#who would've thought he'd be considered a protagonist...he doesn't really like to be in the spotlight IUWHEDIUWHED

[jeoseungsaja]

What's your role in a tragic play?

bold protagonist

you're the star of the show, baby! and boy does that come with a lot of emotional turmoil. you have a seemingly endless supply of determination. whether you have a lot of goals, or one big one, you're constantly working towards it. you're pretty restless, and struggle with imposter syndrome and generally feeling like you should be doing more. your insecurity might not be immediately obvious to others, however, as you come across as very strong and bold. vulnerability is not your strong suit, and that's likely to be your downfall. if only you had just let people in, and asked for help... well, maybe this was always gonna be a tragedy.

TAGGED BY: @rippleofwords TAGGING: @astremourante | @mythvoiced | @ofgentleresolve (How about K? 👀) | @eclavigne & whoever wishes to do this one!!

[morallygreyvigilante]

Someone messaged me about my thoughts on the three Daganronpa characters in my banner, so I'm answering here.

Simple answer? They're my favourites from the main three games.

Long answer? Well...

Trigger Happy Havoc - Makoto Naegi

Okay, so to start off with, my initial introduction to Danganronpa was through the anime so I only really knew about the THH cast (and later, the SDR2 cast, but I'll get to that in a bit) and it wasn't until later on that I got into the games themselves.

Honestly one of the things that struck me about Makoto is how underrated he is. A lot of people tend to prefer Hajime or the protagonists from V3 which, y'know, fair enough. We all have our preferences.

Makoto is honestly pretty impressive, and I know some people might say that he's kind of generic as far as protagonists go. And maybe that's true, but if you look at him from the context of the setting he's in and not what his character role is? There's definitely something interesting there.

Makoto himself points out time and time again that he's fairly average, but he really isn't, or at least not in the way he seems to think he is. You throw an average person in a killing game and chances are they're gonna break, they're gonna give up, especially when you consider the kinds of people he's trapped with. But he doesn't, Makoto doesn't give up.

Sure he gets close to breaking a couple of times but nothing ever really pushes him over that edge (at least, not in the killing game itself). Hell, the guy got framed twice and almost executed once, and he still didn't break. He's had to vote classmates guilty, knowing that they'll die, and he still didn't break.

Also he cares so much about his classmates, people who (as far as he's aware) he's only ever known as participants in the killing game. The one person he does have any memory of tried to frame him, and he never really seems to hold any kind of grudge over it. He mentions that he'll carry their deaths with him, which is a pretty heavy thing for anyone to do, especially in an environment where your life is constantly on the line. But he does it.

Then he becomes the Ultimate Hope, and people don't really talk about it as much as they should. In this setting they're in hope is kind of a big thing, Makoto goes from being completely average - a "nobody" - and becomes this revered figure. And not many people talk about how difficult that must've been to deal with, and Makoto himself never really seems to mention it either.

And then there's that scene in the Future Arc of the anime, and Makoto finally does break. He finds out that Kyoko died, and that in some twisted way he was partially responsible for it, and he breaks. Which, honestly? It felt right.

Makoto is the Ultimate Hope, yes. But he's still human, not some ideal. And when that video starts playing, we finally see just how difficult things were for him.

He gets thrown into another killing game after he'd already escaped one, he sees one of the people he's come to care for die and because of the twisted rules they're playing by he thinks it's his fault. Then there's the video. And what does Makoto see? He sees his fallen classmates and what do they tell him? That he should've died instead of them.

Makoto's been dealing with survivor's guilt since the first game, he's had to see someone else he cared about die, one of the people he'd helped save during that first game. And now he was being told, by the people he couldn't save, that he should've died. Makoto breaks.

It would've been easy to claim that the whole Ultimate Hope thing makes him immune to despair, but it doesn't. Makoto isn't superhuman, he's fallible just like everyone else and that's what I like about his character. Even after becoming the Ultimate Hope, even after he became this kind of 'saviour' figure, he's still just a normal person. Even when everything's said and done, he's still that average dude who's probably a touch too optimistic for his own good.

Goodbye Despair - Chiaki Nanami

Oh boy, Chiaki gives me so many feels. A lot of characters in this series are pretty tragic, but Chiaki in particular really highlights just how unfair this entire thing was.

We see during the Despair Arc just how much Chiaki brought her classmates together, we see how all these eccentric personalities started to mesh together just because she was willing to put in the effort.

We know these characters are talented, but don't really share their talents with each other all that much because a lot of the time their talents aren't really things that they can share that easily. But then we see Chiaki including her classmates, we see them playing games with her despite knowing that they'll probably lose, something which they're probably not used to at this point. And they enjoy it.

What makes it so tragic, is that that closeness is exactly what made it so easy for them to fall into despair. We see the class unite when they thought Chiaki was in danger, we them work together to try to save her. And then they don't. They fail and they have to watch her die a gruesome death, one that they couldn't prevent. And it breaks them.

Chiaki is such a tragic character, because her efforts to bring them together only made their fall that much easier. And the worst part? There wasn't even anything she could do about it.

Then, there was the killing game. And Chiaki's there.

