#yeah she’s deranged but I like her

[bacchuschucklefuck]

she turns, makes direct eye contact with you, smiles,

[kinos-fortress-2]

this is what the mind of someone insane looks like

[pbnmj]

i deserve a spider-woman nepal..... miles doesn't have to be the only teen spider with a terrible bisexual mentor (enter my own sketches of the world's most annoying spiderperson, who i fling towards pavitr, complete with a design that's subject to change)

[adachimoe]

How clueless is Yukiko anyway?

Early in the game, when we're introduced to Yukiko's character, we're given the impression that she has good academics and grades, but she comes off as something of an airhead who isn't aware of the attention she gets from boys.

For example, when Mitsuo tries to ask her out, she seems clueless about what he was after:

The on-looking students even make a remark about the "Amagi Challenge":

These are your first scenes with Yukiko in the game, and it informs your first impression of her. There being an "Amagi Challenge" especially tells the player that she just shoots down guys left and right. But I think the game hints at her being not so clueless, and that what you initially perceive as cluelessness is an act.

I touched on this briefly in the post about "Teddie and Scoring", but when Yukiko appears on the Midnight Channel, her Shadow self announces that she's going to "ナンパ (nanpa)... 「逆ナン (gyakunan)」":

ナンパ is like saying hitting on, picking up, flirting, etc. But it's typically talking about guys trying to pick up girls. Yukiko's Shadow pauses, then corrects herself to say 逆ナン instead. 逆ナン is a combination of ナンパ and the character for reversal/turnaround/etc.

tl;dr = ナンパ is "guy pursues girl", whereas 逆ナン is a reversal of that, so "girl pursues guy".

Let's remind ourselves of what the Shadows are: They poke at very real insecurities that the Investigation Team has, but they manifest as practically caricature-like versions of the people they're based on. Then we're told in December that Shadows hate the truth, and the moment when humans want to see the truth is what makes Shadows go nutso and attack.

When you think about how the game plays out, then the Shadows attack the Investigation Team because the "You're not me!" is the brief moment when humans yearn for the truth. It's a truthful enough statement to torment the Shadows, causing them to lash out.

In the case of Yukiko, her Shadow proclaiming she wants to 逆ナン seems to be part of the caricature-like nature of her Shadow that doesn't represent her. Case in point: Yukiko doesn't go around Inaba hitting on dudes as a way to escape. Perfectly sound logic.

At the beginning of this post, I asked if Yukiko really is clueless about all of this. Considering how her Shadow says "ナンパ" then corrects itself to "逆ナン", I think her Shadow's use of these phrases indicates Yukiko does understand that men are hitting on her. Even if her Shadow is a caricature, her own insecurities and experiences are real.

As we see, people in town are reaaaaaaally not subtle about how horny they are for a 16 year old girl. It's not just boys her age who do this to her, it's random TV reporters and even her own teacher who treat her like this. She is constantly being objectified:

If her Shadow is going on about ナンパ and 逆ナン, and she actually does know what is being said to her, then it seems from the scene on April 12th that Yukiko's way of dealing with this objectification is to just... feign ignorance.

I think you can also assume that one of her other solutions to this is, "Let Chie do something about it". We're not shown this directly, but we get the impression that Chie sometimes deals with these guys herself, and this must be a recurring thing if there's a meta game recommended strategy about talking to Yukiko alone:

And this is probably why her Shadow brings up Chie as a prince figure:

If Yukiko knows she's being hit on and is more aware of these situations than she lets on, then what is this about Chie? Less than genuine helplessness and reliance, it feels more like she is intentionally making her problems become Chie's problems. But Yukiko has a new struggle due to Mayumi Yamano's visit and death, called "managing the ryokan while having no idea what the hell you're doing and also being a high school student". Which is why Chie is no longer qualified to be her Shadow's prince: Ultimately, Yukiko can't make the ryokan also become Chie's problem.

As the game goes on past Yukiko's Castle, there are scenes where I think Yukiko responds differently than before her time in the TV and before everyone saw her Shadow, and I think they lend to the idea that yeah she did know all along.

