel like this is an unusual thing for will to say, for sure. but for me, personally, when i look at it this way, i see it as fully in-character, because the core thing about will, for me, is that he consistently does things that go against his own interests in order to help merlin. coming back to fight a battle he knows can’t be won, saving arthur’s life, pretending to be a sorcerer - his decisions consistently make his own life worse and merlin’s life better. the things he does are always done for merlin’s sake, at his own expense.

and sometimes - like in this scene - i think the things he says are said for merlin’s sake, too.

merlin and will both know each other too well for merlin to really think that will is jumping on the arthur train. merlin knows exactly what will is really trying to say. he knows it’s a parting gift. he understands that it’s just will’s way of saying, “i’m leaving and i want you to know i love you this much, to jump when you jump, even though i personally think the drop is deadly. that’s how much i trust you. that’s how much i believe in you.”

merlin understands, and will feels understood. they leave arthur and camelot behind, after that exchange. they’ve both said everything they need to say about it. they’ve put that argument to bed, in the best way they can manage, with the time they have available to them. will has made his feelings about arthur and camelot clear, and now he’s also made it clear that he trusts merlin to know what’s right. whether or not that proves to be true, later, isn’t relevant - only merlin can make decisions about where his life is going, after all, and will acknowledges that fact, here, at the end, as a gift to his only friend. he might have taken a different tack if he weren’t dying, yeah. but since he is, he decides that merlin deserves to walk away from this moment with at least the small comfort of knowing that will, when the chips were down, chose to trust merlin implicitly.

that’s the only reason why arthur’s future as “a great king” even comes up in that conversation. the rest of that scene is just about merlin and will, and how much they care for each other.

and for two people who never had anybody else, that’s just as it should be.

#the once and future slowburn #long post #meta #bbc merlin gen #no kings no masters #every time i think i've exhausted every possible topic of discussion related to this episode i am proven.....wrong #XD #i legit loved the post that prompted this one; i had spent so much time thinking about that line last year #and this is the first time i've ever seen anyone bring it up #FANTASTIC EYE @CLOTPOLESONLY #absolutely spot on #like even if i ultimately have found a way to feel like this line makes sense i still agree with everything OP says #i can make it work for myself but she's right; that is definitely an eyebrow-raising moment

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warelander · 4 years

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Since SEGA has revealed the 28th PPT2 character on the official Puyo Twitter (and via the collab with Quest), I feel more comfortable sharing my thoughts on the story now.

Still with spoiler warnings and under a Read More of course, I want to talk about everything I find worth discussing, which means spoiling a lot of stuff.

Anyone who has followed me for a while knows that I have been very critical of the writing the direction of the series post-15th Anni., because of it I wasn't really all that optimistic for the writing in PPT2. This really just makes me all the more happy to say that this game was one hell of a pleasent surprise in that regard and a major step in the right direction.

It follows up on PPT1, while feeling like a much more robust take on it's concepts, most notably the corruption of characters in Chapter 3. PPT1 had something similar, that just came and went, in PPT2 though it fits with the larger plot and get's proper explaination.

In general, PPT2 puts far more effort into having a cohesive narrative, instead of relying on conveniences to get character from point A to B or make stuff happen on the fly. It doesn't feel like just some excuse plot this time around.

Marle and Squares are the major newcomers and handle the major focus that comes with it well, they kept me constantly intruiged, which is made even better by them having such a strong presence through the story.

Also, big shout-out to Marle for not having any ties to Ecolo, like I was initially afraid she would. It's nice to have a plot play out without Ecolo hijacking the solution or start of the conflict in some way.

So the story is surprisingly solid and honestly, characterization is not far behind.

Flanderization is a problem the series suffered from for a long while now, with Chronicle being the peak of it. Luckily PPT2 scales it back considerably. The biggest examples are Rulue, who is no longer just Satan crazy in every scene she is in and Sig, who never once(!) mentions bugs through the whole game. Draco feels still the most flanderized, but even that felt not as bad here.

That aside, the game has plenty great character moments. It's nice to see Schezo and Witch interact more again. Ex acting very fatherly towards Squares in the final chapter is wonderful and Satan get's a truly great showing there as well.

My absolute favorite part though, has to be Ess finally admitting to liking Amitie during the ending. It's the kind of development for her I dearly wanted and it's nice to see my view on the character be validated.

So, both of these major halfs are handled well. I am happy with how the story shaped up, but I do got some gripes.

As nice as it is to see the greater cast be part of the adventure, they are still very disappointingly silent for good chunks of it, with Chapter 7 forgetting about them completely. Heck, even Ess suffered from the latter and she had every reason to get some attention, being a PPT1 main character and it would have made the ending hit even more, but instead her presence is relegated to just being available in Skill Battle, like most others.

Ally especially get's it rough, since while dialogue and her being playable indicate that she joins up with the others, this is not reflected in cutscenes at all, since she only shows up in time for Chapter 7, where the vast majority of the cast just stand silently in the corner, waiting for their turn in Skill Battle mode. That said, I do like how she is written and her interactions with Marle.

