#twitter is hell right now

[starryjkoo]

Shouting into the void with a long rant, but I’m sort of confused by some of the takes I’ve been seeing about the Jikook NYC trip. Basically, I don’t understand why people think it’s weird that Jimin went radio silent or that neither of them have acknowledged the trip. I’m surprised because I’ve seen quite a few people saying this on multiple platforms.

Jimin never updates us on what he’s doing on a work trip? He barely uses social media or updates us on his life at all (can’t believe he actually forgot his password 😭) so honestly why were people expecting him to be actively posting things while in NY? He literally just went to London, completely disappeared, came back and then finally shared pictures of his HP tour on Instagram. And we still have no idea what he was actually in London for, he just ghosted us until he was back. So, there’s nothing odd about him going to NY and disappearing if he didn’t have a public appearance to attend.

At the end of Jungkook’s live he said he had schedules to go to that he couldn’t talk about, but that he thought ARMY would enjoy. Then he left and presumably met up with Jimin. So I think we can infer that the schedule he was referring to probably had something to do with whatever Jikook were doing in CT. And they had a camera crew with them, GoPros, and mics, so they were definitely filming content. Jungkook literally said in his live he couldn’t talk about what he was doing… so, why do people find it weird that they… didn’t talk about what they were doing? They’re especially not going to acknowledge something that is supposed to be a future project.

Anyways, there are a lot of interesting mysteries about their CT trip! And regardless of their motives, it seems like jkk had a lot of fun and Jimin was still physically present for JK during a monumental moment in his life. But I think there are some points that people are emphasizing as ‘weird’ or ‘significant’ or ‘suspect’ that have me scratching my head a bit because it contradicts what we know about them as individuals and the little bits of information we have about their trip.

And I’ll cap this rant post off with something else that’s been bothering me. It’s not weird or significant that Jimin didn’t appear in Jungkook’s post GMA live. That wasn’t a normal live, and it’s not really comparable to the one that JH did after Lolla or YG did after his concert. This was the first live that JK did after his debut as a soloist, and he used it to talk about the MV and his song. I’m assuming it was meant to be like the ones that the other members did where they talked about their albums a bit. That’s definitely not the sort of live Jimin would or should make an appearance on. It was basically part of an official schedule for JK.

[leahthedreamer]

The ISU needs to re-ban backflips for the Olympic season because not only is it ugly but the locals and four year fans are going to start insufferable discourse over it.

[civetside]

hiiii i have a question for people who like web comics, WHERE do you go to read web comics generally? like i know there's like webtoon or whatever and of course i plan on making mine a lil tumblr blog but other then those im out of the loop and idk if there's any platform that would be better then those or anythin, i would appreciate y'alls thoughts

[statementlou]

.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

friend notoriously bad at videogames said shed play marvel rivals with me tomorrow chat if i never post after tomorrow night its because a blood vessel bursted

[druidonity2]

King

[heyimboredtalktome]

my god who wrote that season 1 novel like.

[corviiids]

For the director's cut fanfic thing: ⭐⭐⭐ (these are THREE stars valid for whatever. I'm giving you blank checks)

thank you again <3

blank check 2/3 goes back to as you like it again! but this time i want to talk about my shadow designs for the akechi bossfights we've encountered in the preceding chapters >:3 there are five - the Puppet, the Singer, the Bard, the Dancer, and the Magician.

but this got really ABSURDLY long this time so ill stick to mostly the Puppet, and just do a brief ("brief") overview of the others for now.......

(for context: this is my palace au and akechi's keywords are akechi goro, the world, theatre.)

the Puppet (photos of giant puppets below if that freaks you out!)

the first Wing the thieves encounter is the puppet show, and the boss shadow is a giant marionette:

For one thing, it’s huge—maybe three or four times the size of a human being. It’s also gleaming, carefully polished and buffed, reflecting light more viciously in the areas where it seems the wood might be chipped or worn. The polish throws the lines of joints and pieces into sharp relief, giving the puppet the general impression of something whole that had been cut up and pieced slowly together with hinges and nails. Behind it, mostly concealed by its limp bulk, is a door. As they might have gleaned from the chatter of the audience, the show does not yet seem to have begun. As such, the puppet on stage is limp on its strings. Most disturbingly, it’s draped backward, not forward, snapped unnaturally at the spine and giving it the extremely uncanny look of a corpse on uneven ceiling hooks. They can just make out the side of the thing’s eyes from where they’re standing. Gravity has not been kind to them: the puppet’s eyelids are dropped open, bulging eyes left wide and staring up as far back as the build will let them. They haven’t rolled all the way into the wooden skull, presumably because they can’t. Instead, the unseeing yellow eyes remain fixed on the back corner of the stage. The puppet is entirely still. “I think I’m going to be sick,” Makoto says faintly.

