#yuris musings

[heartbeatbookclub]

I was looking at a few posts about autism (as one does) and it just suddenly clicked into place a fundamental thing about Yuri's character that I'd been grasping at, but hadn't really been able to adequately identify. I still have a much longer and more thorough analysis going through a whole lot of my thoughts on Yuri's character and her experience of autism that i'm working on (of which this will likely be a component), but I thought I'd share this separately just to emphasize.

Post I saw which made this click for me was making fun of the fact that most media depicting impaired empathy in autistic characters explicitly depicts them with this unflappable confidence of never having been rejected by people they love. The crux of this is that in actual reality, autistic people almost always have that experience at some point, for some behavior, for reasons they don't really understand. "There is an invisible line where people will get sick of you, and you have no warning of when you're about to cross it." So frequently, autistic people attempt to ride a razor thin edge, walking on constant eggshells to desperately attempt to avoid crossing that line.

Very often autistic people will attempt to avoid doing anything at all which could be considered weird, or off-putting, and will try their absolute hardest to do things in a way that is acceptable to other people, sometimes to the point of outright suppressing their emotions, because they are afraid that they'll say something just wrong enough that the people they care about will push them away, and they don't understand WHY it happened, but they know it's THEIR fault. Sometimes masking is fighting to appear aloof all the time because you can't regulate your emotions in a way that is acceptable to other people.

And holy fucking Jesus, that fits the exact mold of what I've been trying to talk about with the particular way Yuri's anxieties manifest.

It really feels to me like Yuri has this constant fear of breaking the "rules" of socializing, despite not really understanding what those rules even are. She's constantly afraid of saying something wrong, when she doesn't even know what wrong would be, she's just sure everyone ELSE will know it when they hear it. I think a huge part of her social anxiety comes from her own understanding of herself as a very weird person who doesn't really get a lot of how to socialize, and it seems to me like she's probably dealt with her fair share of social rejection and isolation based on those traits. She then felt she had to take responsibility for those traits, probably because it's the one thing she can change, and she is the one common denominator in all of these bad situations (This is something which is pretty common, actually! "Everyone else can socialize just fine, and I have so much difficulty with it! I must just be broken in some way. I have to try super hard to be normal to make friends!")

I think a big part of why it's so apparent in the Literature Club is because she really thinks she's found a place where she can make friends in spite of all of her issues, so when she starts...being herself, and receives even the smallest HINT of pushback, she overcorrects and tries to rein all of herself in to fix her "mistake", because she really wants to make friends here, and doesn't want them to reject her as well.

She's had this experience of others pushing her away for being weird so often that, coupled with her acknowledged trouble for reading situations, when anybody responds poorly to something and she recognizes it, she immediately overcorrects out of fear of being an annoying burden to everyone around her, and that "correction" consists of suppressing herself into being "normal" (or at least "less weird"), because she believes nobody could actually like her just for being who she is. There's something wrong with her fundamentally, and to make friends, for people to like her and want to be around her, she has to "fix" herself.

it's just, like...

it's really hard for me to interpret Yuri's character that doesn't involve her being somewhere on the spectrum, bros. she's written with such delicately constructed autistic coding, despite the appearance of just being a hackneyed weird girl visual novel trope. she deserves the world.......

[baltharino]

[purplink8]

Naomi is one of my favorite characters so I decided to compile my thoughts on her in this post! :D

(Disclaimer: I do not particularly like the fanon version of Naomi & while I do dislike Raye, I still believe without a doubt that he cared for Naomi (enough to go along with Light when he threatened to kill his loved ones, and the first one to pop up in his head was Naomi) and had his (however misguided (by sexism ofc)) best interests at heart for her. That does not absolve him for being, frankly, really really rude + sexist to Naomi and I will forever be annoyed with him for that.

tl;dr I'm neither a fanon!Naomi stan nor a Raye apologist. Anywho-)

Before I talk about Naomi, I want you to take a look at this panel directly above the one in which she first appears.

Before Naomi's first appearance, Ryuk says "I guess women being tough in crisis goes for humans, too." This is said in reference to Yuri being unphased with the bus-hijacking and dragging our fave sexist murderer to Space Land haha.

But I think it's significant that the above quote was said by Ryuk for all women (maybe the real feminism was the Shinigami we found all along!) JUST BEFORE Naomi's first appearance.