It's especially a shame, because the part where the extended cast hang around on the SS Tetra and pass the time with competitions was an absolute delight and my favorite part of the game. Fun, funny and with some really interesting choices for interactions (like Sig + Jay and Elle). If the promised updates also include small, new story paths I hope we get more like this.

Aside from that there are some small things. Ally not remembering Arle is weird, kinda dumb and raises a lot of questions and Schezo is still too uberly nice for how I see him, but on the whole, the positives outweigh the negatives. Easily even.

PPT2 is by far my favorite game, writing wise, since 15th Anni. and it's given me newfound hope for a part of the series I was ready to give up on entirely.

#puyo puyo

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thosetwistedtales · 4 years

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Tagging: @mrslittletall @chiralcrystallization @team-trash-panda @savage-rhi @chloca-cola @tineidaelux @nemodoren @maskedprepperkid @hereswhatsarasaid

Didn’t wanna hijack Op’s post but I did want the visual to show why I’m kicking the day off with another Higgs analysis and so ^^^^^^^^.

T h i s. It’s fucking SAD and hard to watch from an analytical point of view. Some people really love to joke about Higgs being into having his ass beat by Sam and I just———- ya’ll DIDNT read his journals did you?? Or did you all just collectively forget from a young age Higgs went through daily bouts of physical abuse at the hands of his daddy/uncle as a young boy and well into his teens? How it nearly ended in his death and he had to save himself by killing the only family he had to stop the man from strangling him to death? How it’s highly likely despite people enjoying joking about Higgs’ passive behavior in this scene——- their observations probably couldn’t be farther from the truth.

You have to remember up until he met Amelie and she offered him the power to help accelerate the 6th extinction, Higgs hadn’t been a GOOD guy..... But he’d wanted to help the world keep on keeping on. He’d been helping to keep it alive. He’d been a porter just like Sam. He burnt sooo many bridges in the name of ushering in the final extinction that he’d have had literally nothing and no one to go back to should it fail. And I think Amelie in a sense told him before Sam arrived that it was ALWAYS going to end this way. That he’d ruined his own life to advance her agenda without ever even realizing what her true plan was cause she never told him.... Till the very final hour, where she revealed that he was never the hero of the game. He was the villian. And then stripped him of his power. And told him his final mission was to be defeated.

Higgs’ behavior on the beach is not a portrayal of enjoyment..... It’s the last gasp of a dying man whose spirit has been truly broken (“You can’t break a young boy’s spirit”) and whose body is finally just starting to catch on to that fact. It oozes from every aspect of his fight with Sam. From the lackluster way he ‘hunts’ him down with his rifle. To then dropping the gun and switching to a blade upping Sam’s chances of defeating him significantly under the guise of arrogance. And then finally the fist fight.... If you can even call it that where it’s so clear Higgs is at this point well and truly only putting up a fight as a performance (“What I’m supposed to do.”). You actually listen to some of Higgs’ dialogue in this last stretch of the ‘showdown’ with Sam it’s him grumbling about Sam being an asshole, it’s him brokenly murmuring Amelie’s name, and some cut off points of other assorted dialogue that sounds more like vague questions to nobody for the most part.

But Cas then what’s with him going all feral??? 🙄 Lads.... Higgs only has a chance to bite a damn chunk outta Sam’s ear if you literally just stand there and do nothing. You gotta be losing and doing so on purpose almost to even get the scene so in all likelihood it’s Higgs being Higgs and taking a chance like any survivor would. It’s him trying to get Sam’s head back in the game. It’s Higgs being the nasty and mean mofo he’s always been and leaving a lasting mark on Sam as well as just being bitter and a poor sport about how he’s LOST.

Obviously people are welcome to think whatever they want about Higgs and his motivations in this scene. But this is how I see it. This wasn’t a fight. It was a performance. A game over. The death of Higgs Monaghan. Abuse survivor. Prepper. Porter. Terrorist. Exctinction Herald. God particle. Pawn. Loser.

Edit;; and to make it clear despite the visual this isn’t directed at ANYONE in particular Or anyone at all really. Chiralcrystallization is a friend of mine and they were JOKING. But even if they’d been serious this isn’t meant to be taken as an ARGUMENT or callout. It’s not that serious my dudes so please don’t treat it like it is. It’s just my opinion that’s stemmed from seeing this joke used one too many times for me to not wanna response for it somewhere. That being said people are allowed their headcanons and to view fictional characters and situations anyway they choose and it doesn’t mean they actually condone any of it either. So long as your opinion isn’t hurtful you should never feel badly for having it or voicing it 💜

#i just woke up #i havent had coffee #so if i sound loopy or there’s typos—— i dont carand im not gonna till an hour #and some coffee from now #death stranding #higgs monaghan #higgs analysis #ds analysis #my analysis #done so many of these things for different fandoms by now i really ought to think of a proper tag

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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Speaking of writing advice, I get asked a lot if I have any tricks for writing dialogue, so quick post about that, because I do, actually!

Really, its just two simple things that can make a huge difference: listen to people talk, and read your dialogue out loud.

