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fourraccoonsinacoat · 3 months

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Head Full of Ghosts: Chapter 3

Pairing: Astarion x Dark Urge

Summary: Takes place during the events of Baldur's Gate 3 and explores the romance between Astarion and the Dark Urge, as well as the friendships and relationships she has with her companions. Plus, everyone gives shit to Gale about his cooking. Tags: Slow Burn, Angst, Pining, Humor, Violence, Friends to Lovers, Developing Friendships, Developing Romance, Spoilers for the Dark Urge and BG3 in general, Dark Urge as Original Female Character Rating: Mature (Will eventually be Explicit, just not there yet.) Current Chapter Count: 3/? Read on AO3 Current Word Count: 13,050

Author Notes: I'm finishing up the fourth chapter and realized I never uploaded this chapter to Tumblr. So here we are! Getting this fic back on track and should have the next chapter up soon.

Chapter 3: Monsters

“You know she is a hag, yes?” Lae’zel’s severe and even voice cut through the sticky swamp air like a hot knife through a wedge of Durinbold cheese.

The bog was a foul place, both in atmosphere and in smell. The air was thick with humidity and an ever-present smell of wet rot. Trees sagged and bent at jagged angles, their tired limbs wilting in the gloom, and a thin fog seemed to permeate every corner of the swamp. A hazy light filtered through the tree canopy, casting blotchy shadows upon the muddy ground.

The path the four companions were following sank into marsh every several yards, forcing the group to pick their way through mire and muck. The slog was slow, and there was much complaining. Especially from one particular high elf who no one had told not to wear freshly polished leather boots.

“I am like…seventy percent sure she is a hag, yeah,” Eli answered as she carefully stepped over a rotted tree limb, half submerged in murky filth. “I mean, she’s entirely too eccentric to just be a normal human, right?”

She looked over to Astarion for support, who was currently trying to rub some manner of sludge off his doublet.

“She certainly isn’t playing Three-Dragon Ante with a full deck, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Astarion replied coolly before throwing up his hands and huffing in irritation, the stain unyielding.

Lae’zel hummed for a moment, considering. “Gale is eccentric and a normal human, is he not?” she questioned, amber eyes fixing on their resident wizard who, at the moment, was trying to free the hem of his robe from the clawing grasp of a gnarled tree root.

Eli sighed. “Gale has a magic bomb capable of leveling entire cities in his chest. I would not call that normal.”

“You wound me, Eli.” Gale responded in a good-natured tone as he tugged his robe free and the group began moving once more.

“You consumed an enchanted bracer yesterday at breakfast,” Eli quipped, recalling the morning fondly. Karlach had been fascinated, quickly trying to get Gale to absorb several other items from their camp hoard and asking him if he “took on their powers,” as she put it.

Eli chuckled at the memory before concluding, “You’re as deranged as the rest of us and it’s not up for debate.”

Their little group really had become a hodgepodge of oddities over the past few days. Karlach was settling in well, because where else would she fit other than with their traveling sideshow which included a vampire who could walk in the sun, a warlock who was recently transformed into a part-devil by his patron, an amnesiac with the compulsion to murder anything that looked at her crossly, and all the rest of them.

Eli was starting to wonder if she had a penchant for picking up emotionally constipated strays. They were all kind of outcasts in some way or another. People just trying to get along in a world that had kicked them in the teeth and tossed them out with the garbage. She still had no idea why they’d all just sort of accepted her as their group’s figurehead, but she was beginning to feel a certain affinity for their gang of misfits. They were all fighting battles both within and without, and Eli couldn’t help but feel a certain kinship with people who were struggling with their own personal demons, just as she was.

At least as the day wore on her constant headache had faded to a dull throb, rather than the brain splitting white-hot pain she’d been experiencing. Her memories were still lost, and whenever she tried to call upon them she was only met with flashes of red violence. Images of mangled bodies, ruptured limbs, stringy viscera…it all melted and jumbled together in a confusing blur of chaos. Her dreams were no better, and her nighttime raids on the camp’s supply of books and wine were no secret among the party. Both Shadowheart and Karlach had even joined her on separate occasions. Hells, she’d have a proper book club up and running soon.

“So,” Lae’zel’s stern voice brought Eli out of her musings. “You trust this hag?”

“No,” Eli nearly spat the word out in a laugh. Auntie Ethel, as she called herself, was a lot of things, and trustworthy was not one of them. Astarion’s assessment of Ethel as ‘positively demented’ was accurate, and hags were not known as an honest sort.

“Good,” said Lae’zel, slightly drawing out the word in approval. “Lest I remind you that the only way to remove a ghaik tadpole is a Zaith'isk.”

Eli could feel the gith’s eyes on her and she did her best not to bristle under what she was sure was a judgmental stare. “I am aware,” Eli said, trying to sound unfazed and relatively certain she was failing miserably.

Lae’zel continued to press. “And a Zaith'isk can only be found at a gith creche.” She laid emphasis on the last two words, as if she were pointing something obvious out to a very dimwitted child.

Eli felt the back of her neck and ears start to go warm as irritation stirred in her chest and tightened her shoulders. The throbbing headache at the back of her skull began to growl.

“You don’t say…” Eli replied, quietly pleading to whatever deity she couldn’t remember worshipping to please just let her have the rest of the day without feeling like her brain was on fire.

“I just did say.” Lae’zel shot back, drawing a sidelong glare from Eli.

Eli liked Lae’zel. For the most part. When she wasn’t threatening tiefling refugees or complaining about the lack of spice in Gale’s cooking. Though, to her credit, Gale’s food was kind of bland.

The gith fighter was blunt, stubborn, opinionated, fierce and one hell of a talent when it came to steel and blade. Eli appreciated Lae’zel’s steadfast loyalty and belief in her people’s culture, and even felt a slight pang of jealousy for it. It grounded the warrior and gave her a perspective from which to view the world, something Eli did not have. Culture, family, heritage…they were the building blocks of a person. Even if a person rejected or outgrew those foundational aspects of themselves, they still provided guiderails – or at the very least an anchor for one’s identity.

Without those things, Eli felt adrift and directionless in a vast and swirling ocean, constantly beaten upon the rocks before being dragged back down to drown.

“Explain to me why we are seeking this hag who you do not trust and who cannot remove the tadpole,” Lae’zel said, driving at a point Eli knew was coming and one she wasn’t sure she had a decent argument against. “Instead, should we not be pursuing a more productive course of action?”

Eli sighed, rubbing at her temples as her headache began to mount. “I’m curious,” she responded rather lamely.

“I see,” Lae’zel said with a tone that indicated the gith was wholly unimpressed by Eli’s reasoning. “So, the situation at Emerald Grove continues to escalate, goblins continue to terrorize the Sword Coast, the druid healer remains missing, and the tadpoles in our brains remain unremoved.” Eli internally cringed at the chiding way in which Lae’zel spoke. “But, let us humor your curiosity. What is the worst that could happen?”

The question hung in the air uneasily. The worst that could happen was…really fucking bad. Everyone could die. Eli and her merry band of misfits could all turn into mind flayers. The Grove could fall under the absolute rule of a tyrant and racist. And the Sword Coast could get fully and aggressively fucked. Why was this all her problem, again?

“Lae’zel, was that sarcasm I just heard?” Astarion chimed in, and Eli felt a pull of appreciation towards him. He probably hadn’t meant to run interference between Eli and her interrogator, but she was thankful for it all the same.

Truth be told, there was a small part of her that hoped Auntie Ethel did have a solution for their tadpole troubles. While they weren’t the most honorable of sorts, hags were rather enterprising and shrewd. And given the nature of their unconventional problem, an unconventional solution would more than likely be required. Besides, if things went south, they could just kill her. That seemed to be a particular specialty of their group.

“Sarcasm often accompanies truth,” Lae’zel said with a pointed tone.

Astarion chuckled lightly and Eli felt something not unlike faint affection flutter in her chest. She very quickly shoved it down into the black hole within herself where all the things she didn’t want to deal with went. Nope. That wasn’t good. That was the very last thing she needed right now.

It had been happening more and more since the night she’d made a complete fool of herself, drunkenly asking him if they were still friends. Still friends. Gods, she was such a loser, and Astarion surely thought she was a total basket case after that encounter. But, every now and then, he’d give her a smirk or say something that caused a laugh to bubble up, and then that weird and endearing feeling would creep up and holy shit was this not the time or the place! Besides, that man had more red flags than a circus, and it wasn’t like Eli was a bastion of sanity, so together they’d be about as functional as wet hot garbage.

“How profound,” Astarion continued, oblivious to Eli’s distressing mental spiral. “This little jaunt in the swamp does seem to be a rather unhygienic deviation from more pressing concerns.”

The appreciation she’d felt for him earlier poofed away, and Eli glared. “I will turn this whole party around if you all don’t stop your complaining!”

Astarion’s eyes lit up with delight. “Oh, please do! I worry the putrid scent of squalor and anguish is never coming out of my clothes.” He ran his hands down his doublet, trying to smooth out some wrinkles, and sighed in an overdramatic fashion.

“I, for one, am looking forward to seeing Ethel again,” Gale chimed in as they continued to trod down the muddy path. All of them would be washing muck off their clothes for days. “Fey and the like often have access to magic that even a wizard of my caliber cannot wield. This deviation - as you put it, Astarion - could prove very advantageous if we play our cards right.”

Eli resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder at Astarion, who had surely just rolled his eyes so hard he could see up into his own skull. She could practically feel the disdain radiating off of him and pointedly kept her eyes ahead, scanning the dreary bogland for any sign that they may be nearing Auntie Ethel’s dwelling.

It took Astarion all but two seconds to quip back at the wizard. “Gale, your opinion is like the filth on my boots. Unwanted and irritating,” he said with all the cheer of a muddy wet cat as he paused to kick some grime off the bottom of one of said boots.

“It is a wonder any of you have survived this long,” Lae’zel said, glowering at Astarion as he continued to preen.

“We are a rather astonishing group, aren’t we?” Eli asked with a small smirk, glancing back at the gith.

Lae’zel just rolled her eyes.

Eli was glad for the banter, as it provided some distraction from the pulsating headache growing behind her eyes. However, as they rounded a bend in the path where the trail began to climb upwards towards the interior of the bog, snaking away from the swampy shoreline, Eli was struck with a surging agony that flashed white hot throughout her head. She doubled over, the heel of her hand pressing into the ridge of her brow as a hiss escaped from behind her clenched teeth. Her stomach churned angrily, a hunger rising from deep within that neither food nor drink would satiate. Her head felt as if it were shattering into fragments, her conscious self being pulled apart at the seams as something else tried to push its way to the surface. Something feral, and frenzied and starved.

From somewhere behind her, Eli thought she heard Gale muttering a question. She then felt a hand on her shoulder and wanted nothing more in the world than to seize it and dig her nails into the supple flesh. She wanted to smell the crisp metallic tang of blood in the air as her fingers peeled back skin as if she were pulling the rind off a particularly ripe fruit, bloody pulp exposed and raw. The thought of her fingers sliding between muscle and skin, slick with blood, feeling fibrous sinew tear away and hearing the wet squelch and pop as she degloved flesh from limb…

Fist clenched, her nails dug into the palm of her hand as she fought to keep control. A pleasurable shiver ran down her spine as her mind entertained depraved thoughts, and for a moment she thought she may vomit where she knelt. She was not herself. Her mind was splintering with a hundred craven desires…she wanted to walk across fields of ruptured bodies and feel the viscera turn to jam between her toes. Her muscles tensed and she flinched away from the hand, standing in a near delirious state and muttering some nonsense about “needing a minute” before stumbling off into the fen.

Eli needed to put distance between herself and her companions. At least for the moment. At least until her head cleared. She slogged through the wetland, unfocused on where she was going, until she felt a dampness seeping through her boots. She stopped and blinked, trying to wrench her consciousness back from the brink. As her sight cleared and the world around her came back into focus, Eli found herself standing ankle-deep in water near a riverbank, looking out over the vast and gloomy expanse of the Chionthar River - the opposite bank obscured by fog.

Sloshing her way back to shore, Eli stepped back onto somewhat solid ground just as she heard a rustling in the thicket. Her eyes shot up to see Astarion picking through the snarl of brush and weeds that bordered the muddy shoreline. His expression was one of exasperated frustration, brow furrowed and mouth pulled into a grimace, as he tugged a booted foot free of the clinging bramble.

“Gods below, this entire place needs to be tossed into Avernus,” he grumbled as he plucked a bur off his doublet and flicked it to the ground. Astarion then glanced up at her, crimson eyes guarded, although Eli thought she caught the glimmer of something else in his gaze…a flash of something softer. But it came and went like a spark catching alight then burning out just as quickly. “Are you…alright?”

His tone was hesitant and uncertain, as if he were unused to the concept of asking after someone else. Astarion had an edge about him that never seemed to dull, as if he were always acting under the assumption that those around him would lash out at any given moment without warning. Eli wasn’t sure why, but she felt as if she recognized that particular brand of uneasiness. It was a tension that came from an impartial distrust of anyone and anything. A response to a life lived in a constant state of conflict, always ready for fight or flight. Something gnawed at the far recesses of her mind, tugging at a memory she couldn’t quite grasp. She understood that feeling, though she did not know why…

“I think I am. Now, at least," Eli said, rubbing at her eyes as her headache growled but remained tempered. Her mind seemed to be clearing and realigning itself to the present, no longer at risk of breaking and letting loose whatever atrocity lay coiled up inside herself. “You didn’t have to follow me out here. I just needed a moment to collect my thoughts.”

Astarion eyed her and raised a brow, disbelief apparent on his face. “My dear, whatever just happened in that pretty head of yours is not nearly as frivolous as you’re trying to make it seem.”