For example, Yosuke wants her help academically and mentions "private lessons". Yukiko interprets this as something inappropriate. She doesn't bother to ask him what he means by that and reacts by slapping him, insisting that her hand simply moved on its own:

Like how the news reporter and even her teacher acted, in this scene we're also told that ryokan visitors say inappropriate shit to her.

There's also the scene Yosuke tries to get Yukiko's phone number, and Chie mentions that Yosuke calls her to tell her dirty jokes. Yukiko does a thousand yard "......." stare before changing the subject entirely and not giving him a response:

(I've read an interpretation that Yukiko repeatedly acts dismissive to Yosuke because Chie likes him and he's oblivious. I'm not into that pairing, but I get where they're coming from cause early 2000s media did have some "two people bickering with one another means they're going to get married and have 4 kids" type of shit going on.)

Yukiko also reacts when she sees Kanji has an anime nosebleed. She's the one who pushes him into the water, not Chie:

Compare these scenes from after the TV world with how she treats Yosuke and Mitsuo on April 12th, before anything with the TV happens. Yosuke says he tried to ask her out before and got shut down, and she acts like she isn't sure what he's talking about:

While she ends up shooting him down (again), she actually bothers replying to him (as well as Mitsuo), she doesn't get physical, and she shows her fake reliance on Chie by asking Chie what Mitsuo wanted anyway.

You'd think if that she was genuinely oblivious about these interactions with boys as she's shown to be in April, then would her Shadow even know what ナンパ is? And in the May and June scenes, wouldn't she be asking questions like, "What does he mean by 'private lessons'" or "Hey Chie, why is Kanji's nose bleeding?" (which would then lead to Chie pushing Kanji in).

And the culmination of all of this is her response to the reporter who wants to film her bathing in the onsen and offer "all day menus" (99% sure this means "turn the ryokan into a soapland"). Rather than continue to make things Chie's problems or expect Chie to do something or pretend like she has no idea what's being said, Yukiko -- having seen a caricature of herself -- takes her own initiative.

...buuut this raises another question. Even if Yukiko is aware of when dudes are being gross to her, what about the other moments where she seems completely oblivious...?

Is she only aware of the interactions with guys because of how frequently they happen? Or is she actually a master of deadpan humor who is perfectly aware during scenes like this too?

[lover-of-mine]

song: Heaven by PVRIS (youtube)

[betweenlands]

i think someone needs to lock squiddo and forgelabs in a room to see what kind of entirely new backstabbing gremlin behavior heretofore unthinkable by mankind might pupate out of the resulting scheme

[ilyarataka]

i seriously think its crazy sanji spent 2 years on Queer Island then came back parting his hair the same way his mom did and i just start tapping my chin in thought like .. what did oda mean by this?

[thornedsidekick]

btw ummm here's some other oc's of mine. Darla Sterling (she/her) + Simon (he/him) ... Darla is a counselor that specializes in villain therapy and her best lil emotional support monkey is Simon. Simon is psychic btw, he usually communicates via body language Or his lil collar translator he built (he has a very high intellect from all the experiments that were done on him years ago)(Darla saved him by stealing him from a lab lmao)

[fragmentedblade]

I think I've become an official HI3 player. I check the HSR leaks hoping for iterations of HI3 characters now

[atopvisenyashill]

sorry i’m still annoyed but like we really think if ned would have seen robert hit lyanna with his own two eyes he wouldn’t have done anything. that’s what we’re saying. that’s really what we’re all saying that’s really-

[daily-whistlepaw]

daily whistlepaw until ah becomes PoV day 1167

I think I finally understand how people feel when around a crush, can't say I enjoy it

[archduke-enver-gortash]

having completely normal thoughts (gortash wotr au)

[thetimelordbatgirl]

So round two of family drama briefly happened again tonight and despite trying to sleep, I was still just this the whole time:

[lady-shadow-and-darkness]

I think all the main cast in Heathers lowkey had a crush on Veronica.