The first sounds simple, but its more about just increasing your awareness of how DIFFERENTLY most people talk, even if they do sound similar in a lot of ways. And the key here is like, I don’t mean watch TV or read books, because what you’re absorbing there is still ultimately just other writers’ interpretation of how people talk. Which is still one step too many removed from the source.

I know its not as easy during a pandemic, as say, when you could just go write at a food court or coffee shop, but even just listen and absorb stuff while your family is talking over dinner or your friends are all in a group call or whatever it is you’re personally doing to have social interaction offline these days.

The point isn’t to like, listen in on conversations and be a creeper, lol, its more just about trying to attune yourself to the wide VARIETY of ways in which people speak. I’m talking everything from inflection to patterns of speech to rhythms of it....the way some people pepper a lot of filler words into their speech patterns, like ‘like’ and ‘y’know’ as they try and search for just the right word they want, and the way other people take their time and are more deliberate with their speech, erring on the side of always saying exactly what they mean even if it means they don’t say as much.

And thing is, this isn’t just about improving dialogue, it really helps with your character work as well. Because one of the most common pitfalls a lot of writers fall into - and like EVERY single agent or editor I’ve ever known has agreed on this - is a lot of writers accidentally fall into the trap of making their characters all sound alike. And this isn’t something that routinely comes up in criticism from readers and audiences....because its one of those things that people absorb when reading a work without often even realizing that they’re absorbing it. And it usually is one of the distinct markers between how much or how fully someone is immersing themselves in what they’re reading......the more ‘real’ the dialogue sounds, the easier it is to lose yourself in what you’re reading and lose the separation between the words on the page and your own perception of them as just words on a page.

Because dialogue, what we say, is one of the clearest indicators of who we are, when we can’t all know what each other is thinking. And its no different for written characters, especially when you’re writing in a limited POV that at most allows you to ‘see into’ the thoughts of one character at a time. What people say - even if it is often contradictory or not an honest indication of what a person or character is really feeling - its still one of the only things we have to go on when trying to get a sense of who a person or character is. And thus, the more what someone says is DISTINCT to them, is something that’s so clearly them that you could imagine closing your eyes and still being able to identify them by what they say - not the sound of their voice, but what they say and how they say it, how they sound when they say it even if its just written words.....the more distinct that person or character is in your awareness as well.

And the more you can increase the individuality of your characters by layering in the LITTLE things....the inflections, the vocabulary choices, the rhythms and filler words or lack there of.....the more real they feel for other people. Don’t fall into the equal but opposite trap of trying to rely too much on linking characters with certain keywords or phrases....this is kinda an artificial individuality. Take for instance Batfandom.....I think a big part of why we see so much of Jason calling Dick “Dickhead” and JUST Jason, like, also has to do with it being an identifier for Jason, a way to distinguish Jason’s dialogue from others even when you’ve got four or five characters all present and talking to Dick, so that he stands out even without having to name him every time he talks. Same thing as leaning on Damian’s “tt” sound not just because you feel its what he would make in a moment but rather just because you’re trying to make him distinctly Damian and that’s the easiest go-to.

The problem with leaning too much on this stuff is its a fairly shallow link or association....and one that any character can hijack at any time, for any reason then. If then, Tim makes the “tt” sound because he’s trying to mimic Damian for a joke or insult, or multiple characters who aren’t usually present are making jokes about Dick’s name so its no longer for this chapter just a Jason thing.....you’ve kinda shot yourself in the foot, by relying overly much on stuff that you may personally associate with a character....but when its the only association you really lean on, and its an association that can easily be spread to other characters....its effectiveness is completely diluted.

So focus less on what people SAY and more on HOW they say it. How they remain clearly and distinctly THEM in your impressions or general awareness, even as they say what’s essentially the exact same thing someone else is saying. How two people can say the same thing in totally different ways that sound like totally different people, etc.

And then part two of this is, when possible, when alone and editing or whatever, read your dialogue back aloud. This helps you detect the stilted, artificial parts where you’re trying too hard, when you’re attempting to FORCE a character to sound a specific way or carry a specific tendency, and its not feeling natural or organic. Because that’s the stuff that does come through the page when reading it, and that makes readers feel less.....immersed in what they’re reading because even if not on a conscious level, they feel like something is off, or not quite ringing true. They’re not fully able to commit to feeling like they’re part of the scene or just outside it listening in, because its a little too clearly a SCENE still in their awareness, rather than just events unfolding around them or near them.

And it also helps you see and evaluate how well you’re distinguishing or separating characters from each other on the page. Because when you’re reading ALL their dialogue out loud...and you have just the one voice, and your own natural ways of reading and speaking.....the more you’ve varied up your characters with different patterns of speech and identity in speaking....the more this will shine through because what you’re reading will start to kinda....take over and hijack how YOU read/say what they’re saying, to sound more like their rhythms and patterns and inflections. And when you’re reading, say Barbara out loud, and then reading Jason out loud and then Bruce and then Tim, and its still just you but they’re all SOUNDING totally different even just in your own voice, and its not even just because of specific single words or phrases but rather just the PERSONALITY shining through from each bit of dialogue....that’s how you know you’re on the right track.