Eli winced internally. He was right, of course, and it wasn’t as if she had been subtle when she’d walked off aimlessly into the bog after being doubled over and obviously in pain. Hell, given how she must have looked in that moment, he’d probably followed her to make sure she didn’t trod blindly into a sinkpit or end up ensnared by some flesh-eating swamp ficus.

She sighed and ran a hand absentmindedly through her silvery hair. “I just don’t want to worry people,” Eli conceded. “We have enough to deal with, without adding my violent mood swings and absconded memory to the mix.” She spread her hands out, as if the gesture could represent the absolute shitstorm they dealt with on a daily basis.

Astarion considered her for a moment, expression thoughtful and impassive, before he shook his head with a small smile. “I believe you were the one who pointed out earlier that everyone in our weird little group is ‘deranged,’ as you put it.” He emphasized her choice of wording with a gesture of his hands, pantomiming plucking the word out of thin air.

The action brought a soft smile to her lips. She enjoyed Astarion’s embellishments and dramatics. The elf had a flare for the extravagant that she found both endearingly silly and strangely alluring…

Nope. No. Stop it. She shoved that twinge of attraction back down into the deep dark hole within and refocused herself. “Yeah, well, one of us needs to at least act somewhat sensible,” Eli quipped with a smirk. “Can’t have Zevlor and his lot figuring out how truly unhinged we all are. We may not get paid,” she said the last bit with more than a little fake indignation.

Astarion played along, pretending to be scandalized and clutching his nonexistent pearls. “Now that would be a tragedy. I have every intention of hiring a witch at the first opportunity to hex Gale’s cookpot so it will only produce boiled squid,” he said cheerily. “I’m assuming that won’t be cheap.”

Amused with himself, Astarion tipped his chin up, smirking at Eli with all the wiliness of a fox. For her part, Eli just rolled her eyes but couldn’t stop a grin from spreading on her face as she imagined Gale, flustered and put out, ranting about the juvenile use of magic.

A thought occurred to her, then. Something unbidden and completely inane, but one she latched onto desperately. It was a joke that had bubbled up from the deep recesses of her broken memory, and though she had no idea where she heard it or in what context, she was delighted at the prospect of finding something among the rubble of her ruined mind. It set the tiniest flicker of hope alight within her that maybe, eventually, she may be able to recover more.

Eyes bright, and with a reserved sort of hopefulness stirring in her chest, she gave Astarion a genuinely dorky grin and blurted out with all the self-restraint of a toddler; “What do you call a magician who cooks?”

Surprise overtook the elf’s face, and he tilted his head curiously with a small laugh, thrown by the sudden and highly abrupt tangent. Before he could speak, however, a snap sounded in the brush behind the pair. Both Eli and Astarion turned to find a man, tall and well built with slicked back hair the color of burnt coffee. His mouth, framed by a neatly kept goatee, was turned down in a grimace, jaw clenched, and in his hands the man held a very large crossbow - loaded and aimed in their direction.

“I’d think twice before you get much closer to him, miss,” the stranger warned, eyes darting from Eli to Astarion as if he expected the elf to set upon him any second. “He’s dangerous.”

Eli frowned at the stranger, fingers curling reflexively into the beginning gesture for her Eldritch Blast incantation. “And yet you’re the one with a crossbow pointed at me,” she said warily, watching the man’s fingers for any twitch or movement on the trigger.

Next to her, she could feel Astarion stiffen defensively, but he remained quiet. Had the stranger not had a crossbow bolt aimed in her direction, Eli would have been more curious who he was and his connection to Astarion. Due to his comments, she assumed he was aware of Astarion’s vampirism, though she couldn’t be certain. Her curiosity, however, would have to simmer in the face of their current predicament.

“Call it a precaution,” the stranger said before tipping the crossbow in the direction of Astarion. “You know what he is? Vampire spawn.” He said the last bit as if it was supposed to be some revelation, venom laced within his words.

Eli studied the tip of the crossbow bolt, noting how the sharpened edge glimmered faintly in the hazy light. Silver? She glanced back and caught the man’s eyes with her own, a growing dislike darkening her expression.

“Old news, my friend,” she said with more than a hint of antagonistic sarcasm. “Known that since I met him.”

This drew a somewhat startled noise from Astarion, whose gaze she could suddenly feel turn to her. “You did?” he asked with a genuine note of surprise in his voice.

Astarion had not admitted to being a vampire spawn until the night Eli caught him creeping in on her as she slept, hungry and poised to bite. Up until that point, though, he’d done a rather poor job of concealing his nature. What with the bite scars on his neck and his pale, almost pearlescent, complexion. The fact he could walk in sunlight was an oddity, of course, but given that she’d just flown through Avernus on a mind flayer ship after having an illithid tadpole inserted into her brain, a vampire traipsing about in the sun wasn’t even the weirdest thing she’d seen that day.

She chanced a quick sidelong glance at Astarion and quirked an eyebrow. “Well, yeah. It was kind of the worst kept secret in Faerûn. Shadowheart and I even had a bet about who you’d try to bite first.” Eli still owed her a bottle of sweetwine, come to think of it.

She shook the thought from her head and turned her attention back to the stranger who still had his crossbow trained on them. “Mind introducing yourself before you start a fight you’ll regret?” she asked, watching his body language for any sign that he may back down now he knew Eli was fully aware of her companion’s condition.

The stranger glared at her, and Eli sighed. Another day, another fight with some ignorant douchecanoe who was wasting the last moments of their life antagonizing her. That darkness inside of her, the thing that craved slaughter and whose language was only violence, shifted restlessly like a dog in a cage, pressing at the barricades with a cruel need. She fought to push it back, but gods she could imagine her hands tearing into his gut, ripping dying organs from the yawning wound, warm and wet. The iron scent of blood in the air. The agony twisting his face as he writhed. It would be beautiful brutality.

Her headache was mounting once again, and through the throbbing pressure she heard the man say; “You can call me monster hunter.”

He braced his crossbow, targeting Astarion, and Eli was moving faster than coherent thought. She felt a force collide with her left shoulder, nearly knocking her off balance, and then the world melted away into a manic savagery that was both achingly familiar and terrifyingly transcendent.

Flesh would rend. Bone would snap. And her hunger would be sated. For now.

The headache faded, and Eli was suddenly aware of a thick and deep pain radiating from her shoulder. Her mind swam dully, like a bobber struggling to stay above water as forces tried to pull it down. She felt…tired. Dazed.

Why was she on the ground? Was that her blood spattered across her bracers? Why was Astarion yelling?

“Godsdamnit! Why would you do that!”

Something jostled her, and the pain in her shoulder flared. She groaned and tried to turn her head towards Astarion’s voice only to find she was propped up against him. He was kneeling next to her, a hand braced against her back to keep her seated upright while his other hand pressed into her shoulder. She grimaced, trying to ignore the searing agony rocketing down her left side, but found herself unable to focus.

She looked up into Astarion’s face, head bobbing to the side, and squinted at him. A range of emotions flitted across his face as he looked down at her. Anger, frustration, exasperation…all common day-to-day expressions for the snarky and uppity elf. But there was something else, too. Something in the clench of his jaw, the tightness of his lips and the way his sharp, clear eyes stayed fixed on her. Concern…

“Do…what?” she asked, confused.

Eli continued to watch his face, thinking dully about when she’d ever seen him worried and coming up with nothing. Well, she wasn’t in a great state of mind at the moment and kind of just wanted to go to sleep. She was probably just forgetting…

Her mind drifted…eyes closing wearily…

Astarion shook her gingerly and she let out a noise somewhere between a hiss and a growl. “That bolt you idiotically decided to jump in front of was laced with poison! Do. Not. Fall. Asleep.” He pressed at the wound on her shoulder and her eyes wrenched back open, pain flooding her senses and slamming adrenaline into her system.

“Fucking rude!” she yelped.

Then, the pain was fading and a slow numbness was creeping down from her shoulder. It felt cold and soothing, and she was so tempted to just relax into it and fade away. Her head dropped and came to rest against his chest, eyelids fluttering closed again.

“I think I just like to annoy you…” she said weakly, then gave a hiccupping sort of laugh.

Astarion was trying to jostle her out of the daze again, only this time there was no pain and she felt too content to open her eyes as her head rested against him.

“Eli! Eli! Shit!” He sounded so far away. So far…far…away…

“What do you call a magician who cooks?” Astarion asked, a hint of panic coiling around his words.

From somewhere very distant, Eli remembered she hadn’t finished telling him her joke. A small laugh caught in her throat as she thought about it…but she really didn’t feel like talking right now. Gods, she wanted to sleep…

Astarion was shaking her again. “What do you call a magician who cooks! Eli!”

Fucking hell, he was loud.

Eli groaned and tried to lift her head. Too heavy…

…she needed to finish the joke…

“A…saucerer…” she said lamely, then laughed, head still slumped against his chest. She’d have to tell Gale…

There was some muttering, then a feeling of being lifted. The ground was gone. Her arms sagged.

“You will not die,” she heard Astarion say from miles away. “You will not die because that was just awful, and it will not be the last thing you ever say."

Eli smiled to herself. She was hilarious…

Everything went dark.

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a-student-out-of-time · 1 year

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Danganronpa and the Mean Girl Problem

Hello, everyone! I’ve come to once again share my thoughts on something.

With the (as of writing this) recent release of Despair Time Chapter 2, I felt this was an appropriate time to discuss some things. First off, I am very interested to see where this fangan is going from here on out, and even from the first episode, I’m hooked.

I really enjoyed the character moments in the first episode, from Eden to Levi to Teruko to J to one of the subjects of my discussion today: Arei.

Now, I have to admit, Arei’s one of the most interesting characters in DRDT to me. She’s not my favorite- that honor goes to Hu- but she’s the one who I think has the most potential for character development within the narrative of DRDT. And that’s also something that concerns me.

See, that brings us to the point I want to address here is in the title. It’s something I’ve noticed across both the canon games and some fangans, which I’ll call the “Mean Girl Problem.”

(Spoilers for the canon games, DR3, the Another series, Despair Time, DR Antebellum, etc. will follow. You have been warned.)

(Also, this became a long-ass post. You’ve also been warned on that.)

As I’m sure many of us are aware at this point, Danganronpa is a very formulaic series. While we see different stories and character arcs play out, we nevertheless see similar archetypes and story beats across them. Sometimes these are broken in unique ways, but we often have very similar starting points.

Oftentimes, these repeated tropes have been deconstructed and explored in different ways, either in the games themselves or among fan games that seek to go beyond the formulaic writing. Even then, however, there tends to be repetition with a lot of them, mostly in terms of things like my least favorite trope, the double murder in Chapter 3.

What I want to focus on here is an archetype I’ve seen a lot and one that often leaves me thoroughly disappointed every time: the eponymous mean girl.

These tend to be female characters who are presented as bullies, either toward one character in particular or members of their group as a whole. I feel this archetype really got its start with Hiyoko in DR2, and it understandably became a point of contention with a lot of people. And it was later repeated with a lot of characters.

I can’t speak for all fangans, so I’ll stick to the ones I’ve seen. Among them, we’ve got Hiyoko, Ruruka, Natsumi and Miu in canon; Rei, Kizuna and Hibiki in the Another series, Mitsuba in Brave DR, Emilia in Antebellum, and Arei in Despair Time. I’ll leave Mitsuba out of this discussion, since Brave DR hasn’t made it quite as far as other fangans, but we still have a lot we can talk about here.

The Mean Girl Problem is a writing trend I’ve seen where these characters end up not receiving much narrative importance or opportunities for development, particularly in comparison to their male counterparts. And when they do, it’s usually squandered hard.

If you already have objections to this, I understand, but allow me to explain what I mean, character by character.

Now, DR1 didn’t really have a Mean Girl character, which is interesting. There were no female characters who were really openly malicious or antagonistic, unless one wants to include Celeste. However, she isn’t really an example of what I’m talking about. The problem really started in DR2:

________________________________________________

Hiyoko Saionji

As I said, this archetype began with Hiyoko. Her introduction had her crushing ants, making her creepy face and then calling Haime a wuss. From there, she spends most of her time complaining, manipulating and insulting everyone, aside from Mahiru who’s the only one that really puts up with her. Her worst insults are saved for Mikan, which...grr, but I’ll move on.

Now, Hiyoko being a selfish bratty girl is by design. She’s a member of the prestigious Saionji Clan and thus sees herself as superior to everyone else, so it’s at least understandable why she’d feel this way. Even if she plays it off in her Free Time Events that she’d been the subject of “assassination attempts,” which some of my friends have attributed to others getting back at her for her bullying, it’s clear she’s not well-liked in-story.

My point here isn’t that Hiyoko is a bad character. Quite to the contrary. Many people who defend her point out that she does have a lot more going on than just being a bully, and I fully agree. I like how much she loves her nation’s culture, how much she misses her dad and her belief that protecting something is a sign of love. That’s interesting.

The MGP stemmed from me asking a simple question: what purpose does she serve in the story?

It’s a serious question: what does her being a bully contribute to the narrative? What role does she serve, either thematically or in the plot itself other than being a member of Ultimate Despair? How does she actually change as a result of the story?

To all of this, I have to say “Not much.”

Now, I’m not going to say she didn’t have any purpose. Again, there were good moments with her. I like how she tried to make a memorial for Mahiru, but it came off as ominous and creepy to everyone, and she admits she’s not good at anything but dancing.

...Of course, then she turns right around and insults Mikan again.

And this brings me to another point about her: nobody in the story really seems to actually acknowledge Hiyoko’s cruel moments. Sure, they get annoyed with her, but nobody takes her aside and tries to explain why it’s wrong. Hajime makes some snarky comments about in her her behavior FTEs, but all he really seems to do is tolerate her.