Even before Naomi is introduced, the canon has (however jokingly (side-eyeing you Light-o)) established that women are tough in crisis. I do think that's saying something- especially when you'll see (which will be discussed in length in this post) that this statement holds true ESPECIALLY for Naomi.

But we'll come back to this later; let's move on to Naomi actual appearance in canon.

We're introduced to her as Raye's loving fiancé who is also attentive (receptive) towards him as she asks him why he's tired to which he mentions the bus-hijack.

She's quiet in noting down her observations in her head as she asks Raye for more info regarding the bus hijack:

Look at the '...' she has before asking Raye for details. We can read it as hesitation to voice her suspicions before they sound strong enough or as the pause to think it all through OR more likely as we'll see in the panels below, she perhaps hesitates due to the conditions she agreed to with Raye. The pause may also be due to her analytical mind starting to work, she has to mull over the details she's just been given before reaching to a conclusion.

She does speak out on her misgivings as she clearly cares about Raye and thinks (& correctly at that!) that he met Kira.

Only to get shut down by him. Raye is, obviously, sexist and rude here but we have to remember that Raye thinks he's doing the right thing (according to his sexist 'i have to protect her from danger' attitude anyway). He does admit that she was an excellent fbi agent but still, he's not respecting her opinions.

Now this is where my hate for Raye shines through like

"once you pop up some of my babies, that habit won't pop up anymore" ~Raye Penber, probably, i wish i was exaggerating

Raye is unbelievably dismissive of Naomi here. Not only does he not take her concerns seriously, he also follows it up with a 'joke' about directing her intelligence towards being his future wife. Now, I do believe that Naomi wanted to quit her job too but that doesn't make it okay for Raye to y'know treat Naomi like this. And Naomi (being genuinely apologetic) politely chuckles it off.

I think this brings us to an important aspect of her character: she has a sort of passive attitude. She is not that assertive imo instead preferring to be compliant and yielding. She values harmony in her relationships & avoids conflicts by being agreeable (at least with Raye).

Then Kira happens to Raye Penbar and other FBI agents. I find it interesting how these panels are placed next to each other:

These panels are juxtaposed to each other to perhaps show us that while killing the FBI agents may be like a game to Kira & L, there are real stakes involved for those related to Kira's victims- they become pawns in Kira & L's game-: Naomi being the prime example, who is shown grieving Raye's death.

She is intelligent enough to deduce that Raye was murdered by Kira.

Now instead of wallowing in her misery (remember what Ryuk said about women being tough in crisis? yeah this is what's happening here), the former FBI agent picks herself up, gathers her wits + composure, and gets ready to investigate.

We're then shown panels of Naomi travelling alone. I want you to remember that the emotional wound of losing her fiancé is still fresh & forefront in her mind (trying to catch Kira is a very close second). Even if her thoughts are not depicted (her ride to Shinjuku is deathly silent: with neither dialogue nor thoughts- meant to express how she deals with her grief- Naomi takes action and does so quietly), we get an idea of how she feels.

Alone. Torn between feeling lonely/helpless yet determined to catch the murderer who killed the man she loved. Still, she perseveres.

And she gets info from the bus conductor, that there were six passengers other than Raye during the bus-hijack. She figures that since Kira must've been someone out of those six people, Kira may be living somewhere near that bus route. It's a small lead but a lead nonetheless.

Naomi also infers that Kira is able to kill people by causes other than heart attacks too. More importantly, she is of utmost confidence that her finding IS a fact which means she wouldn't be shook off that belief any time soon. Which is really, really bad for Kira as it narrows down the list of Kira suspects considerably well.

I'm gonna focus on Naomi's POV (you'll know why later):

_____________________________________________________________

She enters the NPA building and the receptionists are being much help: saying that there's nobody on the task force here despite her appointment with them, which was made the previous day + asking her to just leave a message when she insists on meeting the task force personally.

This is important to her. Why are they being so difficult? She'd had an incredibly long day, her fiancé is dead and only she seems to have a clue of Kira's powers extend to killing people by causes other than heart attacks. She absolutely needs to tell this clue to the Task Force. If only somebody actually listened to her. (Even Raye, when he was alive, refused to do that).