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gold-pavilion · 5 years

Text

Red’s Complete Guide to the SDR2 Stage Play

The following is a sort of walkthrough/summary of the SDR2 stage play, mostly focusing on what’s different in this shorter but also highly expressive version of the story than the game, and what extra content is in it.

It’s mostly aimed to help non japanese speaker friends (or not fully fluent ones) enjoy this amazing play even without english subtitles available; in general terms, just having good memory of the game’s events will allow you to watch and follow it just fine, but anything else you could be missing, this guide will point out for ya! That being said, you can either read this all on its own, or keep at hand to check as you watch. I’m dividing it in parts according to what would be the game’s chapters, so you can easily find your place. Hope it’s useful!!

PROLOGUE / INTRODUCTION

The beginning is quite the same as the game: Nagito waking Hajime up on the beach, memory gaps, no one knows why they’re there when they should’ve just been at their entrance ceremony, etc. The minor differences would be that they’ve already separated and had a look around, thus cutting out the island exploration from the main POV. They’ve all warmed up pretty fast to the place too. The setting of it being a fun class trip is established and everyone’s excited to go to the beach, minus Hajime of course.

More small changes: as you’ll notice, Hiyoko being unable to tie her own kimono sash, getting help offered by Mahiru and getting attached to her happens at this point (‘cause of the swimsuits they want to put on) instead of in chapter 2, so their relationship gets established this early. Also, Teruteru and Kazuichi are caught trying to sneak in to where the girls are changing, ahem.

As in the game, Hajime’s hesitating a lot about just relaxing like that. We get a cute little new moment where he sees that even “Byakuya”, though claiming it’s to “research the way to leave this island” is prepared to go play at the sea, and with some prodding from the boys overall, he gets convinced to join in and have fun too. All super sweet, before Monokuma hijacks the scene. The killing school trip begins!

The opening and character introduction sequence is absolutely amazing and stunning, but since the intros and the comments Hajime and Nagito exchange as they go from character to character together are pretty much the same as in the game, there’s nothing to note from me. Just how amazingly it was put together!

After that, along with the basic intro to the killing game, there is an added rule for the students to see: the one/s who earn/s the right to leave the island will be given back the stolen memories of the last 2 school years. So, the amnesia period is immediately established, and Hinata’s own amnesia about his talent is taken as proof that it could be true. Teruteru is openly agitated about the possibility of having that two-year blank, more than anyone else, and while revealing there’s a restaurant waiting for him on land he tries to get reassurance from the others. He’s much more transparent here.

Monokuma gets the group under control with a different method than his monobeasts: he makes lightning shoot at them. Real lightning, no tricks, as Byakuya says. Here, he reveals he can control the weather so that’s what he uses to keep the students intimidated. Different, but easier for stage representation than robots and achieving the same purpose. After all is done and Byakuya has sent everyone to rest for the night, there’s a small added scene of Hajime and Nagito staying behind, and having the following exchange that I thought best to translate directly:

Nagito: “So it turned into this kind of despairing situation…”

Hajime: “Why would that Monokuma guy do something like this?!”

Nagito: “It’s unforgivable, right?! That killing game…! It’s absolutely...!

That’s it… we… we have to join our forces and stand against this despair!”

Hajime: “I’m glad that the first one to call out to me here was you, Komaeda.”

Nagito: “Yeah... me too, I’m glad to have [met] you, Hinata-kun.”

CHAPTER 1

The next day, Byakuya announces the party and the group accepts his proposal without suspicion. The old building is suggested as the place, cleaning duty is required, the straw game comes out and Nagito ends up chosen to do it. So far, no news. But on the party scene, we do have several differences:

From how they explain it, the old building consists of just the dining hall and the great kitchen. With this simplified setup, everyone is closer together, so there’s no messy deposit room, no office to guard, no fire door to take into account and Byakuya isn’t checking anyone for dangerous objects. Also, no guard outside and no Monomi, since she’s been locked up by Monokuma. The scene with Hajime speaking to Byakuya privately is preserved (though it doesn’t take place in the kitchen and he wasn’t dragged off to it, but rather, approached Byakuya himself to raise his suspicion that the party was planned for everyone’s wellbeing) and his mysterious dialogues are the same.

When the blackout occurs, they’re able to find the breaker and turn electricity back on their own. Only when the body is discovered do they get told there’ll be a trial, and how it will work. Investigation time!

When everyone scatters, they’re mostly talking about having things they want to check out or thought were weird, with a very active attitude about it. The times when the sound effect rings and the spotlight is focused on Hajime, is when he’s established a key clue, a class trial bullet, so he’s naming/explaining them out loud. Not much else to note, but isn’t the whole investigation scene SO dynamic and enjoyable? Such brilliant staging!! For the trial too!!