i think the Puppet is my favourite of the five because he's so disturbing. i imagine he looks a bit like the giant marionettes by the french street theatre show royal de luxe:

but i really love these guys, so i think it's uncharitable to say akechi's shadow looks exactly like them. i know giant puppets are always a little freaky but i genuinely love the royal de luxe puppets and i think the workmanship on these does genuinely do a ton of work to dispel that uncanny vibe.

puppet akechi on the other hand is absolutely drenched in uncanny valley, so i guess imagine these puppets but much scarier. the main thing is those places where different pieces of wood are joined, in the joints / on the limbs / etc, because that's very key to puppet akechi's look in my mind, hence "something whole that had been cut up and pieced slowly together with hinges and nails". the Puppet is a marionette, but the way he's been constructed and set up on stage almost calls to mind the imagery of a corpse that's been reconstructed to perform. the way he moves is really unnatural:

Ren is beginning to think they might be able to get past and slip through that door without a fight when the whole creature rears up, back strings going taut, and lashes wildly out at him with a horrible clack of its arms—he leaps back and crashes directly into Haru, who catches and dips him like a princess before twirling him frantically into Ryuji and the puppet gouges a deep gash in the stage floor.    As they watch it screeches, howls an unnatural shriek, eyes suddenly wide and bulging larger. They ‘blink’ a few times, eyelids flipping, then the puppet Akechi goes limp on its strings again, though decidedly more upright than before, like whoever’s pulling the strings is now on guard. Its eyes stay open this time, bright gold and piercing.

very much not like something exercising its own agency, but like a body on strings being operated by someone who did not care to practice in the artistry of operating a puppet to make it look like a live thing - the puppet is literally just a tool to be flailed about.

this also shows in the way the puppet sits when it's at rest. guys do you know how god damn hard it is to find normal pictures of puppets? when you google marionette it just comes up with a bunch of fnaf shit. anyway check this guy out

at rest, they usually just kind of dangle innocently, or might slouch forward if given too much slack, right? it was important to me that puppet akechi look very wrong at rest, as if he's not "at rest" so much as he's just been left to hang. hence: "it’s draped backward, not forward, snapped unnaturally at the spine and giving it the extremely uncanny look of a corpse on uneven ceiling hooks." i'm basically imagining meat hooks, like, in a slaughterhouse or something you know? like he's just dangling from those.

that imagery was inspired by persona 5 dancing, actually - akechi's finishing pose in his dance is this:

this is just such an unnatural pose. when i saw it for the first time, i just couldn't get the image out of my head of a string puppet who'd been hung up and left to dangle without any regard for how it might look or feel (lol). not to mention that blank look in his eyes. i think a lot of the Puppet was born from this dance because the dance itself is so dynamic and silly but then the lead-up to the end suddenly gets very jerky and puppet-like. i really like his dance!

the Puppet's battle mechanic is that the applause will continue as long as the Puppet is either acting or getting hurt (kind of like the mettaton fight in undertale actually?). if the applause stops, then the Puppet will be inflicted with Despair - in p5 the Despair effect means you lose SP for each turn and then instantly die on the third turn. makoto ends up healing the Puppet and yusuke mercy-kills it before it can commit suicide:

Fox silently raises his gun. The Thieves collectively flinch as the Puppet dissipates. The applause starts back up. “If we’d left things silent,” Yusuke says, “it would have only happened again.”

because this is the first shadow bossfight the thieves encounter in the Theatre, i needed it to have some broader implications (vs some of the later shadows who have more specific interactions). so obviously the analogue for akechi is that the performance needs to continue and he needs to continue receiving acknowledgement from the public / from shido / etc because if he's not useful and entertaining and noticeable and such, then he's nothing - his life doesn't mean anything. obviously, if he doesnt perform for shido (perform in the sense of working, but also in the sense of showmanship) he'll probably be killed. but also, akechi really externalises his sense of self to an insane degree. the conceit of the palace is essentially that his entire internal world is the show, it's just this shallow performance, the backstage is empty. if he stops existing in the cognition of the masses, he essentially "stops existing".