Then a young guy, who introduces himself as the son of the task force Chief, comes in and talks with the receptionists about a case he had helped solve in the past. Whatever. That information does not help her in the slightest. She came here for one purpose and one purpose only: speak to the Task Force. Why are the receptionists so warm towards him while being so useless to her? And then the boy says something interesting:

He (if she heard correctly) may be able to beat L in solving the Kira case. He's definitely got her attention now. Either he's way too confident or there may be a degree of truth in his statement (well, they did just say how he helped them solve a case when he was a high schooler). Still, it's not like this guy can help her catch Kira when he's not even in the task force, right?

She's just about to mentally dismiss him when:

...he shares valuable information with her- something which the receptionists haven't (even if they had their reasons) and even better, offers to help her (he's the first person to do so ever since Raye died). He chooses to trust her (he had no reason to do that but does so anyway maybe due to the goodness of his heart? (she doesn't know- still he has helped her out a great deal already)).

It feels weird accepting his help but the boy is very polite + willing to help so she does. And offers him her sincerest thanks.

He also seems to think that Kira has greater powers than people think. That surprises her.

To think this young guy has deduced something which she had too...she chooses to confide in him a little (not so much, just a little without details, just as vague as his statement was) that that's why she's here.

The stranger tells his name. Light Yagami. And asks for hers. She's not taking any chances. Raye died because of giving his ID to someone in the bus (who, she's sure, was Kira) and while this kid seems relatively harmless, she's cautious. She has prepared for this. So she gives him an alias. Shoko Maki.

It seems she hadn't heard the end of his deductions. According to him, Kira can also control people's actions before they die- and she finally has someone intelligent enough, trustworthy enough (he trusts her AND has helped her out a lot) who is willing to listen that she cracks, offering him the final piece of the info she has puzzled out: that Kira can kill by causes other than heart attacks.

More information trickles out her (the kid, Light Yagami- she reminds herself- is surprisingly great at putting her at ease)...she tells him about her fiancé meeting Kira before his death. He's silent. When asked about it, he tells her it is due to the shock of hearing that.

Light is a patient listener, asking her details, offering his views on the matter so she doesn't mind telling him everything she has concluded thus far with utter conviction:

He's initially skeptical of course:

Still, he agrees that it's worth investigating into and that's what matters to her.

After thinking about it for a while, he informs her that he's convinced of her theory. Not only does he take her seriously, he also takes notes of the details of the incident.

Light has been as useful as a person in his position could have been and she's really grateful. She wishes to tell the task force herself so she heads back to the NPA.

He's still following her. Maybe he's doing this out of politeness? She tells him that she'll be fine on her own and thanks him for all his help. She turns. The kid approaches her again.

Only to tell her why the members of the task force were said to be absent.

Now she's suspicious. Why does this kid know so much about this investigation which ought to be kept secret from the general public? So she asks him. Only to get hit by this bombshell:

He is, if he's telling the truth, a member of the task force. Well, that explains a lot.

He tells us that all the members of the task force have been hand-picked by L.

Then she doesn't need to go back to the NPA, as she has already spoken to Light who, by his own admission, is a member of the task force which means her insights will be passed on to L.

Now that she knows that L selected Light himself, she allows herself to trust the kid enough (as she completely trusts L) to tell him that she worked with L on a case 2 years ago when she was in the FBI.

Naomi reveals that she'd been reluctant to trust the police and even the task force compared to L who has her complete trust (her plan was to ask them to let her speak to L directly, i.e., she didn't even want the task force to know her insights). Light asks her then why did she tell him something which should've been for L's ears only.

She gives him her reason.

She feels that Light & L are similar somehow (I think it's her gut feeling) and since she trusts L, she also, kind of, trusts this kid as he reminds him of L.

Then, something crazy happens. He asks her if she would like to join the investigation... She is flabbergasted, to say the least. She had come thinking that she'd be lucky if she got to talk to L directly but joining the task force herself?

Still, she has to admit the kid is nothing if not convincing. She feels indecisive. She doesn't know what to do; she's been feeling lost since Raye died. They were in Japan for a short while only. Hell, they were going to get married & get settled permanently in the USA. And now none of it was possible.

Raye was dead. She had to accept that.

What should she do?

But when the kid brings up how she's still a young beautiful woman for this dangerous investigation, she finds her doubts shattering and her resolve hardening. She realizes that she has gotten a new purpose now.