Not much is different in the trial until its very end, in fact it goes faster than in the game with all the complication factors that were skipped, so it reaches Nagito’s breakdown quickly. As I’m sure many people will want to know what the dialogue is in the famous getting-touchy-touchy-on-Hajime scene, I’ll note that it’s Hajime saying “is that your true nature?! Have you been deceiving us all this time?!” to which Nagito replies “that’s… wrong.” Quite sure the writing is the same as in the game, it’s just the acting that carries it differently.

After that, in the end, the way they figure out the culprit is from the existence of a passage to get under the floor that they’ve concluded the killer used: since it’s clearly not in the dining hall, it must exist in the only other room of the building, which is the kitchen, where only Teruteru was. Case closed in a much more brief, yet complete manner.

During the reconstruction of how it happened, the conversation Nagito and Teruteru had in the dining hall is very different from the game. Instead of the monologue focusing on his love for the ultimates and how he wanted to see them display a bigger hope, his words are much more manipulative. He asks Teruteru: “hey, Hanamura-kun… could it be true... we’re missing 2 years worth of memories? 2 years is a long time… if it were true… what then?” and insistently “Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to go back home?”, playing from the worries he was displaying earlier. He is also more straightforward in remarking that Teruteru wasn’t his victim nor acting in everyone’s defense, that he could’ve said something when he realized he had killed Byakuya instead of him, but kept quiet to save himself (a dialogue that, in the game, is said by Monokuma instead). He also claims to love that hope Teruteru had of going home, a hope so strong that Byakuya and everyone else could’ve died for it.

You’ll see that the execution is also very different, as almost all of them will be (personally, I love them even better than in the game). As Teruteru dies, his last words are: “momma… I’m sorry”.

Post trials comes another surprise: the group gets a freebie for their effort, which is a new piece of info. They’re told there is a traitor among them. Of course they suspect Nagito, but then, as they’re confronting him, we get this:

Hajime: It’s your fault! That Hanamura… and Togami...

Nagito: Ah, right, about that… that wasn’t Togami-kun.

Gundham: What are you saying?

Nagito: During the investigation, I found this.

Hajime: Togami’s e-handbook?

The name’s… different.

Ultimate… imposter.

Ibuki: Daaaaang! That Byakuya-chan wasn’t Byakuya-chan, then?!

Nagito: But what an amazing talent! Because, out of all of us, no one even thought it wasn’t Togami-kun! He sure got us!

But… since he’s dead now, it’s not worth caring about, is it…

Akane: I’ll beat ya up, you bastard!

Hajime: Not worth caring about?

The fact that he was a wonderful leader, who protected us with all he had, didn’t change.

That he’d tried to protect us till the very end… and not allow the killing game to happen… he was a proud, worthy leader.

Chiaki: Yes… that’s true.

With that very early revelation, the chapter closes.

CHAPTER 2

Shortening matters, through the night Monokuma already gave to everyone a piece of their past: the envelope containing the pictures of the girls in their Hope’s Peak uniforms and of Fuyuhiko’s sister’s body. They all have seen it by morning, but naturally don’t know what it could all be and don’t discuss it. As in the game, Nagito is being kept away, tied up, though here Akane helped as well; she intended to beat him up while she was at it, but Nekomaru stopped her claiming the strength of her muscles wasn’t meant for stuff like that.

It seems Peko is getting a few more added interactions with Fuyuhiko as well, mostly since she can be closer and take more physical actions in this medium. As she tries to stop him from breaking away from the group, she tells him “if we’re together, it’s certain you’ll be safer”, with this same nuance in English where she could mean together with the group, or together with her. Neat stuff.

Moving on: everyone knows Nagito’s situation. Mahiru suggests taking breakfast to him in front of everyone in this version instead of privately to Hinata, to which everyone reacts complimenting her kindness. No one actually goes to give Nagito food tho (ouch), since everyone starts taking off to the beach and to mess around, doing their own things. Also, Sonia’s interest in Gundham is already made noticeable. A fun little addition:

Hajime (to Gundham): Sonia wants to invite you though, so… will you come to the beach too?

Kazuichi: Hinata…

Hajime: What do you say, Tanaka?

Kazuichi: HEY…

Of course, everyone agrees and will be meeting at the beach house in 1 hour. So it’s not a girls-only meeting in this version, but for everyone who didn’t have other plans. Under Hajime’s advice they’ll try to stay together as much as possible to be safer.

The stage skips to what’s happening at the beach house not long after. We proceed to the murder, conveniently obscured, and body discovery.

As for differences in how the case unfolds, during the investigation, it’s Gundham and Sonia who notice the beach house has another exit: the small window set pretty high up. Then, as Komaeda joins in, he takes special interest in checking whether Hajime’s remembered his talent yet or not. He finds it pretty amazing that even without that, he’s out there solving cases, and expresses looking forward to Hajime remembering. He remarks that he’ll always be on the side of hope to clarify his position.

This class trial is also cleanly shortened without sacrificing anything important. As you’ll notice from the proof collected, the whole thing with the fake Sparkling Justice doesn’t happen. After concluding it couldn’t have been Hiyoko and the killer set her up, the point is made that the killer actually used the window to leave, which only one person could’ve possibly done: Peko. So that’s that.