Her bullying never really seems to factor that much into the plot, other than it just being something she does. Hell, even her being killed by Mikan had nothing to do with her bullying, but simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her being a bully was basically irrelevant to everything that ultimately happened with her in the story.

But here’s the part that really gets me: this moment in Chapter 3 where Hajime claims she’s changing:

Which, I guess I understand. It’s not the same thing as earlier, when she basically raged that Teruteru deserved to die horribly for committing murder, and that she wished she could’ve spat on his corpse.

Like, I guess that’s progress, going from “He deserved what he got” to “We’re only working together to escape because we don’t have a choice.” Still though, jeez.

And what comes off this? Again, basically nothing. Hiyoko can’t get her kimono on, Sonia suggests she use the full-body mirror at the music venue and that’s where she gets shanked by Mikan. Not because she was mad about the bullying and nobody doing anything to help, not because Hiyoko confronted her or she confronted Hiyoko.

No, she just walked in and Mikan went “No witnesses.”

And later on, DR3 confirmed that Hiyoko more or less acted the exact same during her time in Hope’s Peak. The only real progress we can really say she got was the fact that she acts more like a platonic tsundere toward Mikan in Side Hope.

Overall, it really seems like being a bully was the focus of Hiyoko’s character, when the game clearly wanted to acknowledge there was more going on with her. Yet most of the deeper elements with her were relegated to her FTEs.

And if she was bad, Ruruka was even worse.

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Ruruka Ando

Probably the biggest contender for the most hated DR3 character, Ruruka is, in a word, a self-centered bitch. Now, again, that isn’t to say that’s a problem and that there isn’t anything deeper going on with her character.

It genuinely seems like she has trouble with empathy, something that was shown when she and Seiko first met and she didn’t even really address that Seiko was crying over the dog she couldn’t save.

One could attribute that to her being a child, but throughout Seiko and Ruruka’s friendship, it becomes quite clear Ruruka asks her for more and more favors, going from medicines she needs to basic things she could probably just buy herself. This is acknowledged and addressed by the story.

What the story doesn’t do a great job of addressing is Seiko’s side of things, where it kinda seems to blame her for constantly accepting Ruruka’s requests and acts as if this is a “both sides are wrong” situation. I don’t think the story presented it well, and just made Ruruka look incredibly toxic and manipulative toward someone who has trouble saying no. Not quite the same as bullying, but more than enough to meet the standards of a Mean Girl.

The manga actually did one better and worse at the same time, where it brings up the idea that Seiko can’t eat Ruruka’s candies and addresses why she doesn’t make sugar-free ones: she refuses to acknowledge that Seiko even has an allergy and that she’s making it up to spite her. Sounds shallow and petty, but it’s a real thing that’s happened with some people.

If you don’t believe me, look up the woman whose in-laws fed her mushroom soup because she didn’t believe her when she said she had a mushroom allergy.

But again, the story wants there to be something deeper with these two. In the Future arc, Ruruka internally admits that she always saw Seiko as her hero, as someone with the talent and skill to do anything, and she was jealous because all she could do was make sweets. That’s an interesting motivation.

And the story doesn’t do all that much with it. Once again, the way it’s framed, Ruruka is a toxic and manipulative friend who wanted to use Seiko’s talents to cheat in her practical exam, and it was largely Nagito’s fault that things went south, then they had a falling out and were expelled.

There is a good story buried in this narrative. The problem is that Ruruka is presented in far too much of a negative light to really come off as someone with a valid point, while Seiko didn’t really do anything wrong. Izayoi is also barely a character and just follows her around everywhere, when maybe he could’ve been the mediator between the two of them.

But instead, after Seiko and Izayoi die, Ruruka nearly kills Kyoko and gets Koichi killed thanks to her bullshit. Granted, she was under threat of her Forbidden Action, but it was still framed as her being a villainous character, with her glaring evily.

This is not the face of someone who was forced into committing evil for the sake of her own survival.

And what happens after all this? What role does she have in the story? Nothing.

She wanders off on her own, rambling to herself about how she’ll survive, and then she gets killed by the hypnosis monitor thing- very graphically and excessively, I have to say- and then nobody even acknowledges her existence again.

I’ve heard speculation that the story of Ruruka, Seiko and Izayoi is meant to show why it’s important to trust your friends, but she had so few good qualities to her and so little going on within the narrative beyond just fighting with a roided-up Seiko that I could barely glean something like that.

She really just feels like she’s there to be an antagonistic force for a while, and when she’s not needed anymore, she’s shoved off to die. And if the story wanted us to at least feel for her, why kill her off in such a mean-spirited and graphic manner? Were we supposed to feel bad or feel like it was karmic?

Either way, it’s not a good look.

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Natsumi Kuzuryu

Here’s what turned out to be a retroactive example of the MGP: Natsumi, the girl who was originally only known through flashbacks and Twilight Syndrome Murder Case, in SDR2, who was originally just Fuyuhiko’s unnamed sister

DR3 came along and gave us a better look at her, though in a way I doubt we were expecting. From what Fuyuhiko had told Hajime, it seemed as if Natsumi was an Ultimate. Hell, he was sure she deserved the title of Ultimate Yakuza far more than him:

But what DR3 gave us was a girl who joined the Reserve Course, and just called herself the Ultimate Little Sister.

She certainly lives up to what Fuyuhiko was talking about, at least in how she was self-centered and arrogant. Even so, it’s obvious the two of them were very close, especially with how Natsumi looks up to him and dreams of joining the Main Course so she can stand by him as an equal.

The problem is, though, her intense rivalry with Mahiru and Sato, who she’s been in conflict with since Middle School. Once again, a character who we were lead to believe was an Ultimate turned out to also be in the Reserve Course.

Regardless, the two of them had an absolutely bitter rivalry, which as we’d learn would eventually lead to Sato murdering Natsumi, then Fuyuhiko murdering Sato in retaliation. DR3 had the opportunity to tell us a little bit more about Natsumi’s side of things.

And what we learn is that Natsumi fears being left behind with her brother in the Main Course, and wants to be acknowledge not for her talent but to earn a title so the two of them can be equals.

Now, Natsumi’s inclusion this way, while a weird retcon, isn’t pointless. It’s a pretty decent means of reinforcing the idea that talented and talentless people can’t mix, fueling Hajime’s insecurity. But once again, it really seems like it brushes over a lot of things with her cruelty toward Mahiru and Sato, none of which prove relevant for the larger story.

This is especially odd because the anime seemed more than willing to sympathize with Natsumi, while also neglecting to giving Sato a full name. And given that both of them die shortly afterward, it does feel a bit emotionally manipulative.

But once again, no relevance to the larger story. They’re not even mentioned once afterward.

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Miu Iruma

Now, Miu’s an interesting case because she has a huge fanbase. I understand why: she’s vulgar as hell, but also confident and hilarious. I call her a Mean Girl because, again, she often goes out of her way to insult and antagonize people for no real reason.

She’s different than the others, however, because she actually does contribute a lot of important details to the plot with her inventions.

It’s thanks to Miu that they get an overhead view of the first crime scene, she’s the reason why Chapter 4 happens, and she’s the one to provide the group with the weapons they need to take on the Exisals and learn the truth about their situation, both the manufactured one and the real one. So overall, she makes a massive impact on the story of V3.

My question is this: does this make her a character or a plot device factory?

Miu has basically no character development through the story, and is mostly just there for either making devices to move the plot forward, for comedy or for fanservice.

We do hits of greater identity and motivation for her in her FTEs and in Chapter 4, where we learn she received her talent after she was in a car accident that left her in a coma, waking up and finding she had a ton of ideas for inventions. And in Chapter 4, just before she attempts to kill Kokichi, she says the world needs her and her inventions.

This suggests either Miu knew what had “happened” to the world as part of the flashback light, or she didn’t but believed this idea in general. That, despite her crude behavior, she has genuinely altruistic motivations. That’s a good character quality for her.

And we don’t get much of that after this moment. The only memory of her anyone really has is of her and her inventions, and everyone except Kiibo basically hates her guts as a whole.

But what makes all of this worse in its own way is that this isn’t even Miu’s real personality, but a fabrication from Team Danganronpa. I can only go off of what we see here, so it’s hard to say what the real her was like, but the version we get here definitely falls victim to the MGP.

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Kizuna Tomori

Moving over to the fangan side of things, we have Kizuna Tomori, Class 79′s Ultimate Cheerleader from DRA.

Now, Kizuna is definitely closer to the Mean Girl archetype you might’ve thought of, i.e. a Regina George or Heather Chandler type. She acts all sweet and touchy-feely with Yuki, calling him nicknames and asking if he’ll buy her things when they get out.

And it goes on and on in her FTEs, where Yuki eventually wises up to the fact that she’s incredibly materialistic and she gets mad when he calls her out on it. Then she goes on to reveal that she’s the Queen Bee of her school, having boys do whatever she wants, buying her things and basically pimping out her fellow cheerleaders to them in exchange.

And it really seems like she doesn’t understand that this is a bad thing. Not that she knows and doesn’t care, but that she can’t comprehend that this isn’t supposed to be how things work.

Things get interesting in the last one, where she basically tries to have sex with Yuki, and he demands to know what the hell is going on with her.

She did all of this deliberately. She understands that she’s not a good person, but she’s also scared of guys who are only interested in her for her looks. She basically turned every guy who was interested in her into her servant, but in the process, she ultimately isolated herself from everyone else.

And there’s also the influence of her mother, Minako, who also seems to value her appearance. I can only image what kind of situation Kizuna was in to feel this way, where she was scared of being taken advantage of by guys if she drops this facade. One that’s kept her from even having friends.

In the game itself, Kizuna also isolates herself from everyone thanks to Tsurugi’s tyrannical rule, and also ends up quite lonely. Something Akane goes out of her way to help her with after she and Yuki find her crying.

It’s a really sweet and wholesome moment, where Akane assures her that she does consider Kizuna a friend, never saw her as weak and that they can confide in each other. Something Kizuna never really had before then.

And what happens afterward? Well, turns out she’s a fake bitch.

Which inevitably leads to Kizuna attempting to murder Akane.

The thing is, lying and scheming aside, Kizuna actually kinda has a point here.

The motive in Chapter 2 of DRA is, naturally, secrets. The one she found suggested local normal protag Yuki Maede might actually know the identity of the mastermind, and as we learn in Chapter 6, that turned out to be him.

Not only that, but Akane was actually his colleague and fellow Ultimate Despair. Kizuna unintentionally targeted both masterminds, and had she pulled it off, she may have actually ended the Killing Game early on. True, she was only focused on escaping, but it would’ve been beneficial to a greater number of people.

But what really bothers me is LINUJ’s attitude toward her. He created a pretty sympathetic backstory for her, which doesn’t excuse but explain her behavior, yet he admits in her design document that he made her to be the character everybody would hate and wanted to give her the most painful death possible.

Which he did in the form of a stab would in the stomach that took about thirty minutes to kill her. Like...jeez, dude. It’s also kinda hard for me to hate her not only when she’s actually kinda right on repeat viewings, but she also took the time to try and tell everyone it wasn’t actually Akane who killed her via dying message.

I also don’t want to be that person, but the fact that the character with the most sexualized design, the most overtly flirty and outgoing personality, and a backstory about trying to prevent guys from taking advantage of her weakness, is portrayed as an unrepentant villain?

Maybe it was unintentional, but it doesn’t sit well with me.

Really though, once again, I must ask why? What was gained from all this? What does it actually organically add to the story? Is there a lesson to be gleaned with this?

Not really any that I can see. I understand the points LINUJ raises when he talks about how we shouldn’t ignore the wrongdoings of a character because we sympathize with them, but I must also ask if utterly demonizing them for those wrongdoings is a bigger issue.

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Hibiki Otonokoji

Oh boy.

I’ve already talked at length about my problems with SDRA2 Chapter 3, but that was mostly me rambling about Kanade and the story. Instead, I’ll keep it short and focus strictly on Hibiki. Because out of all the victims of the MGP, Hibiki got robbed the absolute hardest.

I’ll start by saying that Hibiki isn’t so much a general bully as she is big sister bully. Her ire is mostly directed toward Kanade, who she insults, belittles, orders around, and harasses for her own amusement. At least it seems that way.

As we learn throughout the game, the Otonokoji Twins really have a mutually toxic relationship. Hibiki bullying Kanade is, according to the latter, because Hibiki’s actually a try-hard who’s jealous of Kanade for being better at her in everything: academics, athletics, even music. She hates losing more than anything.

That setup is at least an understandable motivation, and it could’ve made for some decent development opportunities, which the game actually did take at first.

See, because of SDRA2′s unique setup- there being five masterminds in the group- she understandably doesn’t feel safe trusting anyone except her sister at first. It takes a lot of work to get her to even leave her room and hang out with everyone.

Thanks to Setsuka’s encouragement, she admits that, yes, she wants to be friends with everyone. Hibiki is naturally a social butterfly, and even if she’s scared of what might happen because of the Voids, nothing will change if things stay the same.

And that’s a lesson she actually takes to heart afterward.

She genuinely tries to change her attitude and be more of a team-player with everyone, hanging out with them and trying to cheer up the group when they’re down because of their situation.

Because she takes responsibility for the things that happened, be it Yuri’s death at the party and Kokoro’s death due to the concert they held. And she’s doesn’t want there to be a third one.

She knows she’s not very smart, but she doesn’t want to be a burden on everyone and wants to contribute however she can. And the start of Chapter 3 actually shows her practicing what she preaches, even cracking jokes with everyone.

The disappointing thing is that everything that was going on with Hibiki was far, far more interesting to me than what actually ended up happening.

But instead of focusing on her trying to change and grow as a person, we got to spend the rest of the chapter glorifying another serial killer, turning Hibiki into a background extra and then revealing that her life had been literal hell, her parents are dead and her real personality probably doesn’t exist anymore, capped off with her dying a meaningless death.