With her fiancé gone, she's got nothing left to lose anymore. Getting Kira (who was responsible for his death) is the only thing that matters to her anymore, as she says in her outburst. She'd do anything, regardless of risks to her life, to make sure that Kira is caught.

She's very determined now to join the investigation and requests Light for the same. He asks her some proof of her identification.

She hesitates, but feels this can't be helped: she reasons to herself, as she apologizes for giving out a fake name earlier. He praises her carefulness. And she gives him her driving license. He asks her some details about the time she was in the FBI. And keeps glancing at his watch strangely often enough to prompt her to ask him why:

He, once again, looks down at his watch as he replies.

He is Kira.

Light Yagami is Kira.

She is horrified, with realization dawning at her eyes that she has already given him her real name, and is filled with dread of what is to come.

And just an instant later, she turns sharply (not unlike clockwork) away from him. She feels as if she's in a trance. He is speaking something to her.

What's the matter?

An answer comes unbidden to her lips, as if that's what she's been supposed to say all along, like she has practiced this chat with him before,

"There's something I have to do."

The words feel foreign to her, and yet she feels that that's what she was destined to say anyway.

Didn't you want to talk to my father?

The words are a blur as she replies mindlessly.

"No. I have nothing to say to him."

_____________________________________________________________

...well, that. was. Dark.

No, really, it's so fucked up how Light taunts Naomi in her final moments that's why I hate him during this scene.

But anyway, I wrote those 1.4k words talking from only Naomi's POV so that we may understand why she allows herself to trust Light.

I think the argument of her trusting Light "that easily" is uh... debatable? If you pay attention to the plot, it's not that hard to believe that Naomi comes eventually to trust Light.

I think people take this panel at its face value...

...which is just Light self-congratulating himself AFTER he got Naomi's real name (only to think 'that was a close call...' in the next panel itself) like? You guys, don't fall into his trap thinking that Naomi trusted him way too easily.

This guy cognitive-restructures his way out of every setback. Just because Light wants to convince himself that it was that easy to overcome this setback of a woman, doesn't mean you have to be fooled into thinking the same as Light too. This is just his hindsight-bias talking.

We know how hard it was for him to figure out a way to get Naomi's real name after she gave him an alias (while being as cool as a cucumber too). Do not forget that before you chide Naomi for being too naive (yes she IS a little naive (y'know the trusting L a 100 percent? after working with him through a computer screen?) but we shouldn't blame her for giving Light her real name). She was being careful all along.

Until Light, with his genius social skills (remember he's exceedingly polite & helpful + just. a. Kid in Naomi's eyes), focused all his intelligence to achieve his goal of getting Naomi reveal her real name and succeeded as he's an excellent manipulator and got luck on his side while Naomi's degree of luck is exceedingly low.

Also remember that Naomi is freshly grief-stricken and this polite kid is the first one to stop and listen to her (+ agree with her respectfully). And then too she gave him an alias. But was forced to give out her real name because the situation called for it.

(I don't put much stock in htr13 stats but I think we can safely conclude that it's correct about Naomi lack of good luck. Also, she dislikes stalkers and Raye stalked Light (yes he was just doing his job but still you have to admit it's a lil funny that she was gonna marry a stalker- ok I'm done now with the htr13 discussion)). Moving on!

After Naomi's death (she was only 28 at that time), L accepts the phone call from her parents reporting her as missing and comes to know that she's Raye Penber's fiancé. L finds her name familiar and has Watari look her up, to find that she arrested the preparator of the LABB case, which reminds him that he worked with her on that case.

When Aizawa & Matsuda suggest that she may have killed herself after hearing news about her fiancé, L disagrees with them saying that the Naomi Misora he knew had great inner strength and was an excellent FBI agent. He thinks that she's try to go after Kira (and he's not wrong).

And that's all the info about her that the manga canon offers us.

In conclusion, I think Naomi is very intelligent yet a little gullible/trusting of people (she chooses to believe in the good of the people methinks), polite, quiet, introverted, a tad passive, and tremendously emotionally tough (seriously tho, she's in grief sure, and that makes her vulnerable to Light's tactics to get her to trust him & all that but it takes guts to go after a killer who can kill just by knowing your name & face just after he killed your future husband).