Once again, it’s rather the reconstruction of the incident that changes. Hiyoko and Mahiru are talking about their friendship, how they’ll continue to be friends even after regaining their old memories, or might’ve even been friends before, when Peko knocks Hiyoko unconscious. The discussion continues.

On the 2nd part of the case reconstruction, Fuyuhiko openly threatens to kill Hiyoko right there to get Mahiru to talk about the pictures and his sister’s death. You’ll notice the image on the screen is the other one, of Sato’s body, but since it was the only picture of a live actor, they used that one as though it were the sister (please be understanding)! Plus, the story about bullying and how they were both killed doesn’t come up, so there’s nothing to be confused over in this version. All we know on the play is that Mahiru took the picture, because Monokuma said so, so Fuyuhiko believes she did the killing too. Mahiru argues that she must’ve taken it as proof. “Us photographers… can tell the meaning of a picture we took ourselves”, she says, but it’s too late.

The debacle of whether Peko is the killer or Fuyuhiko counts as it for using her as tool is, of course, maintained. Enjoy the actors’ amazing representation and another great execution scene!

The rewards for winning the trial this time: 1. The info that the traitor definitely came to the island with them. 2 The traitor belongs to a world-destroying organization called Future Foundation. (Which, in a fun dialogue I believe is new, Nagito calls a pretty hopeful name for something like that.) 3. Those who have talents will be given a present related to their talent. Nagito leaves to check that out, and with Hajime musing “will I be able to… remember my talent?”, the chapter closes.

CHAPTER 3

From here on, the stage play’s scripts starts to differ from the game more and more.

The gift Nagito received for his talent was the gun. Upon finding that it’s loaded with only one bullet, he understands it’s for playing russian roulette, a test for his luck aside from a present. I have to say, I find it insanely cool that he goes for 5 out of 6 shots instead of the 1 shot he did in the game, like holy shit??? But anyway, his reward for the game is the binder with the info on Hope’s Peak and the students.

As for the others, the gift Ibuki got is an electric guitar, Chiaki got a game system, Kazuichi got the communication/camera set that he would make at this point in the game, the one that plays an important role in the 3rd case, and so on; everyone got something related to their talent, except for Hajime. He already suspects it might be that he has no talent, after all, but the others comfort him, doubting that’s the reason.

Enter the despair disease. In this version, Nagito doesn’t get the disease; only Akane and Ibuki do, plus Mikan, who catches it from the start as well unbeknownst to the rest. The set up is like this: Mikan will be caring for the sick at the island’s hospital facility, Hajime volunteers to be there with her, and Kazuichi provides his comm set to link the hospital with the hotel lobby to stay in touch without spreading the illness.

From his position at the hospital, Hajime sees the transmission which he supposes is taking place at the hotel, so he runs over there. But from the hotel, when checking the comm system, the transmission comes on again so everyone thinks it has to be taking place at the hospital now. On the road from hotel to hospital is where they run into Mikan and Akane. Once at the hospital, the bodies of Ibuki and Hiyoko are there.

This investigation process differs A LOT from the game’s. For starters, everyone is far too discouraged by now from so many of their friends being gone and Kazuichi doesn’t even want to investigate anymore. To top things off, when Nagito arrives...

Hajime: Komaeda… where have you been?!

Kazuichi: Mioda and Saionji died! Do you get it?! Both of them at once!

Nagito: Who kills, who gets killed… I don’t care about that anymore.

Hajime: What did you say?

Akane: You asshole… if you say that, I’ll kill ya!

Sonia: Owari-san!

Nagito: Hey, Hinata-kun… did you remember your talent? Did you get any present from Monokuma?

Hajime: … no…

Nagito: Then, this is true…

Hajime: What does that mean?

Nagito: Hush! A reserve course level guy like you… could you not talk to me like we’re equals?!

Hajime: Reserve course?

Nagito: I got this from Monokuma… documents from within Hope’s Peak. You… have no talent, you were a reserve course student!

After explaining what the reserve course is, leaving Hajime destroyed, Nagito steps away to do his own thing.

With Hajime totally out of commission from shock, it’s the other characters who do the investigating on their own this time, without the protagonist’s lead we’re used to. Pretty painful to witness, honestly, but a very clever, impacting and well-handled modification. Everyone lets him have his time. In fact, when Fuyuhiko asks what’s wrong with Hajime, Gundham replies “Do not ask… it is a trivial matter.” for him, and when Chiaki talks to him, it’s only to ask case-related questions, no personal prodding. They only get to go over the causes of death, how the monitors worked (the hotel one showing a feed of the hospital, the hospital one showing a feed of the hotel) and as soon as Fuyuhiko finds a bit of the pillar-wallpaper-thing, investigation time’s over with no more evidence pieces than that. On to the trial.