A chapter that also effectively made her and her sister’s presence completely irrelevant to the actual story. While I complain about the MGP, nobody got it worse than Hibiki.

She deserved so much better than that.

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HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Rei Mekaru

Danganronpa Another’s original bad bitch, Rei is one of the few mean girl characters who actually managed to not only survive, but also receive development as a result. Good for her!

The thing with Rei is that she’s largely more similar to Byakuya than Hiyoko or Miu, although she dabbles in the Mean Girl archetype on occasion, particularly toward Kizuna. I’ll still include her because it’s an interesting example of slow-burn character development.

Rei starts out as cold, dismissive and condescending toward her classmates, and while she’s clearly intelligent, she’s also more than willing to let everyone try and solve the cases themselves while also insulting them at the same time. This continues on for some time, at least until Chapter 4.

It isn’t until she sees Haruhiko and Satsuki willingly sacrifice themselves, allowing the rest of the group to survive, that ultimately rattles her view on things and gets her to reconsider. She almost seemed baffled when Satsuki gave up any chance she had to escape.

Likewise, in what was a pretty hilarious moment, when everyone basically isolates Yuki when it seems like he might be the traitor, she calls them out on their sense of false righteousness when they talk about the power of friendship. It’s not often you see these sorts of characters touch on something like that : P

Really, Rei’s character development really seems to take place in the second half of the game, which is probably how she manages to avoid falling victim to MGP. SDRA2 hits us with what looks like Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome, only for it to be revealed she survived.

Of course, given that DRA already has Kizuna as a victim of the MGP, it was probably a given. Still sad that, by the end of SDRA2, she and Tsurugi are the only survivors of Class 79.

Emilia Carmine

We now come to what’s probably my favorite fangan thus far: Danganronpa Antebellum, which has its own resident Mean Girl, Emilia. Now, I’m gonna be frank with this: Chapter 3 of Antebellum isn’t finished yet, so I can’t really call this an example of MGP, and I hope I don’t have to.

What I will say is that Emilia does fulfill a lot of the Mean Girl tropes: she insults everyone, antagonizes them, and she’s easily the most foul-mouthed out of everyone. However, in contrast to the previous examples, she also has a genuinely sweet relationship with her best friend Mint, who she considers a brother. She teases him a lot, but it comes off more as teasing than actual bullying.

Even toward Shinku, she gradually goes from mocking him to opening up to him, to enjoying his presence. Emilia herself was raised in a very controlling, heavily restrictive manner by her father, who also kicked out her sister Elodie on account of her being trans. Emilia was very close with her, and would do anything to reunite with her. A motivation that nearly drives her to murder Shinku in Chapter 2, which, if it hadn’t been for Mint and the BDA, she very likely would’ve. Something she regrets immensely.

The sad part is, at the end of Chapter 2, her crime is revealed: burning down her father’s hospital, killing and injuring many people. A revelation that drives a wedge between her and Mint that never ends up resolved. While Emilia wants to make up with him, the group is split in half when the ceiling caves in and Emilia is killed in the game’s double murder, never even getting to see Mint again.

It’s too early to say, but this is feeling more like a genuine tragedy than a case of MGP, and I highly doubt she’s going to be forgotten by the end.

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And that finally brings me to the subject I brought up at the beginning: Arei Nageishi.

Now, I called Arei the most interesting of the Despair Time cast because she has a quality that makes her a bit different from the other Mean Girl characters: she legitimately values friendship.

That might sound bizarre, given that she still openly insults and antagonizes the group. While she does go out of her way to be cruel to Teruko and Xander in her introduction, it seems like she wants to be included in group activities.

And of course, she falls into a self-pitying session of fake crying to get sympathy, which Hu shuts down immediately. Now, one could easily just write this off as attention-seeking behavior, but it’s the small details that interest me.

They shut her down on that.

Xander is, of course, disbelieving that she could be that oblivious to the situation. However, I think her behavior has less to do with her being oblivious and more to do with her having a skewed perspective.

See, when MonoTV shows up to announce the new motive, he specifies that there might be some bad news about their friends and family. Arei’s reponse?

No jokes, genuine concern over the motive.

And another moment that caught my attention was in the wake of the trial and Min’s execution. It was fucked up and horrifying, and everyone is understandably freaking out, but the reactions differ. Most everyone is freaking out about their situation, wanting to leave and being afraid of dying. Others are genuinely sad for Min, and among them?

Yeah, after the girl she’d previously accused of excluding her gets executed, Arei is genuinely upset to see her go. This was also after she’d spent the trial railing against any potential murders, mostly Teruko. She doesn’t make jokes, she doesn’t say she deserved it, she doesn’t shrug it off like it’s nothing.

She’s genuinely sad to lose Min.

Another insightful bit comes from her FTE with J, where she thinks to herself how fun it is to mess with her, and how she finds her cute.

Yeah, Arei has a system for how she bullies people, ranging from just teasing to wanting to utterly destroy their lives if they’re mean to her. A lot of this stems from the fact that she was the Queen Bee of her school, and like Kizuna, she used her looks and status to get guys to do whatever she wanted.

But the most interesting part to me is when J starts ranting about her mother, and Arei has this to share.

We’ll come back to this, but suffice to say, Arei has a very odd idea of what friendship is. She’s under the impression J likes her because she didn’t leave the situation.

Something else worth bringing up are the characters quotes from the tumblr page, both the public one and hidden ones. For Arei, these are as follows:

Public: “If I tell you a secret, will you promise to keep it?”

Hidden: “Because that’s what friends do”

And then there’s a hidden one in relation to the mysterious Mai Akasaki, who seemed to have been a friend to the entire group:

“She doesn’t like when her friends fight.”

For someone who continuously insults and looks down on the group, Arei sure has a lot of quotes in reference to friendship and trust.

Which brings me to the first part of Chapter 2, where MonoTV distributed the group’s deepest, darkest secrets...to the wrong people. And Arei, who’d previously been complaining about the situation, immediately quiets down.

She’s not making jokes, she’s not making fun of whomever’s secret she got. No, she is horrified.

This might’ve been easy to overlook after everyone is confused about not getting their own secrets, but after Arturo reveals J’s true identity to the group, Arei once again drops the jokes and complaints. She makes some pretty good points about their situation.

To me, this feels like a pretty group-oriented approach, subtly hinting she saw something really concerning and thus it’s better that they all start sharing secrets before things escalate in the four days before everything is revealed.

And the comments about having a famous parent like J are compounded here. I’m starting to get the sense Arei might’ve been neglected by her parents. Bullying and attention-seeing behavior like hers often stems from a lack of self-esteem, difficult home lives, and even being subject to bullying themselves. While Arei certainly has a high opinion of herself, what she really seems to want is attention and companionship.

I feel this makes for an interesting potential arc for her, given Despair Time’s themes of trust and betrayal. If her focus is on making and earning trust, it makes for a nice contrast to Teruko, who’s said she won’t trust anyone again and doesn’t want to leave. Like it or not, though, they’re gonna have to work together if they want to survive.

Of course, as interested as I am to see Arei’s development, it’s also a cause for concern. With how many death flags have already been raised just in part 1, both for her and for others, all we can really do is wait and see.

The True Issues With The Mean Girl Problem

Let me just say upfront what this essay isn’t about. This isn’t about how Mean Girls characters should never be made villains, this isn’t suggesting that anyone who engages in the MGP is inherently sexist or misogynistic and this isn’t about how any of the games or fangans I’ve mentioned are bad. DR3 is bad, but for numerous reasons.

No, this essay is me wanting to touch on the existence of a double standard I’ve noticed and how I feel this limits the works in terms of creativity. This isn’t a call-out post of creators in particular, just the acknowledgment of a writing problem.

Broadly, the MGP can be summarized in four points:

Mean Girl characters have sympathetic qualities to them, but they're very understated or left unexplored in the main story. Their defining feature there is being cruel or antagonistic to others.

Despite that, their bullying is often brushed aside and is simply shrugged off as annoying by the other characters. It has no impact on the story, does not catalyze character development and rarely has anything to do with their actual deaths or the death of any other character.

When they do start to undergo any significant character development, especially before Chapter 3, they tend to die more often than not.

Following their deaths, they're rarely mentioned by the narrative again, highlighting their overall unimportance to the story as a whole.

As I’ve said, a lot of these Mean Girls are much deeper than their portrayals within the main stories tend to want to explore, yet they’re often subject to much harsher criticism both in these stories, from creators and from the fandom.

On the other hand, male characters who present these traits are often given the label of The Rival, and I have to be honest in saying that a lot of Rivals end up doing things that are much worse than simply being bullies. Despite that, they all get a chance to develop:

Byakuya: Has a very condescending, classist view on everyone, and is the one who takes the entire concept of a Killing Game completely seriously. Seriously enough that he tampers with Chihiro’s body in the name of making the game more interesting, exposing Genocider Syo’s presence and figuring out who’s his biggest threat. He doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself, at least until Chapter 4, when Makoto and Kyoko save him from getting everyone killed because he doesn’t even consider that someone might do something altruistically.

Fuyuhiko: Starts off SDR2 as a loud, antisocial asshole, one who wants nothing to do with the rest of the group (sans Peko) and who also contemplates what he has to do in order to win. He also makes threats, however baseless, like selling Mikan to a whorehouse or selling Hajime’s organs on the black market.

Kokichi: The biggest troll in all of V3 at best, and someone who self-identifies as an evil villain. A lot about his character is meant to be ambiguous, but within the confines of the story itself, Kokichi actively antagonizes and even endangers the group, from the Insect Meet-and-Greet to revealing Maki’s identity against her will, to tricking Gonta into killing Miu while believing their situation is a hopeless nightmare in order to save himself, etc.

Tsurugi: Essentially takes a page from Light Yagami in his utter dehumanization of criminals, viewing all those who dissent from his commands as potential criminals as well. His sense of justice is incredibly black and white, where killing for any circumstance whatsoever makes someone human garbage, and he’s happy to say as much. It gets to the point that he’s willing to force the group to commit mass suicide to prevent another murder.

None of this is a complaint about any of them as characters. I happen to enjoy seeing them and the roles they play in the story; Fuyuhiko gets the most development out of them all, Byakuya becomes more of a team player with his fellow survivors, Kokichi dies but is vindicated in that he helped bring an end to the Killing Game, and Tsurugi...well, that’s another matter entirely.

Tsurugi is a prime example of negative character development; not full-on villainization, but progressively becoming worse from his experiences rather than better. He doesn’t become a less violent and morally absolutist figure, but doubles down when he becomes leader of the Kisaragi Foundation, even willing to sacrifice Teruya and work with Syobai to stop Mikado.

The thing is, that’s still a form of development. It still falls in line with the concept of character progression, which the Mean Girls rarely seem to get. For them, their negative qualities aren’t brought on by the circumstances of the game, but are simply part of who they are. They’re rarely even worsened by the game itself, at least not in the same way Tsurugi is. They only seem to exist.

Now, I’ve seen some points raised about this, such as “Some people don’t change” or “They’re meant to serve as a warning about X”, and while I can understand those points, I have to ask why they don’t seem to be applied in the same way to Byakuya, Fuyuhiko or Kokichi, along with what sorts of object lessons rival characters are meant to serve as. Chapter 2 of DR1 has a solid and understandable lesson about the dangers of toxic masculinity, how succumbing to it in different ways ultimately culminated in the tragic deaths of Chihiro and Mondo.

It’s hard to have any sort of object lesson about Hiyoko, given that her death was unrelated to her bullying Mikan. It’s hard to say anything about Kizuna other than “she’s a bitch,” according to LINUJ. The closest you could get to with any sort of object lesson is probably Ruruka, but even then, it was so imbalanced and tried to show there being two sides that it doesn’t work.

Furthermore, if the goal is to show them as awful people, why is it that these characters are given so many sympathetic qualities that get people to like them, only to them cut them down in their prime and tell those audience members they were stupid for getting invested? Are they meant to be characters we hate and whose deaths we should find karmic, or are they meant to be tragic examples of someone not meeting their true potential? You can’t have it both ways, especially when those sympathetic qualities are barely touched on in the actual story.

I can genuinely see both sides of the argument; the ones that don’t like these characters because they’re bullies and the ones who want to see more because they clearly saw potential in them as characters. I completely understand why you might feel one way or the other, and I’m not saying you’re wrong.

If you want to make a character who serves as a foil to another, where both of them have similar flaws and negative qualities but one changes for the better while the other gets worse, you can absolutely do that. You can have characters who are genuinely bad people but who are still engaging. You can have mean girls, you can have rivals, you can have all kinds of wonderful creative characters like we do across this series and its fan entries.

My point with this is to show you why I feel that following the exact same character traits, and then writing them off as bad people simply because they’re bullies, feels not just uncreative, but borders on genuinely toxic and harmful. The idea that people can never change and that only bad people do bad things is not a healthy mindset to hold, especially when we might display these very traits without knowing it.

We can and should always work to be better, both as people and as writers. I love seeing people in stories and the real world learn from their experiences and grow better, hopefully with the benefit of hindsight. That can often come with needing to address the harm that’s done by actions and ideas we regret ever doing or holding, and if we look back and cringe at those moments, we do better for ourselves and others.

So what can we do here? Simple: let the Mean Girls get the same opportunities for development, growth, change and narrative impact as other characters do. As I said, it happens with Rival characters and it also happens with others through the games. Don’t restrict them or yourselves to the archetypical or formulaic writing you’ve experienced. If you don’t want to include a Mean Girl, you absolutely don’t have to.

For those that do, we also need to be willing to acknowledge and accept when mistakes are made by them, realistically approach the problem and see what can be done about it. Do they get better? Are they forgiven? What happens if they’re not? Or only some members of the group forgive them and others are hurt by those that do? Would they change by their own desire or would it be from someone calling them out on their behavior?