i think a lot about third semester akechi in royal and how completely he's faded from public awareness. he doesn't care because he's a dead man walking and has locked into nihilism at that point. but if you look at what akechi says in the engine room:

his voice when he says this says a lot to me. akechi's envisioning the world as it will look when he has to return and face the consequences of the world discovering what's behind the curtain and realising his credibility was all a show. to be honest, i think this also plays a role in his decision to sacrifice himself in this scene. i don't think he wanted to die, but i think he did realise that the post-thieves, post-truth world wasn't a place that held anything for him anymore, and his desire to return to that reality was dramatically weakened, so it was an easier decision for him to choose to make that sacrifice than it otherwise might have been.

um, i had a point. okay, so, i was saying that once the applause stops, the Puppet begins to despair. the Puppet also is the most direct representation of akechi as someone who is being used. all the shadow bosses correlate to some aspect of akechi's need to perform and to the varying reasons why they all have that sense of desperation:

“Kinda feels like they’re just defendin’ themselves, you know,” [Ryuji] says. “Or somethin’. Look too much like him. It’s weird they can’t talk, cos it’s like fighting a dumb animal. Don’t they all seem real scared to you?” None of Akechi’s Shadows have delivered grand speeches about conquering the world. Even Futaba’s Shadow had given them a fairly strong indication of what was going on with her, that overwhelming guilt which had given birth to a resolve to lock herself up in her mind and die. Akechi’s Shadows have lashed out, tried to destroy them, sure. But it feels different in a way that’s growing more and more impossible to ignore. Desperate to fend them off, more than anything, like each one is the final bastion standing for a world that could crumble at any moment.

that's why once you figure out how to stop each shadow's "show" from going on, they instantly die:

ripping the Singer's mask off causes him to cease to exist (see below)

silencing the Bard, who relies on the power of his words to manipulate others, removes his power and reveals that he's pretty easy to take down

the Dancer's feet are always bleeding because he can't stop moving. he's hard to catch, but the moment he stops dancing, he's revealed to have extremely low defence and can be taken out very easily

but the Puppet is literally being manipulated by a puppetmaster. because he no longer has any use when the applause stops, he no longer has a reason to exist. i also just thought this would be a fun effect to start on because it's so drastic as an introduction to akc's psyche and really gives the thieves a sense of what they're working with by throwing them directly into the deep end.

ok let's leave the puppet behind for now. im gonna be more brief with the others i promise (maybe)

the Singer

LET'S TALK about. beneath the mask. a song about ren. but it's also a song about goro.

I'm a shape-shifter at Poe's masquerade Hiding both face and mind All free for you to draw

the fic goes over some of my meta about this:

[Yusuke] I have done some research. [Makoto] Oh? [Yusuke] I believe when the Opera Shadow sang of “Poe’s Masquerade”, he was referring to a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “The Masque of the Red Death”.

eternally grateful for the scene during the pyramid arc where yusuke loredumps about egyptian mythology so i have precedent to do this

yusuke summarises the story in this chapter (chapter 4), but basically: the story is about rich people abandoning the common folk to a plague, until a personification of the plague wearing a red mask enters the castle. when his mask is removed, it's revealed there is nothing underneath. everyone in the castle then succumbs to the plague.

the superficial connections to akechi are pretty obvious - red mask, plague doctor. etc. but this song is really, really telling for both ren and goro. i briefly went over this in my last dvd commentary post about the palace fic, but this relates to my meta around both of them as mask wearers. the line "all free for you to draw" is a big one - ren is "all free for you," the player, "to draw" - he becomes who you need him to be, and because you need to max out your confidants, he becomes (via you) who his friends need him to be.

goro is similar on a different scale because he moulds his personality to what the public expects him to be. he takes it one step further, because it's less utility for him and more foundational - as i said, to an extent the performance is the substance of his personality, which is the core of the distortion. so both ren and goro are wearing the mask, malleable in character, their actual personality being somewhat questionable, but that emptiness is only true for goro. ren's definitely got something underneath it, but goro feels like he doesn't.

brief cw for suicidal ideation, but i also generally take it as a given that goro doesn't really expect to live past 18 after defeating shido. not that he's actively suicidal, but i think literally or figuratively he knows after shido's downfall, his own life will pretty much be over, and that's part of what drives the emptiness. the show really only needs to go on until that point, and after that there's no need to build a real thing underneath to return to. he's very much living for that goal.

anyway: so the Singer starts out singing the Phantom of the Opera - the Shadow is very much modelled after the phantom - but swaps to beneath the mask and begins to connect with ren. the Singer wears a red mask. i really like this mask! i envision it as looking like someone pouring blood over his face and then the blood freezing in place, so it just looks very molten and liquid but fixed over half his face.

ren defeats the Singer by ripping his mask off:

[Ren] Please don’t take off my mask, revealing dark [Ann] OMG!! [Ann] THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED WHEN WE TOOK OFF HIS MASK!! [Ann] HE REVEALED DARK!!!! [Ann] HE DISAPPEARED!!!!!!!!!!