Like it would happen in chapter 4 in the game, Nagito’s undermining Hajime in the trial, but no one else minds that he’s from the reserve course. Hence the physical attitude you’ll see him taking throughout. Understandably, though, from how the set up was, Hajime looks very suspicious, so the first part of the trial is on the possibility of him having committed the crime. Once that’s cleared and they’ve got it down that Hiyoko’s body was already there when he woke up, hidden under wallpaper, it’s concluded that the transmission was a trick from the killer, who had to be female and at the hospital at the time: Mikan.

Her breakdown follows pretty much the same script as in the game, as well as how she finally gives herself away by mentioning specifically the camera angle. As for the reconstruction of the case, it shows that Ibuki was already healed at the time, that Mikan used some sort of injection to kill her. As for Hiyoko, all the same, except… well, you’ll see. “I’m sorry for being a disgusting, pervert woman…” is what she says, which kinda... adds a layer of to consider in their behavior to each other.

Just as in the game, Mikan reveals what the despair disease did to her, talks about her past and her old lover before she’s executed. No additions or changes on any of that.

CHAPTER 4

… well, kinda. Chapter 4 of the game pretty much doesn’t happen in the stage play. Instead, we get the scene we can see immediately after the execution:

Angry and at her limit from everything that’s happened, Akane challenges Monokuma, like she would go off on her own to do in the game. With everyone being right there in this version, Nekomaru, Fuyuhiko and Gundham are quick to back her up, while Hajime and Kazuichi keep the more physically frail members of the group safe, and Nagito simply stands aside from everything, commenting how awesome everyone is. Do note that he takes a spear from the Monokuma army for his own purposes.

While the whole Funhouse ordeal doesn’t happen, the main points and the weight of the game’s chapter 4 are preserved, with the self-sacrificing role Nekomaru and Gundham take during the fight. All the information we get from the game chapter has already been given in the previous parts of the play, the tensions and relationships between characters were also already set up, and the victim and culprit roles kept a last-effort, self-sacrifice spirit; it’s true that it’s less morally complex and takes exposition away from Gundham, but everything is still basically covered. Even the message to “not give up on life”. So, with their noble deaths, this chapter closes.

CHAPTER 5

Here the play realigns more faithfully to the game’s order of events.

Now knowing they’re Ultimate Despair, Nagito no longer has sympathy for the group or their dead friends. Since the binder he got has info about everything except the traitor, his aim is to uncover them through his bomb threat now. Here he’s immediately revealing his aspiration to wipe out despair from the island and become the Ultimate Hope, and as Hinata asks him to stop before he kills someone, Nagito tells him: “Hey, Hinata-kun… I believe… in my Ultimate Luck!” Words that will be very important.

Here, Fuyuhiko steps up to establish what to do with the situation: Hajime and Chiaki will be staying behind to go through the documents Nagito gave, while he and everyone else will go search for the bombs. “It’s got nothing to do with talent. I’m doing it because I trust in you… so leave that up to me,” is more or less what he says, like the cool heckin bro he is. Very neat modifications. What Hajime and Chiaki have on their hands, then, is the info about the deaths of the student council, Kamukura Izuru, the most despair-inducing incident in the history of mankind, Junko, the group that constitutes Ultimate Despair… pretty much what we’d be getting during the chapter 6 exploration of virtual Hope’s Peak.

Continuing, Nagito has been spotted going into a building, which would be the factory warehouse, so the group get all back together and chases after. The discovery of his body plays out just as in the game, the case itself has the same elements too, from the stuck door to the fire to the bottles. Enjoy the amazing and chilling staging!

In regards to the investigation, even the group recognizes it was too short this time around and that they have no leads. Chiaki already recognizes that “this might not be a trial to find the culprit”.

Once again, the trial is more agile and short. Given that everyone was together most of the time and no one went in or out of the warehouse after Nagito, Hajime proposes it was suicide very quickly. A trick pulled to throw them off… and get them all executed? Although most of the others are ready to accept that as the conclusion, Hajime himself is quick to pause things and question it. Because Nagito said that he would expose the traitor, not kill everyone, so that shouldn’t be what he’d try to do. The trial goes on.

Hajime’s effort to understand the reasons behind Nagito’s actions is comes in the form of a truly fantastic change here, a new scene annexed to the case reconstruction. I’ll translate that conversation between the deceased Nagito and him:

Nagito: Hi there, Hinata-kun.

I really didn’t think you from the reserve course, of all people, would be the one to finally reach the truth.

Hajime: It wasn’t just me… it’s because everyone worked together!

Nagito: Hey, did you find the traitor?

Hajime: ...

Nagito: You haven’t found them, then. I’m glad.

Hajime: You, who obsessed over hope...

Why would you go this far to get us killed?

Nagito: To make despair into a stepping stone for hope. That’s all it is.

If I were able to overcome this despair, then I’d surely become the true hope. The Ultimate Hope!

Hajime: So what… if you die it’s meaningless, isn’t it?

Nagito: Oh, no. [The next line, I’m unable to translate at my level, due to how fast the actor is speaking I can’t make it out properly. There is an “isn’t it natural” there, but that’s all I can catch. Apologies.]

Hajime: I…

I was happy you’d called out to me at the start… when you were telling me I’d remember my talent someday… I was happy...