I know we love to say things like “X did nothing wrong” as a joke, but sometimes people will jump through mental gymnastics to justify liking a character, inventing stretched-out reasoning for why they’re not really at fault. I’ve never felt that way about any character I like; I fully acknowledge some of my favorite characters of all time have done some horrible things, and I still love them in spite of that.

If we could simply accept the idea that characters we love are and can be fucked-up people, we’d be a lot better off for it. Liking them doesn’t mean you fully support everything they do. Fictional people in fictional settings gives us a chance to explore things we may not be able to in the real world, either as a lesson, out of curiosity or for whatever reason we wish. And doing research for this essay, I can see Mean Girls have that appeal to them too, especially for those who relate to them.

I believe allowing Mean Girls to be more than just bullies is beneficial to both sides: people who want to see them move on from bullying because they don’t like bullies, and those who want to see them grow and have more prominence in the story. The multiverse of DR is rich with story potential for these characters that so rarely gets tapped to its full extent.

After all, in a series with a core theme about the importance of hope, wouldn’t it be best to show that some people do change for the better?

#danganronpa #mod talks #mod rambles #a student out of time #long post #dr1 #danganronpa thh #dr2 #danganronpa 2 #sdra2 #Super Daganronpa Another 2 #dra #danganronpa another #dr3 #danganronpa 3 #drdt #danganronpa despair time #v3 #danganronpa v3

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farshootingstar · 1 year

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Guess it didn’t take as long as I was thinking. I really wanted to draw Ashton. So yeah, another Picture Perfect Boyfriend playlist and cover image.

Here’s the Ashton playlist for my fellow simps out there! Like with the Ashino playlist, I tried to make it a bit of a mix of stuff he’d listen to and songs that otherwise fit his vibe, though this list is a bit more structured since this guy has more of a character arc and I have more to say about that.

Obviously, we have to start off strong with this list, so Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance was a no-brainer. Kind of a similar deal with the second song, I Will Possess Your Heart by Death Cab for Cutie (albeit the Radio Edit, since the album version is like 8 minutes long).

Spoiler cut below that pertains to both Picture Perfect Boyfriend and Picture Perfect Boyfriend REBOOT, even if I assume that Ashton’s nature is pretty generally known by this point in the fandom.

Coffee Bar by Yung Dark is next and probably doesn’t come off as super notable aside from being the most atmospheric song on the playlists so far. I just thought it would be fun to toss in to represent some chill coffee dates at Café Rose, since things will escalate quickly. Weird little aside, but I kind of like how audible the hand movements are on the guitar strings for the fret work, so I guess we can stretch that to Ashton pulling the strings on these dates? :p

Lightning round, sort of, Alien Boy and Feel Good Inc. are mostly for the sense of isolation, if that makes any sense. Smooth Criminal (covered by Alien Ant Farm) and Kill All Your Friends also come off as… pretty apt for what happens in the events of the first game.

I’ll admit that Reptilia could also really fit for Ashino, but they are more similar than they’d care to admit, so I put it on Ashton’s list since the genre’s more of a fit for him. Besides, we’re in his smug winner phase starting with that song! It definitely continues with Ava Adore and particularly The Glow (especially the line “making light of it, when you’re winning”, but also the general sentiment of the song that the anonymity afforded by the internet makes some people feel secure in their cruelty towards others).

I like to think that Dark Red is the smallest hint of faltering, since Ashton tried really hard to brush off the fact that he murdered his friends just to be assured closeness to the player. From there we head into Take Me Out for the iconic garden confrontation and Thnks fr th Mmrs for the fallout.

I consider the next handful of songs to generally be Ashton’s musings between the two games: regret over causing that whole shitshow, still loving the player, wanting to be better, etc. Bossa Nova Corps by Origami Angel is probably my favorite song selection for this playlist because it feels especially tuned into those sorts of sentiments and is about where we’re hitting sequel territory.

I think Nevermind can be used bluntly for the search for Ashton and You’re On being once he’s back in, after Ashino’s blocked off the Bureau and the kill switch isn’t working as intended.

While I try to kind of have an array of songs to give the vibes some wiggle room for how the player feels about characters, I’ll admit these last few are simp territory. Bad Habit is a pretty good “nerd wins love” sort of song, got Maybe Chocolate Chips for mutually assuring over looks and expectations, Honey for the obvious reason of the title and that the lyrics are about resolving to be better than before, and we finish on Death of a Bachelor. We can ask Ashton a particular question on one of the REBOOT dates that makes the last song feel right, if you chose to ask it.

But yeah! That’s the general thought process in this playlist. If I ever go back and add some more songs in, I really should add some more grunge. I totally forgot for a while that I had wanted to add in Black Hole Sun, so traded it with a kind of redundant choice I had in there before (for now, I’m trying to have the playlists reach the hour thirty mark and might expand on them at a later point, since I wanted to keep things fair).

#picture perfect boyfriend #picture perfect boyfriend reboot #ppb #ppbr #ashton #ashton fell #spotify #spotify playlist #character playlist #playlist #espoirduvide #farshootingstar art #my art #yandere #male yandere

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kenobisgalaxy · 2 years

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Don’t You Know (Obi-Wan Kenobi x Jedi!Reader)

fandom: STAR WARS

pairing: Obi-Wan Kenobi x Jedi!Reader

type: one shot

genre: smut

word count: 2,812

warnings: Straight up smut (with some plot), a little bit of angst (because I can’t help myself), AFAB!Reader (but no pronouns)

summary: Obi-Wan is acting strange lately. The Council doesn’t assign him on your mission with you although you usually are sent out as a team. You decide to confront the Jedi Master.

a/n: I don’t know how this happened and I’m a little bit embarrassed, but I finally managed to get around writing some heated stuff which usually really isn’t in my comfort zone. But I had to try. So this little piece of writing is purely based on the song Don’t You Know by Jaymes Young which is just an amazing hot mess. Naturally, this one shot is as heated as the song is and should hopefully send shivers down your spine. Have fun reading it, but be warned: I couldn’t help but drizzle some angst into it. As always there is quite a bit of set up so that you can settle into the setting. I like to give some basic info so that the reader can imagine the scenario better. AAH, I am so unsure about this and I really really hope it isn’t awful.

masterlist

Obi-Wan Kenobi was a flirt. He didn't do it intentionally, it was just something that was in his nature. His sarcastic and flirty way of conducting conversations was almost a staple of his character and even or rather especially his enemies weren’t left out by his straightforward way of phrasing things, except perhaps the more important Jedi in the temple, obviously including the council and for some kind of reason: you.

You had known Master Obi-Wan for a long time, you had trained together as Padawans and had been on many missions before. Especially, during the early stages of the Clone Wars you two had been an unbeatable team. Naturally, you admired the slightly older Jedi Master immensely as what he was: a capable Jedi, a distinguished light saber wielder and on top of all the best partner you could ask for on missions. Although Obi-Wan usually was quiet moody and cocky, always being able to think of a snarky remark, to you he never ceased to be his most polite self. Sometimes, in all that politeness you wondered whether he even liked you. His behaviour around you actually was quite odd, he was being too nice, always helping you up and trying to please you at every given point. He never even attempted a sarcastic remark towards you. Maybe, this was what had made you fall in love with him at first, but in times of doubt and especially when you were suffering from low self esteem again, you did wonder whether he actually liked you or whether he was just being superficially friendly in order to hide his inner contempt for you. Was he just being nice because he felt like it was his duty whilst actually being quite repulsed by you? You couldn’t be sure of it and the whole affair drove you around the bend. For a while now, you had tried to get rid of your intrusive thoughts and not think about Obi-Wan as more than a friend, but your love for him made you doubt your relationship to him even more. You felt like every step towards him was actually pushing him away from you and you observed that he was really just becoming more distant the more you yourself opened up to him and sought his attention. It wasn’t like your were showing your true feelings to him because you really didn’t, you rather just tried to spend quality time with him, but with each further attempt on your behalf he just closed himself off even more, until he became fully distant and even cold towards you.

It was another particular appointment for a Jedi Council meeting. You had been summoned to receive a new assignment and were now waiting in the ante-room when you were called. As you were entering the Council’s chamber and stepping in the middle of the round you looked around the room. Master Obi-Wan was sitting as always in his cushioned arm chair with his legs folded and arms placed on the armrests. Why did he have to look so bloody perfect all the time with his copper hair and smooth beard? That wasn’t fair. You shot a quick glance at him smiling, but he didn’t look at you. Instead he watched the ground intently as if it was some interesting new species that he had never seen before. Why wasn’t he noticing you? Usually, he always gave you at least a reassuring smile because he knew how you hated standing before all these Masters, but not this time. What had happened? What was wrong? Master Windu’s firm voice suddenly brought you back to reality and you quickly emptied your thoughts not wanting to showcase them to the Council.

“Master y/n, you will be sent on a mission to Malastare in order to check in on the fuel cargoes that have been ordered. Due to rather unfortunate diplomatic errors after the latest incidents on the planet, the Dugs are still quite suspicious of the Galactic Senate’s decisions. Please watch them carefully and ensure their loyalty.” Master Windu instructed you.

“I expect I will not be sent alone?” You asked hoping to be accompanied by your usual partner Obi-Wan.

“Actually, you will this time, we lay great trust in your expertise and besides this mission shouldn’t be of great difficulty.” Master Windu proceeded.

“I don’t want to be disrespectful, Master, but I’m not quite the diplomat myself and I usually get sent out on mission such as this together with Master Kenobi since he is the negotiator of the two of us, why not this time?” You asked trying to keep your voice as steady as possible.

“Because I will be on a mission on my own.” Obi-Wan answered drily.

“Oh okay, well then - I. Yes, so when will I be off planet?” You inquired trying to not sound too baffled.

“Tomorrow set off, you will.” Master Yoda announced.

“Well, thank you, Masters. If that is all, may I leave?”

“Sure, Master y/l/n, your Commander will wait for you with further instructions. May the force be with you.” Master Windu said.

“And with you.” You answered him turning around and leaving the Council’s chamber as quickly as possible.

What in the galaxy was wrong with him. He had been strange all week, but there was no sane rhyme or reason why he behaved so repulsive. He didn’t even look at you all the while you were standing there encircled by the Jedi Masters. Had you done something to annoy him? You couldn’t tell. Perhaps, he had noticed your affection towards him, but that couldn’t be it. You followed the code, you knew that any kind of close relationship was forbidden. Jedi weren’t supposed to have possessions such as a significant other. And it was quite clear to you that Obi-Wan valued the code even more than you. That was the reason why you hid your feelings in the first place. If you couldn’t be in a relationship with the man you loved, you could at least try to be friends with him and have him in your life as just that. But what Obi-Wan was doing was outrageous. There was no possibility that he had found out about your thoughts, so the only reasonable explanation for his behaviour was that he didn’t appreciate your companionship after all. And there they were again: the doubts that haunted you at night. It didn’t make sense, he didn’t make sense. He treated you like he treated nobody else, he was kind and sweat to you and now from one day to another he had apparently changed his mind about all that, about your partnership and about your friendship. Couldn’t he just at least be his cocky self in front of you?

All these thoughts rushed through your head as you were strolling to your quarters. As you were approaching the sliding door it struck you. Kriff. You would never know what was up with him if you didn’t talk to him. Why not just ask him? What was the worst thing he could say? You turned and left the corridor through the way you had come. Obi-Wan’s quarters were just two corridors away from yours. You knew he wouldn’t be there because the Council meeting certainly was still running so you decided to just wait for him as you had done multiple times before. You opened the sliding door and stepped into the familiar looking room. It was the same as yours, quite empty and barren. You said down and got out your holopad to do some research on your new mission whilst waiting for Obi-Wan.

One and two hours must have past when you heard the familiar steps approaching the door. Obi-Wan was busy looking at his own holopad when he entered the room. You quickly got up smoothing your robes with your hands.

“Master Obi-Wan. I’m sorry to intrude your privacy, but I have to speak to you.” You said firmly.

“Master y/n.” He looked quite startled, but quickly seemed to be able to collect himself. “If it is something about your mission, please ask Master Windu or your Commander, I have to prepare my own one.”

“I think neither Master Windu nor my Commander will be able to help me with this. See, it is something quite personal.” You continued.

“Well, ask me another time, I’m busy.” He muttered ushering away from you.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi!” You urged, now angry. “What is possibly wrong with you?”

“Why? I- I don’t know what you mean. I’m perfectly fine.” He stuttered. You were agitated. What was he thinking of?

“No, you’re not! Has a Kwazel Maw eaten your brain? Why do you treat me like I am nothing but thin air to you? And why in the damned galaxy aren’t we assigned on the same mission as always? Tell me why you are acting so strangely.” You asked him with every word urging the Jedi Master backwards whilst poking your finger in his chest.

“I thought it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while. I don’t think this is working.” Now it was you the one who was startled by his words. You were slowly processing his words not wanting to believe them.

“What isn’t working, Obi-Wan? We are the best team. We’re always successful and we always have a great time on our missions.”

“That’s exactly the point. We are not supposed to have a great time together. This is war. It is supposed to be nerve wracking and tedious.” He explained turning away from you.

“So this is what you want? To be miserable all the time and drown in the mental casualties of the war?”

“Precisely.” He muttered. You didn’t believe him. That was so unlike the Obi-Wan that you knew who always tried to master the situation he found himself in, no matter how difficult it was. He always came up with something witty to make the war less depressing.

“Obi-Wan.” You urged gripping his wrist firmly and turning him around. “We know both that you don’t mean that. Tell me what it really is.”

“I can’t - I. This is not what I- It will destroy us.”

“Why? What are you saying. You’re not making any sense.”