(i love the thieves because i dont have to be subtle about my symbolism i can just make them say it)

anyway, just like the figure in the Masque of the Red Death, ripping off the Singer's mask reveals "dark" underneath - he ceases to exist.

Just a cage of bones There's nothing inside

the Bard and the Dancer

when i was first plotting this fic, i was actually designing the palace not as a written environment but as though it would be a playable place. so a lot of it is informed by me picturing what this palace would be like to play through and explore, building it out as a video game environment in my mind's eye and then trying to describe it from that point. i took the same approach to the bossfights, so they're all designed around central gameplay mechanics which are largely based on status effects and how the player would strategise around them. (to that end, a lot of the design stuff in my doc never made it into the fic...)

the conceit of the bard was a shadow who can manifest abstract concepts into being by manipulating reality with his words. so the status effects he uses are brainwash and sleep, mostly. his monologues are modified versions of shakespeare's works.

part of the reason why i started writing this fic was specifically to challenge myself in aras of writing im not very confident in: so longform planning, progression of plot, environment description, and action scenes being major ones. writing all the boss fights was and continues to be a real challenge. the chapter that the bard shows up in (chapter 5) ended up taking ages and ages in part because i kept putting off writing this fight. now that it's done, though, the bard fight is actually maybe my favourite fight scene i've written lol. it always turns out that way!!! the reason i like it is because i realised the physical action wasn't the fun part of writing a fight like this. since it was focused on status effects, it meant i got to crawl into ren's headspace when he got brainwashed, which i really really enjoyed doing because i got to drag out some trauma that joker has lovingly repressed.

   to set my fellows, phantoms in the wings    in deadly hate the one against the other…    This isn’t the Casino. This is somewhere else entirely. The Casino, and everything that came with it, that was months ago. How did he forget? The cottonwool that had crept so slowly into his blood dissipates in a mad rush that leaves him dizzy with disbelief. His hands, now that he can feel them again, are trembling. The knife between his fingers, trembling. The cool floor beneath him, the air in his lungs. How close had he come to never feeling that again?    Had he really just been feeling safe about that plan? Had he really felt everything was going to be okay? If anything had gone wrong—anything at all—he’d have been gone. He’d have been dead. How had they made it so he felt okay with that?    A trick? A ruse?    How blasé they’d all been, when it was his life they were gambling with like a worthless set of poker chips! And they’re here—all around him. Safe? He’s never been in more danger.    “Joker!”    Surrounded. He’s surrounded by the ones who left him for dead.

the Dancer doesn't get as much attention in text because i didn't want to slow down the pacing of the story every few minutes to do another huge scene tgat doesn't really serve a purpose, just like the exploration of the Globe Wing didn't. all that mattered was that he was shown to be adaptable, agile, and resilient - the Dancer needs to be in top condition at all times and ready to dodge any threat. the imagery that came through to me the strongest was the idea that his feet are always bleeding, so he leaves bloodstains all over the floor.

the Magician

this was another scene i adored writing. i think environment-wise, the House of Cards is my favourite Wing in the palace because it's the most unique structure. it's not a styled theatre like the others, it's more on-theme to the Magician, like he's set up his own performance environment. so it's just a huge house of cards made of crumbling playing cards which is really difficult to navigate and which joker kind of blends into.

the premise for the Magician was someone who needs to perform miracles and present impossible illusions as reality with a flair for drama. the Magician fools the Thieves over and over and over again, because they are good-hearted people who want to save him.

did you ever see that unused mementos request in royal where akechi tells the thieves about a target to save someone, and doesn't tell them that the someone in question is dodgy themself, and watches to see how quickly the Thieves immediately trust them?