What strikes me about Chiaki's part in the killing game, is what happens towards the end. Yet again, Chiaki ends up dying, and yet again her death was something that she couldn't do anything about. She was the blackened yes, but she didn't set out with the intention of killing anyone. She was the blackened in a case where the murder was set up by the victim themselves, and she was the one who took the fall.

The whole thing was a bit more complicated than that, but that's a topic for another day. But the thing that struck me the most about that trial wasn't what happened during it, but what happened at the end. Chiaki didn't try to plead she was innocent, she didn't fight what was about to happen, instead she chose to reassure her classmates. She chose to comfort them, to make them know they made the right choice.

And then there's the actual ending. The ending of SDR2 was so bittersweet. Because on the one hand, it was a simulation, no one had actually died. But the Chiaki in the killing game wasn't real, the Chiaki in the killing game wouldn't wake up with them. The real Chiaki died at the start of the tragedy, the real Chiaki died probably thinking she'd failed them, the real Chiaki was gone.

Honestly it would probably be more accurate to refer to Despair Arc Chiaki and SDR2 Chiaki as two separate characters. But they're both equally tragic for very different yet similar reasons so I feel it's appropriate for this post to talk about them both.

Killing Harmony - Kokichi Ouma

And now for the gremlin. I've already talked about Kokichi a lot on this blog so I probably won't go too in depth here since I've already shared a lot of the thoughts I have about him.

But, generally speaking? Kokichi is really intriguing. There's so much we don't really know about him (well, about his game persona, since we don't really know anything about the pre-game V3 cast) and what we do know is pretty suspect simply because it's Kokichi.

This guy is a walking mystery to begin with, but then we find out later on about his plan to masquerade as the mastermind and it adds a whole new layer to pretty much everything that he said or did previously. There's just so many different ways to interpret a lot of his actions and motives, and I don't think anyone other than Kokichi himself truly knows what the correct answer is.

At an initial glance Kokichi looks a lot the villain of the story (at least up until the end of chapter 5) but he's so much more than that. I won't go as far as to say to say he was a hero, but I feel like just brushing him off as being 'evil' doesn't do his character justice.

Like I said, I'm not going to go too in-depth because I've already done that a lot for Kokichi and I don't really want to repeat myself too much.

But, if I had to pick out what really stuck with me in regards to Kokichi? It's how alone he really was. Kokichi was such a paranoid character, arguably the most paranoid to be introduced in this series so far. Sure there were characters he was probably close to, and we see how one death in particular affected him - how genuine that response was is open to interpretation - but he never really seemed to form connection like the other characters did. And when you consider his plan to masquerade as the mastermind, you understand why.

But for a character who seemed so determined to push everyone away, his plan wouldn't have worked at all if he didn't have the cooperation of at least one person. And sure, the plan didn't end up working, but it came pretty close and he wasn't even there to see it.

I've said in a previous post that trust is a pretty significant theme when it comes to Kokichi, more specifically that he doesn't trust anyone (at least at the start). But when it came to enacting his plan? He needed to trust someone.

There's more that I could say about Kokichi, but I've said a lot of it already so I won't.

[webbedphantom]

So thanks to my local library, I finally get to read End of the Spider-Verse and MANN, what an improvement over Spider-Geddon. Literally my only complaint so far is that 2099 seems to have gotten shafted... again.

But I just finished Issue 5, and that was... really good. To the point that it's got me thinking about another verse. But to explain it, I'd need to kinda spoil... the entire issue.

So I'ma just put this read-more right here and...

Okay, so the main plot of the issue is that Peter gets stabbed by a dragger that erases him from the Spider-Verse, creating a brand new reality where he was never bitten, but Silk still was. Suddenly, she's going on all the adventures he was supposed to instead of locking herself in a bunker, and he's her tech support guy, making all the gadgets he would've used against the villains she's now up against.

It's got me thinking about all those AUs where one of the other Thieves takes Joker's place as the protagonist, and how I could do something similar here. It's an idea I've mentioned before, where someone else gets bitten instead of Aaron, and they become "Phantom Spider" (though they'd probably have a different name for themselves-), but now I'm really giving it some thought.

Canonically, Makoto would be the easiest to explain, as the way he gets bitten in the AU is based off the TASM films, with her taking Gwen's place, so all she'd have to do is follow him and then bam, Spider-Queen.

But it'd be just as interesting to do with someone else. My first thought was Sumi, since she takes Silk's role in the AU, but I also think Ryuji or Akechi could be really cool picks. Especially Akechi, because like you saw what he did with the power of the Metaverse in the game, imagine what he'd do with super strength and spider powers.

Heck, all of the Thieves would make for awesome Spider-People. Except maybe Futaba, since she doesn't really do the... exercise thing. But maybe that would change with super powers, who can say?

Also Yusuke... What on Earth would he do with Spider powers?? Because something tells me his first instinct will be to use them for art and not superheroism-

Which is honestly fair

But yeah, definitely considering making that a verse now. Just gotta find the right partner to do it with. Can't exactly do a "someone else gets bitten" verse without the someone else.