“I can’t. I- uh, blast. Screw it. Y/n, it is because of you.”

“Because of me? I don’t understand, what did I do wrong?” Now you were utterly confused, the Jedi Master in front of you had completely gone nuts, you were sure.

“Nothing, that is my point. It is just your simple existence.”

“My existence?” You shrieked. That certainly wasn’t the answer you had expected, but it was the answer you had feared. “So you do dislike me after all. I assume I should better go.”

“What? No! That wasn’t what I mean. I don’t want you to go. I need more of you in my life. Don’t you realize what you do to me? Don’t you know that I- don’t you know I want you so bad?” His raspy voice rang in your ears. You just now realized how close you were to him still gripping his wrist. His azure eyes watched you intently and you noticed a slight tingle in them. He was so close. “Every night I call for you. Don’t you know that I’m going mad? I’d do anything to love you. And I know I shouldn’t, I know that I can’t love you, it is forbidden, the code-”

“Screw the code! Nobody should be alone.” You whispered closing the gap between you two and settling your lips on his. You felt him becoming tense, but then quickly he relaxed and leaned into your kiss wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you close. His soft beard was scratching your smooth skin, you loved the feeling of it, it was intoxicating. You were running your hand up into his hair tugging at his lose strands. It felt perfect, like it had always belonged there. You gasped into the kiss opening you mouth slightly and making way for his tongue. “Obi-Wan!” You moaned. “Y/n, I’d do anything to touch you!” he exclaimed letting go of you only to come back peppering kisses down your neck. “I know you were meant for me!” He mumbled against you heated skin. You felt your core already becoming wet at the sound of his words. Was this really happening? Wasn’t it one of your endless dreams? But he was there kissing you. You had never seen him like this. The always so patient and conceived Jedi Master had turned into a ravenous mess, flirty remarks had turned into heated praising and his usually smirking lips were now peppering your skin with pure need working their way to your collarbones. His strong arms were drawing you impossibly closer and one hand grabbed you by your thigh pulling it up. You felt his length stretching his pants and pressing against your sensitive area. “Please, Obi-Wan, I need you now!”

“You don’t how long I’ve waited for this.” He uttered, pushing you back towards his bed, carefully lifting you up and placing you down making sure you weren’t hurt. With one hand he pinned both your arms down over your head while he hovered above you and devoured your sight. “You look beautiful, darling! I would fight in a war for you.”

“You know you’re actually already doing that.” You chuckled.

“Not the point.” He said silencing you with another heated kiss. You arched your back pressing your hips to his. He was already so hard for you. Your were becoming impatient. He was fumbling with your belt finally being able to untie it. Tugging at your robes he managed to free your chest. His hands were coming back to your waist, lips trailing down finding your breast, tongue playing with your nipple tugging at it lightly. “Obi-Wan, please!” You moaned again. He shot up leaving your exposed chest and fumbled with his own robes quickly getting rid of his top and tossing it far away into the dim room. “Oh darling, I know all the ways to appreciate your design.” He muttered darting back to you and trailing further down to your core whilst pushing your pants out of the way. “Oh, don’t make me beg you please.” he said and then kissed you right down there, tongue playing with your clit and two fingers stroking your entrance, then plunging in deep. You saw stars and were moaning in a hot mess. “Yes, Obi-Wan, right there.” He was hitting all the sweet spots you didn’t even know existed. One hand of yours was finding its way to Obi-Wan’s hair gripping it and holding his head right there, the other one was getting hold of the bed sheets tugging at them violently when he let go of you. “Don’t tease me like this, I need to feel you, Obi-Wan, now please!” You begged.

He got back up and freed himself from this pants that had up until this moment held a big bulge in place. His cock stood tall and erect glistening with pre-cum. You wondered how he would feel inside you filling you up, satisfying you, grinding you, but you didn’t have to think about it for too long since he was already back on top of you spoiling you with kisses and placing his length on your entrance. “Do you really want this, y/n?” He asked you. “Yes, Obi-Wan, I need this. I can’t live without you.” One word of you was enough and you could feel him entering and filling you up completely. “You are so tight.” He pressed out melting into you like your bodies were made for each other. He stayed were he was adjusting his length to you, but then he started thrusting into you, first slowly and then with increasing pace. “Harder, please Obi-Wan.” He did as you instructed all the while leaving kisses on your sensitive area on your neck. “Make me cum, darling.” He breathed into your ear, both of you had turned into a hot mess, bodies clinging to each other as if this was the last time they would be together. He reached his hand down and found your clit again stroking circles around it. You could feel your legs getting shaky by the touch of him, the orgasm was slowly building in your stomach rolling like a great wave over the shore. “I can’t do this any longer!” You gasped. “Me neither.” He stuttered moving quicker. The orgasm was making your toes curl and hitting you with such a force that you couldn’t see anything but stars. He came right after you filling you with his sweat sperm and crushing down on you breathing heavily. “I love you so much, y/n.” He mused into your ear, kissing you as he was pulling out and letting himself fall down onto the bed beside you. “I love you too, Obi.” You smiled and wriggled closer to him settling in his arm, your breath starting to become at ease.

#Obi-Wan Kenobi #obi wan kenobi #obi-wan #obi wan #general kenobi #obi-wan X reader #obi-wan imagine #obi-wan x you #obi wan series #obi wan fanfiction #star wars #star wars the clone wars #star wars prequels #star wars attack of the clones #Star Wars Revenge of the Sith #star wars a phantom menace #jedi #jedi master #master kenobi

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nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 1 year

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i just had a dream about the super mario bros movie

It was surprisingly good -- in fact, it's probably my favorite Mario movie. It starts out as an adaptation of the original game with all the old characters and everything (except Bowser is played by Jack Black), but then after they escape from the castle there are some weird cuts that imply the real story has started happening already. The cuts don't necessarily make sense narratively, because what we're seeing seems to be taking place before anything else; I guess this is part of why it reminded me of Inception.

The plot involves Mushroom Kingdom being invaded by bullet ants, who have been trained to do their work by flying bullets. These Bullet Ants are actually dark magic users who were originally going to invade Flying Island instead, but it turned into Mushroom Kingdom when something went wrong. So now there are these guys whose whole thing is flying around shooting stuff at people, except it works on mushrooms too? What happened here? And how did the bullet ant magicians get the idea for this if they were really planning to go somewhere else? Who knows! Anyway . . .

Mario gets mind-controlled by one of them so he flies off like a regular bullet, which makes him look kind of threatening until he lands back down whereupon everyone thinks "oh yeah this guy will totally save us" even though this particular Mario does not seem to know much of anything besides making fireballs at enemies 10 feet away. But anyway it's fine because eventually things start working out and also you realize that the way the bullet ants fly isn't exactly normal, since they can hover and rotate while moving forward, sort of like helicopters. They've apparently gone through the trouble of designing special helmets with these abilities and training many other little creatures called "helmet fairies" to help out. This might sound dumb or ridiculous but somehow it didn't come across as such in context. Maybe because it made perfect sense once you realized how well everything fit together. Also, they used lots of low-quality CGI, so it seemed less lifelike than the classic Bullet Ant designs would suggest, which helped reinforce this feeling. Somehow this worked in favor of the absurdity rather than against it.

The film ends with a fight between Mario and Bowser, who is more powerful than ever thanks to having learned to control the power of gravity. He still uses his hammer and chain whip as weapons, but now those also affect the ground beneath him, including sending giant chunks upward to crush anyone below him. The rest of the final battle takes place inside a cave with no light source visible above, and our heroes keep getting hit with big rocks and knocked backwards, etc., until finally they find some lightning bolts and use those to defeat Bowser and thus set themselves free. Now they go home happy knowing they saved their kingdom. At least, unless you count Super Luigi as a main character, in which case they never left home to begin with, so why should they celebrate? All very mysterious. Either way, the world feels better. You feel glad for everyone involved. Even Mario himself looks satisfied.

#dream

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whatisbraincells · 1 year

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A very unhinged Quantumania review(SPOILERS)

WHERE TO START

RYAN BERGARA?!?!

BILL MURRY?!?!

DAVID DASTMALCHIAN?!?!?

WILLIAM JACKSON HARPER!?!???

LOKI AND MOBIOUS?!?!?

Anyway-

Something I noticed is most of the quantum realm has a warm color scheme(reds, oranges, yellows and browns) including the landscapes and clothing and Kang and his army have cool colors(blues, greens and purples) like they’re armor and abilities which is some cool use of color to signify that Kang is a colonizer conqueror

I adore Kang’s costume design

The mask making his face blue like the comics and the realistic yet futuristic textures

Cassie>>>>>>

She’s such a realistic child of superhero.

She just wants to join in

She’s a sweetie

She also reacts very queerly to Jentorra

I adore Scott and Hope’s relationship! It’s also very grounded and realistic. They’re in love and they live together and Hope is basically Cassie’s step mom and it’s not a big deal.

CASSIE CALLS HANK AND JANET HER GRANDPARENTS

They’re a family goddamnit

Scott went to dinner with Jimmy!

Scott Lang is the best mcu dad I will not take any criticism

I like Janet’s arc, it’s so interesting to learn more about her life and her regrets

Most of the fights would’ve gone by quicker if Scott and Cassie had stingers

I know it’s not like something ants have but like they have no long range attacks

In the scene where all the Scotts make a mountain is similar to how some species of ants work

HANK PYM AUTISTIC ICON

His special interest is ANTS

The line “she wasn’t you, baby” fucking hurt

THE PARALLELS BETWEEN JANET AND HOPE AND SCOTT AND CASSIE.

Scott and Cassie are very physically affectionate and I love that

The ending felt a little clunky but I’m glad Scott didn’t die bc Paul Rudd is a sweetie

I think we could’ve spent less time on action and more on quantum realm world building but it’s a marvel movie and I’m a clown

The quantum realm world design and species designs is so fucking cool. It’s so interesting to look at

“Is that building alive?” “Your’s are dead?!?”

“STOP ASKING ABOUT HIS HOLES SOME OF US HAVE HOLES.” William your line delivery always gets me

The living buildings do kinda look likes dicks tho

“It’s not to late to not be a dick” “Look at me I’m such a dick”

MODOK being Darren took me so off guard but I loved it.

Jonathan Majors’ acting is brilliant

He made me feel kinda bad for him, or at least understand him

Michelle Pfeiffer’s line delivery felt a bit stale, but the emotions were there. She did a great job at playing someone who wasn’t able to genuinely trust others or show her feelings for 30 years.

Evangeline Lily is a darling and I adore that Hope’s character isn’t performative in her badassery

Kathryn Newton is a badass and a sweetheart as always

Michael Douglas is awesome at the old scientist who just really likes ants and his family

And Paul Rudd is amazingly loveable and soft as Scott, of course. His main motivation has always been Cassie and Paul Rudd sells the fuck outta that.

All the side actors a great(William Jackson Harper in particular but that is biased bc I’m a Chidi stan)

This is a movie about family, as many of the phase 4 projects have been. It’s about protecting your family and what you will do for those you love.

(i mean it’s no tlou but yk)

I found the pacing a bit off

But I loved the ending(anxiety icon Scott)

victorianwowkivictorianwowki victorianwowkivictorianwowki victorianwowkivictorianwowki

I’d give it an 8/10 definitely a fun watch

#vyas stupid hyper specific rants #vyas not qualified to review shit #ant man #ant man and the wasp spoilers #quantummania #ant man and the wasp quantumania #scott lang #hope van dyne #cassie lang #janet van dyne #hank pym #mcu #marvel

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gone-series-orchid · 1 year

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You're take on Diana is so right. I also think Caine wasn't pathetic enough for redemption either.

i’m glad i’m not alone 😭 i appreciate the compliment, thank you! and yes same. caine’s redemption is even flimsier than diana’s, but both of theirs are pretty shoddily written, imo

which is weird because i generally like how mg develops his characters—at least the initial trajectory of their arcs? sam’s development is generally really affecting—same with duck (excellent version of an arc that begins and ends in the same book!) and quinn’s (another great example) and mary’s.

mary’s development in particular is great bc it spans multiple books but still remains consistent. from book one we’re introduced to her external conflict (caring for the little kids) and her internal conflict (managing her e.d.), and those conflicts are present for all of her arc. they’re the driving force of her development. but bc of mg’s skill at upping the ante wrt the overall environmental conflicts of the fayz, those conflicts never grow stale.

the adults are gone? mary takes on the task of caring for the littles; also, she has bulimia she’s been managing relatively successfully.

food’s run out? mary exacerbates her e.d. by giving her allotment of food to the littles.

and of course, in lies, these decisions bear consequences. now mary’s mental health and her e.d. are severely affecting her abilities to deal with the titular lies of orsay and nerezza and thus her ability to care for her kids, which then leads to her terrible fate.

she has a steady arc of going “from bad to worse.” circumstances vary depending on what book she’s in, but that trajectory is constant.

but diana’s arc isn’t so straightforward. i actually don’t know if she’s set up for an arc at all in the first book, in terms of mg clearly signaling what her development will consist of—she’s characterized as a wild card (see the scene with her telling her backstory to computer jack for evidence). no one really knows what she’s about because she has no real allegiance to anyone—she’s disgusted by at least some of caine’s violence and rejects him romantically, but she also rejects sam’s attempt to get her to come over to the townies’ side. she has certain limits, like refusing to call lp the r-slur and actively trying to tell sam how to beat the poof before she’s thwarted by caine, but also has no issue going along with the unethical and traumatic experiment on andrew before he poofs, coolly threatens sam and his friends with death via drake, and goes along with caine regardless of how evil he is without seemingly any motivation other than that’s her role in the plot.

so her start is sort of foggy in terms of finding out where she’s going to go from there. we don’t find out what diana wants or what she values; she’s a mystery. and i think that can definitely work, but i don’t think mg sussed out a coherent motivation for her until the second book. I think that’s why her characterization in the first two books kind of contrast weirdly against each other, imo.

anyway, i’ll stop rambling. 😂 thank you so much for the ask, anon! feel free to send more!