i don't think i based this fight off this request because im pretty sure i had it planned out before i ever saw this, but i was really pleased to see it because it's very much the same idea. even in the engine room, akechi calls the thieves idiots for inviting him back into the team. of course, this isn't a good or healthy worldview lol and it's something he has to unlearn because he literally trusts no one and that's not an extreme anyone should be endorsing, but he also has a point in that the thieves are willing to throw their faith into things way too easily and don't look critically at people or situations. so the magician fools them, victimises them, tricks them into considering him a victim, fools them again, traumatises them, but they all continue to feel empathy for him and try to save him when he's in trouble. akc's cynicism vs the thieves' faith is a big theme of this one i think and the question is like, when to doubt vs when to trust even when you have evidence to the opposition. i think the right position is somewhere between thesis and antithesis (which iirc is not actually the wording hegel used when describing dialectics? lol... i might be wrong. i never studied hegel so my knowledge is pretty superficial. but i think this was a translation thing anyway because allegedly goro doesnt refer directly to hegel in jp? someone can confirm or deny idk)

anyway those are the bossfights we've had so far!!! just the VIP Box to go now......................... :3

[koipalm]

cyno my love

[momentomori24]

Brazilian Hatsune Miku becoming the biggest trend on Twitter only for Brazilians to get banned not even a week after that only for that rancid app to transform into an inescapable cesspool of incest (roleplay) discourse not even a week after that is one of the funniest, weirdest and most upsetting chain of events I have witnessed in real time online. We're in the darkest timeline, man.

[clovreat3r]

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS????

WHAT IS THE IS?? PETA WHAT THE HELL

[awkwarddorkynerd]

Officially decided to jump on the bandwagon of people coming here from r/curatedtumblr, because r/curatedtumblr isn’t enough tumblr for me, and Reddit is too Reddit for me

[ethereiling]

nothing more dire than needing a professional social media for something and realizing you dont have one

[d34dbr4in]

Hi guys... I'm still alive. Have this for the time being.

Alternatives version of this + reference under the cut.

[tallytals]

i don’t have an embarrassing history with mha like i didn’t get into it when i was 12 it wasn’t my first anime or fandom experience or anything and i’m actually blessed to have very little knowledge of the incidents that made it such a 😬 fandom in the first place so i’m literally just here chilling with my friends most of the time. the funny thing abt this is that i have friends who did have an embarrassing mha experience so whenever i talk abt it around them they look at me like this

[anonzentimes]

so nice finding an avid Nagito Enjoyer in the year of our lord 2024 especially one that focuses a good chunk on his characterisation because OURGH nagito komaeda u r such an enigma 2 me

former danganronpa enjoyer here actively trying to retrace my steps from basically four years ago until the nagito and hajime brainrot hits me in the face with ttheir left hook. shakes fist

LOVING KOMAEDA IN 2024 YOU KNOW IT🔥🔥🔥🔥 HESS SO AWESOMEEE URGAGHHH!!!!! He's so awesome, like, how can you be so amazing that three entire in depth good songs can be made about you. that's BONKERS.

I don't know if I've said this on here before since it's a liiittle personal but I want to talk about it since this made me think about it lol

Around my second year of liking Nagito i met somebody and got really close to them and they really believed that Danganronpa was embarrassing/cringe despite liking it themselves. And I know they didn't mean to, but it really rubbed off on me and made me feel ashamed/embarrassed about my interests! I felt as if those embarrassing interests were "flaws" so even when I talked about EVERYTHING else I could I still couldn't make myself ramble about those embarrassing interests despite wanting to!! I don't entirely blame them for me developing pointless embarrassment and shame but I can't deny they were a big factor in it happening too. I still loved Nagito but I definitely thought about him just a little less because when I did I felt GUILTY about it.

So when they left me a few months ago, the pressure from being ashamed sort of left??? Like I had the biggest "what do I have to lose anymore," moment of my life and started just embracing my interests again and being "embarrassing" because really who cares? ALSO FUNNILY ENOUGH THATS WHEN I STARTED READING FANFIC TOO,,, I WAS A LITTLE AFRAID TO READ FANFIC BUT BECAUSE OF THE "what have I got to lose" MENTALITY I STARTED READING IT AND I REALLY LIKE FANFICS LOLL

I'm still pretty sad they went from somebody I talked to every day to someone I haven't talked to in months but I think it was, in a way, the best thing for me in the end. I've been able to Attempt to be more comfortable with myself and have become less ashamed and implemented that "what have I got to lose?" mentality but in a positive way! I've definitely improved thanks to this blog as well and I don't feel guilty about loving Nagito anymore.

so why did I go on an entire little personal yap sesh?? uhhm. I'm not actually sure just something about the way you said retracing steps and hit with brainrot just reminded me of myself,,, and I definitely will take every opportunity I can to restate the message of "try not to be embarrassed about being yourself!!" I've been having fun loving him without shame again and It's been SO nice being able to articulate it! :)

Thanks for your ask!! apologies I got a little personal hopefully it isn't a boring response <3