[clockworkcheetah]

dont get me wrong amanda was def taking dirks words into account upon leaving the house but i dont think she wouldve done it if the rowdies werent following her

[faebriel]

i’m in the midst of death note brainrot (again) and would love to hear your thoughts on misa’s character

I WAS LITERALLY SAYING THE OTHER DAY TO MY PARTNER THAT I CAN FEEL AN AUTUMN DEATH NOTE REWATCH COMING ON..... maybe maybe maybe

misa is so freaking fascinating to me!! maybe next death note rewatch will be an extra special misa focus edition 🔍 she's just so fucked up in such a fun way that tbh i kind of feel is a missed opportunity, especially in the latter half of the story (the anime at least - haven't read the manga). she's so self-centred and i love that for her. her motivation to be kira pours from her own heart. while light has never personally suffered at the hands of crime afaik, misa very much has - both her family's deaths and her own being attached. her devotion to the cause is not just for the sake of saving the world but for saving herself, back on that night. it's like this vicarious way she can get back at "criminals" because she couldn't prevent her own family dying. it's ground into her!! that is the kind of experience you can't just shake out of her!! you can set misa on any path away from kira and i truly think she would barrel right onto it because the existence of kira gives her those warm and fuzzy feelings of retribution or maybe even safety that just like, filters right into her obsessive love for light

i like that even though she's clearly devoted to light, she's still an independent operator (well as much as the writing allows at certain times. eyeroll). i think light's whole attitude around "managing" her approach to being kira is so fkn illustrative of the derision with which he views a lot of people lol. there's something so interesting about how he views misa as impulsive and emotionally driven, so she's deranged, but obviously he is different even though their core beliefs are the same. like you might be using strategy but your goal is the same. idk

YOTSUBA ARC MISA AND POST TIMESKIP MISA ARE SO SPECIAL TO ME PERSONALLY. yotsuba arc because i'm like. oh my god the fact that she is not given ANY narrative space to either literally or metaphorically beat L's ass is a fucking choice BUT the fact that her dislike of him seems to come out as purely petty spats while he and light are chained together is so fucking funny. hater arc, but also, you could write a 9k character study unpacking all of this. it all kind of loops around to this iron-clad optimism that everything is somehow gonna turn out alright... and at that point in time, she doesn't even know how much shit she's gotten herself into. i do really really love that moment in this arc where misa gets her memories back after visiting the tower (when matsuda falls off a balcony. you know the one) but light doesn't have his and L is not even clued into what's happened. and light so so so wants to catch kira and clear his name and misa's sitting there like :)) like, i know she's gonna conspire to give light his memories back ASAP because that's The Plan but come on that brief glimpse in time is so fun and for misa her access to the death note & shinigami is such an important and consistent bargaining tool in her own survival. it was cool to see her have a monopoly on it, no matter how brief

they're so fucking worsties

there's definitely something to say here about her relationship with rem too but honestly i'm gonna have to go back to sources on this one. for me i've always kind of felt some parts of the fandom try to bend rem and misa into the "cute background lesbian couple" template that so many fandoms run on and i'm like. mate. you're not selling me. rem loves misa but misa is just too awful and/or deranged for all of that. i've always kind of felt their relationship was tragic in part because misa didn't fully understand the depth of rem's love for her / took it for granted until rem died. but again, i need to go back to sources

OH and this is getting long but i have the softest spot of all for post-timeskip misa. she is so me and my husband by mitski core. her life is falling to shit around her. her lifespan has been quartered. and she gives up her memories!! her knowledge of the death note has always been her key to survival and light sweet talks her into giving it up and this is the bit where i start hollering and screaming. and from then on, she doesn't even realise how much shit she's in. it's not just that she's in a failing engagement. it's that her fiance has wrung her for everything she had to give and she is being left to the wayside. her suspicion that light is having an affair is almost framed as comical but it's all she fucking has!!! she loves him because it's all she has. she has to choose between light and kira like this is some cosmic fucking joke and she cheers on light apparently trying to catch kira because she loves him. because what else exists in her memory from the last five years of her life???? FUCK

post-timeskip misa is genuinely fucking tragic to me because like. through the sheer power of sweet talking light manages to entirely defang her. she's lost rem. she has a book, she has the eyes, but she uses them solely under light's discretion. and then she gives up her memories because light asks. and like she is 100% a terrible person with the whole mass murdering thing but that kind of adds to it in a way. you get me