#gone series #michael grant #the gone series #caine soren #diana ladris

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exuberantocean · 1 year

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I posted 8,845 times in 2022

506 posts created (6%)

8,339 posts reblogged (94%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@fabulousvelociraptor

@managerie76

@hacash

@1989nihil

@nerdswithanxietysaywhat

I tagged 1,902 of my posts in 2022

#ted lasso - 450 posts

#mash - 161 posts

#cats - 150 posts

#jason sudeikis - 106 posts

#star trek - 97 posts

#ofmd - 81 posts

#sga - 78 posts

#my writing - 53 posts

#fanfic - 52 posts

#theodore lasso - 42 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#he should be smushed between beard and rebecca on a couch with a cup of hot chocolate (with marshmellows) watching well loved romcoms

My Top Posts in 2022:

Ted Lasso is so relatable because he’s literally like “I can’t handle my own issues, so I’ll avoid them by handling everyone else’s.”

Never before have I felt so called out yet so seen.

122 notes - Posted October 12, 2022

Ted Lasso very pointedly does not do redemption arcs.

A redemption arc features a character’s atonement for their mistakes and misdeeds.

Rebecca very clearly does some horrible stuff in the larger part of S1. You love her, I love her, but it’s undeniably true. She tries to ruin AFC Richmond and the lives of everyone who works there (probably what, 50-75 people would at AFC Richmond?) with the hopes of causing her ex-husband “as much pain and suffering” as she felt from his abuse and cheating. That’s 50-75 people who could lose their jobs, which which would ripple on to affect their families. That could end the careers of many if not most of the players. That’s not even counting the disappointment of the fans losing the team that she just run into the ground.

And she focuses on doing this through Ted, a man she barely knows. If those pictures she had taken made the papers, it could have destroyed his marriage (she didn’t know it was failing at this point but even if she did, that doesn’t mean it was any less bad). It would have hurt Keeley and Jamie too. Her attempt at getting a hit piece written on him was also cruel. Maybe pulling Jamie as a step below in scale (it was less of a personal attack at least) but it still hurts Jamie a great deal (more so than Ted actually).

If the show was about Redemption, Rebecca is not redeemed. She has done no acts of atonement. No public confessions, no acts to make up for the damage she did or attempted.

What we do see instead is a show with, what I feel is, a more realistic and better arc. Accountability arc we can call it. You realize you fuck up. You apologize for the fuck up to those most affected, and you move on. You try to do better. This is what we see Rebecca do. She apologizes to Ted and Higgins (I still feel Jamie should be apologized/told why he was traded back). She moves on trying to be a better person than she was.

And that’s really the best you can do in life sometimes. There isn’t always a way to redeem ourselves of our past sins in most cases. We can’t always make up for the way we hurt others. But we can hold ourselves accountable and then work to move through the world in a kinder, carefuller way.

This is why I think we won’t see Nathan redeemed, but we will see him learn to hold himself accountable and do better.

130 notes - Posted February 3, 2022

Elizabeth:. We have an emergency situation.

John: *Strapping a nuke on his body* On it already.

167 notes - Posted November 8, 2022

Okay imagine you’re just hanging out, being the top life form in your environment with the rest of your species, when it comes to your attention that a particular species of ant not only evolving at a remarkable rate, but also spreading everywhere. I mean all over the freakin’ place. And you can tell, at some point in the still distant future, it will evolve to a point that it’ll be a potential threat or rival to your own species.

So your like “Hm...we should check this out.” So you get a guy. This guy, he’s a bit of a dick but maybe this will keep him out of your freaking hair for a bit - so you have this guy set up some sort of test, like a trial, to help learn a few things about how you should proceed with this species going forward. Like, should you wipe them out now before they get too powerful? Should you confine them a localized environment and stifle their progress? Should you just let them continue to spread and evolve? You got to figure this out, right? And if nothing else, you’d get this asshole out of your hair for a minute which is good because he’s always making a fucking mess of things.

So you send this guy out and he comes back and it turns out one of the ants seduced him by accident.

This is what qcard is like to the Q.

178 notes - Posted August 9, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

"Well, I play a jerk, so it's really easy to approach that yet again. It's not difficult," de Lancie recently said of reprising Q. "It was nice to do. It was not difficult to bring it up again. We all play pretty close to who we are… at least I am. The material had a lot of the same vibes about it… The intentions are still the same. I'm still Picard's main squeeze. And I'm pushing." X

Update: Jean-Luc’s asshole boyfriend’s back in town.

214 notes - Posted January 19, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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themculibrary · 10 months

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Hope van Dynes & Tony Stark Masterlist

5 Candid Photos of Tony Stark and the 1 Candid Photo of Iron Man (ao3) - dls

Summary: Iron Man, optional. Tony Stark, preferred.

Ant-Man (ao3) - WaywardKeener scott/hope T, 8k

Summary: Scott just wants to see his daughter. Hope wants the tech out of Darren's hands. Hank is with his daughter but disagrees on who they should trust about this mission to stop Darren.

Better Than Before (Yesterday’s Gone) (ao3) - Meatball42 tony/hope G, 2k

Summary: Hope knows she has what it takes to be an Avenger. It’s getting along with her prospective teammates that worries her- and one of them in particular.

bound by a promise to the moon (ao3) - graveltotempo tony/stephen G, 80k

Summary: In 1990, Carol Danvers, James Rhodes, Stephen Strange, Tony Stark and Hope Van Dyne get drunk and make a blood oath.

daddy, watch your little black sheep run (ao3) - paperclipbitch tony/hope T, 10k

Summary: “Just so we’re clear,” Hope says, breathless, hands tangled in Tony’s hair and eyes bright, “we’re only doing this to piss off my dad, okay?”

“Hang on,” Tony replies, fumbling with the back of her bra, “I thought we were doing this to piss off my dad.”

Field Trip 2.0 (ao3) - Angeeelatin pepper/tony G, 3k

Summary: Because the Academic Decathlon team won nationals this year, they were awarded with field trips. Yes, field trips. Plural. Because they had already visited Stark Industries, their destinations this time were a bit more diverse in location. They were going to the White House, and Pym Technologies.

For some reason, Peter has higher clearance than he should have.

Or: I introduce another character into the Peter Parker & SI- verse, Hope Van Dyne

hey, babe? I think I wanna marry you (ao3) - graveltotempo tony/hope G, 6k

Summary: five times tony stark proposed to hope van dyne, and one time she proposed to him (spoiler alert: he said yes).

Hope Burns Bright Despite All Darkness (ao3) - starbuck92 hank/janet, pepper/tony, scott/hope T, 13k

Summary: “There’s no manual on how to raise kids when you do what we do.”

Parenting isn’t easy, even for genuine superheroes. It turns out that growing up with only one of those parents isn’t a walk in the park either.

la petite souer (ao3) - starbuck92 T, 8k

Summary: Christmas wasn’t his favorite time of the year. Unlike other kids, Tony didn’t have the best memories of the holiday season, and even into his adulthood, it hadn’t gotten much better after the death of his parents. He ignored as much as he could, shutting himself in his garage or in the lab to tinker with anything that would occupy his brain for hours at a time, usually ending the nights either drunk off his ass or in bed with someone - or both, more often than not.

Christmas through Hope’s eyes, however, was magical.

Little Boxes (ao3) - TenSpencerRiedPlease tony/t’challa, steve/tony (not endgame) N/R, 33k

Summary: When Tony had been in his twenties he’d been all fast cars, snarky remarks, and promiscuous enough that he offended people with it. Now people talked about how Steve tamed him like he had been a wild animal or some shit. And Steve didn’t tame him at all, he fucking gutted him.

T'Challa doesn’t need another PhD but its better than dealing with political responsibilities at home and he came to America under the guise of doing his best to understand various world cultures. His stint to America is to waste time and avoid his political duties as a prince but his father approved anyways. Probably because he sensed that if he didn’t T’Challa would do what he wants anyways.

Midnight Lab Break-Ins (ao3) - purplecatsweater pepper/tony, background hope/scott G, 5k

Summary: Tony, suddenly a little shy, ducks slightly behind his father.

Rage Makes Fire Hotter (ao3) - Tempest_Raining scott/hope G, 4k

Summary: Hope van Dyne was not happy with the Rogue Avengers for what they did to themselves, the world, and Tony Stark. In fact, she was pretty pissed. Perhaps it was time she let them know it.

Or: The One Where Hope van Dyne Scares The Rogue Avengers For Various Reasons.

Stronger than Blood (ao3) - marvelfoodlover rhodey/tony, pepper/hope G, 6k

Summary: Many believed that a Pym and a Stark can never be in same room without disagreeing. Everyone knew about the hostility Hank Pym had for Howard Stark, and it wasn’t a secret that the the feeling is mutual.

Everybody knew it. So what comes next is quite the surprise.

That Bridge was Burnt (ao3) - Lp37451 (BirdieBats) tony/stephen, carol/rhodey, scott/hope G, 27k

Summary: The Rogues are back, Tony doesn't care for them anymore but Stephen Strange and Tony Stark have a surprising amount in common.

the legacies are (not) alright (ao3) - MarvelousAvengfulSlytherin G, 2k

Summary: Hope changed, Sharon fought and Tony reinvented. How they became an unlikely family and decided to change things. Life isn't fair after all so why should any of them be?

#themculibrary #mcu #marvel #hope van dyne #tony stark #friendship #friendship masterlist #masterlists

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secretgamergirl · 1 year

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Can we talk about this sniveling little worm for a moment?

So I’m still locked out of my twitter account (and consequently bleeding followers on Patreon and probably going to freeze or starve to death soon) but people keep posting fresh examples of the new CEO finding new and innovative ways to run the whole thing into the ground, and while I’d love to check the actual ratio, of what I see, something like 80% of the statements people are pointing and laughing at come not just from standard out there posts, but stuff he’s saying in the replies of this particular little worm here. Which is odd for a number of reasons, but the thing is I have a pretty involved history with this particular random nazi loser that makes it feel extra surreal.

Once upon a time, starting around the summer of 2014, there was a big ol’ nazi uprising on the internet. Which came weirdly close to coinciding with when I started this blog, especially after I nuked some of the earliest posts for safety reasons, and as I certainly hope everyone knows I got pretty heavily involved in countering nazi BS, both independently and networking with other people fighting that particular good fight.

Somewhere in there, I wound up as part of a sort of combination support group/think tank/resource center for major victims of nazi crap, and that’s where I first encountered this particular little worm... and if it wasn’t clear I’m going to continue to refer to him as such for purposes of not coming up if he goes vanity searching. Among other things he has a history of stalking me which I’d like to keep as just history, you know? Anyway, the hell of a thing with it is he DIDN’T first come to my attention as a gross little nazi, but as an anti-fascist activist beyond reproach.

So that angle makes this tricky to talk about because it makes someone else look real real bad and I don’t want to go starting THAT fight, but there was an individual who was a major early target people were aware of and had a lot of faith in, and who frankly was an absolutely terrible judge of character and particularly vulnerable to flattery. So this little worm wrote some messages to that major target, who proceeded to present him to everyone else working to do anything about the whole mess as “one of the few good reporters out there on this” and later because of course this came up, talked him up as a “former nazi” when in reality there was nothing former about it, and he was just using this person’s susceptibility to boot-licking as a way to undermine anti-nazi things and/or make himself feel important by proximity to people who were in headlines.

Anyway, I’d never say anything this cruel about someone who isn’t a literal, wrote a high school essay about how much he loves Hitler nazi, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was as generally worthless and oblivious as this little worm. Like, in the brief period where I interacted with him, I remember him coming to me for advice because he’d boot-licked his way to editor at a very minor game review website (I’ve held such a position) and a woman was complaining about being harassed by a coworker. Totally taken off guard by the only sensible advice anyone could give there, fire the creep. He instead wanted some magical trick to make this woman just somehow be OK with it. Shortly thereafter, there was basically no staff left, he’s trying to hire someone new to write for the site, and is deeply confused that nobody’s interested in committing to writing... I want to say it was 8 thousand-word articles per day, 7 days a week, for a grand total of 80 dollars a month. He was also thoroughly thoroughly convinced that all political unrest in the country would just stop completely the day a video game he was looking forward to was released.

I’d speculate on how he managed basic tasks to get through the day like meals and hygiene, but he’s highly infamous for ranting about his bed, keyboard, and various other things being covered at all times in ants and being at a complete loss as to what to do about it besides just crush them by sleeping/typing right on them. So, there’s that. Look him up and you’ll find plenty of other stories of just how jaw-droppingly bad at just existing and having thoughts this guy is.

This guy who the rich idiot running Twitter into the ground is discussing every single move he makes with. It’s just weird, right? He’s still this generally clueless, still an outright self-applies the term even nazi, still in deep last I checked with outright child sexual exploitation sites, and here he is playing evil vizier. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say he’s playing Brainy Smurf. So far as I can tell he’s just repeating all his bad ideas back to him and trying to rephrase them into something sensible enough to get a “yes, exactly!” back. I’d say bootlicking is the one thing this guy is good at but... no. People who are actually good at that sort of thing get something out of it, materially. This weird little clown just stays in the spotlight with no real benefit.

But the important thing is that yeah, the current head of what’s left of Twitter is actively palling around with a notorious neo--nazi and is enthusiastic about all his feedback. Heck of a thing to see.

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random-filipino-lurker · 2 years

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The role of Imps from Helluva Boss in Hell

Just sharing some random thoughts on this particular topic. Basically, what I know and understand of some things related to the topic at hand. I’m pretty sure there are many who are familiar with much of what is discussed here and it needs not being said. However, I’ll just share my thoughts nonetheless at the very least to make more aware what I believe are very obvious concepts.