I… with you…!

Nagito: That’s… that’s wrong, Hinata-kun.

You the reserve course student, and me with the Ultimate Hope…! You, as someone without talent, have no reason to be talking with me, do you?

Hajime: Komaeda!!

Nagito: I’m hope… I oppose despair! And hope… moves forward.

Through this scene, Hajime has realized Nagito’s intention to save the traitor and kill the rest.

Now, quite similarly to how it goes in the game, Chiaki confesses and the nature of Future Foundation as the good guys is revealed through her. Plus, Monokuma delivers the reason Nagito wanted to save someone from that organization, the revelation that everyone else is Ultimate Despair. Why they were taken on the island is established.

It is with all that already on their plate that Chiaki asks them to execute her. Trusting both Nagito’s talent and Chiaki’s bravery, Hajime makes the call to vote for her as blackened.

Chiaki’s goodbyes are the same as in the game, but damn, does it deliver differently on stage…

CHAPTER 6

As soon as the execution is over, the graduation for the remaining students begins. It’s very confusing for me to pick apart the fine detail of what’s just like the game and what’s different, since it’s all small things all over the place, so I’ll just be thorough in summing up this whole part.

The survivors are immediately presented with the first choice, which is what appears on their e-handbooks and the stage screen: graduate and leave the game world, or don’t and stay in it. This is the first time anything about the island being a simulation comes up, so the explanations for that are due. Junko’s presence is revealed.

She explains that the group wouldn’t be allowed to graduate until a point where the Future Foundation member was dead. Now, they can. And if they graduate and wake up, their friends who died through the killing game will also go back to life (except Chiaki, of course). Hajime is unsure, so to convince everyone, Junko brings the simulation of the others back, who also pressure Hajime to choose to graduate. But he denies it, because that’s clearly not their friends. How does he know? Because Nagito just said to graduate too, and he’d never share that opinion, he wouldn’t agree in any way with the designs of Junko, who is despair. Therefore, it’s all an illusion!

The truth of that choice is explained: they WOULD all come back to life, but all of them would have Junko’s mind. So uh, yeah, that’s why they act and pose as you’ll see, and MAAAAN how I dig those once again incredible performances!!

When Monomi appears, it is to reveal the other option: the emergency shutdown command, which will take the survivors out of the program without Junko (and of course without the others). No, Naegi, Kirigiri and Togami do not appear in this version, so she is giving that information on her own and without the 11307 code. But, the Junkofied classmates explain that would also cancel everyone’s progress in the program and return them to how they were before entering it, as Ultimate Despairs.

The two options are summed up: the “hope” option that Nagito is signaling is the emergency shutdown that sacrifices the survivors back to despair but doesn’t let Junko out into the world, and the “despair” option that Imposter is signaling would be the graduation that allows the survivors to wake up with their memories from the program, but also lets Junko out occupying the mind of each of their dead friends.

On top of that, as everyone is physically restrained to pressure them into the final choice, when Hajime’s trying to talk back to Junko, she reveals he’s the one who brought her to the program to begin with. Since he has no memory of it, she goes ahead and tells him that he’s the legendary Ultimate Hope, Kamukura Izuru. “You are Kamukura Izuru,” she makes everyone chant repeatedly, to get it through his head. So, the shutdown option that reverts everyone to their despaired state, would also make Hajime return to being Izuru. And his current self? The chant is then “disappear”, which gives him the answer to that.

Just as in the game, Hajime is paralyzed. Retreating within his mind, he monologues about how he can no longer choose between hope and despair, themselves or the world, just can’t choose a future. And in much the same conversation, Chiaki hears him out and reminds him that he is himself, that he’s acted undeniably as himself within the simulation and, most importantly, that life isn’t like a game where the 2 options given are all there is; that he can create any other options he wants, create his own path. “You’re not doing it for anyone, but for yourself,” she says, before giving him a hope fragment.

It’s with that mentality, that decision to create his own future, that Hinata returns and convinces the others to do the emergency shutdown. Trusting each other and what should be a new beginning instead of their end, they press both buttons together which begins the process.

The final scene is a perfect replica of the game’s, as far as I can tell. With the digital world falling apart around them, everyone prepares for what may come after, hoping they won’t forget each other and what they went through, a bit scared, but happy to be together and determined to carve out their future.

With that, the stage play ends. Enjoy the outro!

I hope you’re able to have as much of a great time as I did watching the play. The actors truly awed me with how much life they breathed into their characters, and I strongly recommend watching the play more than once through, ‘cause you can always notice new details, other characters doing their own things in the background when the main spotlight wasn’t on them, characters slipping into poses that are so much like the game sprites, etc. The modifications were also brilliantly done to make things shorter without messing anything up, keeping the plot perfectly together; something admirable and, in my opinion, the work of a very skilled writer. The stage work was just unbelievably amazing to me too. Wanting to show all this, so that other people could appreciate how well done it was, is a large part of why I made this long-ass thing.

Have a cool time reliving the fantastic story that SDR2 was!

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