In the Hell of Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel, Imps are one of the lowest classes of Hell alongside Hellhounds. In a number of livestreams and such, they are said to be specifically the “blue collar workers” of Hell’s society. Although this isn’t directly spoken to the audience, this is very much shown in a number of episodes to being the case for them and it’s pretty much guaranteed that those familiar with the concept on some level would instantly recognize what’s going on.

For those who may not be familiar with the concept, blue collar workers are basically those who work the tedious, mundane, manual, and in many cases dirty jobs. They are the baristas, the sewer workers, the fire fighters, the farmers, the fast food restaurant workers, the butlers, and other such personnel that most people usually don’t think too much about, especially those who are young kids with big dreams of growing up to being somebody important who changes the world.

When it comes to blue collar workers, what they do often goes unnoticed despite being essentially the unsung heroes of their communities since they do the essential ground work from the bottom that supports the rest of society that most other people don’t want to do. They are basically worker ants and in a much more darker view, the modern day equivalent of slaves without being slaves on a technicality.

That being said, blue collar workers are not universally the poorest of the poor in any given society. Some are more richer than others but not rich enough to be considered super rich. Likewise, some are more poorer than others but not poor enough to be super poor. There are also some who are much more nearer the middle. Then there are some who are really extremely rich and some who are really extremely poor however those are the outliers and not the norm.

In essence, blue collar workers are understood to be in general average joes and belonging in general to the middle class.

Thus is this is what the Imps in Helluva Boss are albeit with a more Hellish twist. What this ultimately means is that Imps in general don’t live really exotic lives nor have absolutely shitty existences like some other works of fantasy take it to the extreme and that may not be everyone’s cup of tea but it fits in the type of fantasy the world of Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss is clearly going for which was established from the very start.

With that said, here is a list of instances that convey the idea that Imps are meant to be blue collar workers besides I.M.P:

The Imp fire fighters shown in the episode Murder Family

That one recurring Imp butler whose job seems to be to hold the old timey rotary phones that Stolas and Stella use

The carnies who work in Loo Loo Land

The more mundane jobs taken by Wally Wackford the recurring obvious joke character who has a different job in practically every appearance who can be compared to other similar characters like the cameo characters modeled after Matt Mercer in The Legend of Vox Machina

The multiple Imp farmer characters introduced in The Harvest Moon Festival. Special mention to that one scene where Millie’s brothers load up jack o'lanterns unto their Pa’s truck.

The various Imps who work at Ozzie’s such as Lithe the stagehand

The multiple Imp servants of Stolas first seen in the episode The Circus

The Imp movers seen in the episode Seeing Stars

Now as a closer, I guess I should say did any of what I shared points to conveying what the apparent role of Imps within Hell as seemingly intended by Viv is supposed to be? Or to be more specific, does this convey what job in general are the Imps supposed to serve in Hell’s society? Then the answer I would say is yes. They are ultimately doing the core idea of what a blue collar worker is supposed to do, menial manual labor.

Does this show them as a lower class that’s supposed to be oppressed? To that I would answer “Umm, that’s not the question being asked”. The question was what do the Imps do, not whether or not they are being properly portrayed as being as oppressed. Or in other words, what's the Imps' job in general in Hell, not are the Imps being depicted as an oppressed slave race.

Granted, they are some instances in some of the examples I cited and elsewhere however from what I guess I can see is that while those two may be linked in some capacity especially given the type of story, that might be over-complicating a question and not focusing directly on what is exactly being asked.

I get that some don’t really want/like the Imps to be just be mundane blue collar workers as they much prefer something more fantastical and etc. but that’s more of a subjective preference rather than an objective criticism. Plus in real life, there’s more than one way for one to be considered lower class via me explaining the concept of blue collar workers, and there’s definitely more than one culture’s concept of a lower class. This as well extends into other works of fiction.

What’s more, I feel like demanding nonstop for a certain fictional race of characters to be depicted as a slave race in a certain way one believes they should be than what they are originally depicted as by the original creator might make things accidentally really uncomfortable if not handled properly regardless of whatever supposed good intentions.

#Helluva Boss #hazbin hotel #random thoughts #random musing #Imps #Helluva Boss Imps

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gorteaus · 1 year

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Menthuthuyoupi's Character Arc: an Overview

There isn’t a ton of discussion about Youpi’s thematic relevance to the Chimera Ant Arc (which is understandable. I do believe his character is pretty hard to parse), so this write-up has essentially been a long time coming.

Bear with me here, because there’s plenty beneath the cut.

The In-Between

In terms of thematic development of the guard, Youpi appears to be a middle way of all sorts between all three.

As has been pointed out by others before me (and with far more eloquence), Pitou is introduced to the audience as a character who lacks the ability to empathize with others.

By the end of his arc, he becomes largely characterized by his ability to sympathize with humanity.

Whereas Pouf is defined by his lack of it. His resentment only continues to increase, if anything, as the arc progresses.

Youpi’s growth over the invasion and his subsequent ability to sympathize with the opponent mirrors Pitou in that regard. His struggle against the hunters takes him from being rather simple-minded in his view of humanity to being able to express awe and respect for his enemies.

He extends mercy to the hunters and honors Knuckle’s deal despite having gained the upper hand in a situation that would easily enable him to kill them.

On the flipside, the poor man’s rose and the near-death of the king quickly saps Youpi of any sympathy he has for the extermination team.

If Pitou’s growth could be abbreviated as positive with Pouf’s as negative, then Youpi’s character development could surely be described as having undergone both positive and negative change.

I’d also like to note that it isn't just these specific occurrences that make Youpi’s arc reminiscent of both Pouf and Pitou’s opposing natures however. I present a small but important scene that occurs shortly after Pouf and Youpi’s reunion wherein the former relays details of the palace invasion.

I’d like to draw attention to these series of panels:

Having been presented with Pitou’s struggle through a recount of events, Youpi is given insight to the situation. As in, he now possesses a deep understanding of the other’s actions (healing and defending Komugi) as a result of his own encounters and change in character. After all, he himself has bridged the gap between he and his opponents through honor and mercy.

Later down the line unfortunately, true to his nature of balance and much in line with Pouf’s own schemes, he goes from understanding Pitou’s desire to keep Komugi safe, to thinking this:

But keep Youpi's previous insight in mind.

Because it’ll be important for a concept I’d like to revisit in a later post.

Nen Ability

It’s a recurring motif throughout Hunter x Hunter’s storyline that nen abilities often reflect the nature of their users.

The power of transformation and Rage Blast are both respectively associated with Youpi over the invasion. Earlier outlines for this post initially only planned to cover Youpi’s ability to shapeshift (as I found the flexibility of this ability similar to the malleability of his character) without taking his Rage Blast into deeper account. From there, I intended to segue into Rage Incarnate until it occurred to me a couple weeks ago as of publishing this now, that both abilities are inextricably tied to his evolution in that they must be considered together.

Youpi's Rage Incarnate is neither uniquely a result of his ability to control his explosions or solely an offshoot of his transformation.

It is just as much the power to control his rage...

...as it is transformation.

It is both.

The catalyst for Youpi's development can only ever exist because he takes two distinctly separate abilities and combines them. Rage Incarnate represents a unification of two wildly opposing concepts. Not just one or the other.

To drive the point home, a particular panel that I believe highlights the duality of Youpi’s nature:

He embodies both destruction and creation. Rage and transformation. Sympathy and a loss of it. Halves that are simultaneous and opposite.

The last panel is fairly direct- reciprocal (present or existing on both sides; each to the other; mutual) emotions which coexist in perfect balance. Youpi’s development is all about the concept of embodying emotions that should conflict but don’t. There’s a reason why his growth is kickstarted among other things by not just his ability to specifically control his anger, but in allowing rage to consume him whilst remaining calm.

The Rule of Three

Here is where I do think Youpi’s character may be lost on some. He doesn’t adhere to one end of the proverbial scale or the other- while he doesn’t exactly hold Meruem to the invisible ideal Pouf does, he neither quite measures up to Pitou’s standard of being able to protect Meruem’s best interests either (there's extenuating circumstances within the arc that result in this, but we’ll get to that in a bit).

I drawback to a certain scene before the invasion, a subtle and yet key moment emphasized time and time again as fundamental in both the foreshadowing of Pitou, Pouf and Youpi’s ideology. Meruem asks each of the guards of his name.

Many others before me have already pointed out how each response closely follows along the lines of their development. To Pouf, Mereuem is simply the king. His role and title as ruler is inextricable from the person and the individual.

On the flipside, Neferpitou focuses Meruem’s feelings and places them in higher emphasis. Pitou’s response is one that both conceptualizes and prioritizes Meruem as an individual with his own wants and desires independent of his rank.

And Youpi is left…

…unable to answer.

At the time of his response, a lack opinion could largely be attributed to his simple and uncomplicated nature, though by the moment of the invasion and his subsequent evolution, I believe his lack of response to be less of the idea that he is loyal to Meruem in the simplest way, but more so the fact that he simply doesn’t fit into any of the sharp contrasts that Pitou and Pouf represent.

Consider the framing of this scene.

Pitou and Pouf are visually posited as direct opposites of one another.

Whereas Youpi quite literally exists as the medium to Pitou and Pouf’s ideology in Meruem’s line of questioning.

(I don’t think the line of procession that Togashi has specifically underscored for their ideologies here is a happy coincidence either, considering the order in which they've been positioned before Meruem is anything but.)

And this makes incredible sense if one were to view the royal guards as a collective, from Pouf to Youpi to Pitou, as a progression in sympathies- in not only their ability to sympathize with humanity as a whole, but a mirror in the way they come to view Komugi towards the end of the invasion.

Pitou desires to keep Komugi safe at all costs and as such, goes above and beyond to protect her. All he wants is for her to live. Pouf wants to kill her. Youpi goes from being neutral on Komugi, to understanding Pitou’s desire to protect her, to neither wanting to save or kill her, but desiring to keep her away from Meruem for reasons neither uniquely linked to any other ideology.

If Pouf and Pitou represent polar opposites and we’re meant to take all three guards as representative of different phases of sorts, then from one end point to another, there must surely exist a transitional phase, the in-between.

Varied Motivations

I elaborate on a topic briefly touched in the previous section as I feel it deserved a breakdown of its own.

One of the fascinating things about the chimera ants is that the royal guard’s ideologies (and therefore their views on Komugi) develop and exist independently of one another’s influences.

So while Youpi and Pouf find brief common ground over their desire to keep Komugi away from Meruem towards the end of the chimera ant arc, they do so for wildly different reasons.

And I believe Youpi's desire to keep Komugi away from Meruem is neither uniquely linked to Pouf’s ideology (nor his newfound hatred of humanity).

Youpi’s thought process is a fairly subtle nod in a series of easy-to-miss panels, but fairly important in the implications they hold.

Interesting to note is the use of “Us,” in the translation here, with the panel accompanying this dialogue framing all three. It implies that Youpi is not just singularly concerned with the impact Komugi may have on Meruem, and suggests that he’s referring to not just an individual, but a dynamic that affects all three in turn; something likewise involving Youpi himself and Pouf whom are not relevant or contingent to Meruem’s status as all-ruling king.

Drawing upon a relationship which impacts he and Pouf all the same and fearing a wedge within their bond with Meruem, it appears Youpi planned to keep Komugi from Meruem- not because he decided that Meruem’s current state was actually conducive to his role as pinnacle of all, or even that he feared a difference in the king’s domineering personality- but ironically, the opposite. Though Meruem has retained a large degree of his original personality since rebirth, he’s undergone plenty of change.

What's changed about him exactly, and what do Pouf and Youpi now share with Meruem? My first thought seems to be the most obvious here- Youpi and Pouf revived Meruem. In doing so, they are now a part of him and say as much themselves -

- it’s an absolute honor as a guard.

Both are bonded with him, both are capable of feeling his emotions, and not only do they share this connection, Meruem can feel theirs as well. He’s become capable of empathizing with them on a level he previously could not. Whereas he used to ignore them at best and slap them around at worst, he now offers to help Pouf when he begins to display signs of distress.

…and offers Youpi mercy and leniency in the face of his perceived short-comings.

We can see that Meruem’s new disposition has a notable effect on Youpi.

I found the inclusion of Pouf’s reaction to be important here as well. His expression falters because his joy has been overridden by the guilt he feels- he already has been and is conspiring against the king as his goals have always centered Meruem’s sovereignty. By contrast, Youpi lacks guilt as he is yet to hide anything from Meruem or even consider doing such. This lends credence to the theory that his decision to scheme against the king did not occur in wake of Meruem’s loss of memory, and sometime in between the new changes displayed within Meruem and their arrival to the palace, as was it likely inspired because of these particular developments.

I was genuinely curious at first as to what impact Youpi believed Komugi would have on his and Pouf’s relationship with Meruem, but one of the things that hadn’t initially occurred to me (and I think is important to remember) is that Meruem’s journey in sympathizing with others through his interactions with Komugi wasn’t an immediate process nor was it apparent to his guards right off the bat.

Only Pitou is ever given the full impression of Meruem and Komugi’s growing relationship through key incidents.

Up until then, the consensus on Komugi's impact seems to be one generally shared (by Pitou and Youpi at the least):

And a misconception that puts Youpi's actions during the latter act of the invasion into context. There’s a lot more that I could elaborate on in regards to this, but considering this analysis is already quite a read, that’s probably a post for another time.

Final

This section exists to help me conclude my write-up here. Considering Youpi is a terribly neglected character when it comes to read-throughs, watch-throughs, and thematic examinations of the CAA, I felt the extensive analysis was warranted.

#menthuthuyoupi #youpi #analysis #rg

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