Canon!Naomi is far more complex than the girlbossified fanon version of her and I love her <3

[meowunmeow]

Would Fem!Andy have her tits and pussy out for the world to see be honest

[inkdrawndreamer]

Does anybody else want to see Franky and Yuri fight over which one is the better uncle? Because I want these two shady grown men to fight each other in the most underhanded way possible for the approval of an easily bribed first grader.

[ancientgreekyuri]

Thought it would be funny to try to make Aznerine in this picrew, but I realized doing their bronze age designs wouldn't be impossible... and so 😭

[mostlymilkwood]

Caught up with Yuri is My Job recently and I can’t believe the formerly no-named chef is basically the main character right now?? The shift from comedy and drama to just pure drama has been interesting but I can understand it, the parody of Class S stuff only gets you so far and we’re 7 years into this series now.

Anyway please enjoy this silly relationship chart I made! (which demonstrates the increasingly funny metric of how literally no one has managed to fall for someone that liked them back at this point.) Looking forward to the anime in a few months.

[pocket-sized-lawyer]

"All I'm sayin' is I haven' lost an arm wrestle in years..."

[heartbeatbookclub]

I've been having a lot of Yuri thoughts particularly since I've been trying to put serious mileage on finishing a fuller analysis of da dawg in her (autism).

One of them is that for as commonly as Monika is maligned in ignorance of this particular fact, people seem to also forget that Yuri is...a teenage girl? Like, I think based on the fact that she is clearly the tallest, 6'2 queen towering over everyone in the club, coupled with the more mature vibes (some of which i'd say come from the autism lmao), people tend to just kind of forget that she's still quite young and make her seem significantly more competent as a result.

She's still a high schooler, bros, a very awkward one at that. When Sayori suggested they get to know each other before reading she drew a straight blank and didn't say anything until Sayori prompted her. Despite appearances she is wont to be hilariously immature and say/do some dumbass and petty shit, particularly when equipped with friends encouraging her.

let her be silly.......

[arom-antix]

@fishshit @ectobiologay you can't just put the best ideas I've ever heard in your tags and then not expect me to draw them

Original prompt

Original exhibition illustration

Yakov trauma

Outdated design rant

Added design elements

Here's a version without the LEDs so you can actually see

[moonsmultimusings]

❝ 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘶𝘱 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚… ❞

❝ 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘰𝘧𝘧, 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘣𝘰𝘸 / 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝙠𝙚𝙚𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙨𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙚! ❞

an independent, selective, 18+ multimuse blog featuring canon muses from various anime and video games. shadowed by moon ☾

muses ┆ rules <- (check before following!)

[baltharino]

[herosplatling-replica]

artist and muse

[ancientgreekyuri]

i think Asterius becoming romantically involved with Dia was an inevitability..... Every time I thought of her going on dates with Theseus he'd be there too (as support. And Yet........)

[brfran]

@vamporphyric can we PLEASE have alex be yuri for the ddlc + dftm crossover au

PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE CAN GIVE HIM MASSIVE TITTIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[heartbeatbookclub]

There's a lot of ambiguity present in DDLC, and although + does elaborate on a lot of it, it presents some new ambiguity, too. I've already discussed the Protagonist and his entire existence, but I think something people don't even really think about is Natsuki's home life.

In case that doesn't make it obvious, CW: this mini-essay is going to talk a lot about abuse. Take care of yourselves.

Within the original Doki Doki Literature Club, there's an inherent uncertainty in the actual degree to which Monika is personally manipulating the other girls. It's somewhat unclear whether or not Monika is directly manufacturing unappealing traits to give to everyone else, or if she's just exaggerating problems that were already there to the point of catastrophe. In other words, it's unclear as to exactly how much of the game from its outset was something which would happen naturally, or an element of Monika's manipulation.

I think that Plus simultaneously plays into this ambiguity and clarifies a lot of it. There are definitely gray areas left, but the Side Stories in particular answer a lot of questions.

I think what the Side Stories are intent on doing is showcasing all of the girls as characters independent of any potential 4th wall/Monika meddling, and it answers a lot of questions regarding the true depth of each of the girls independent of that manipulation. This includes Monika, actually, and I think what it displays is that Monika's manipulation is far reaching, but she worked with material which was already there.

I've already discussed how the Protagonist is implied to exist within the Side Stories, but vitally, the Side Stories indicate the raw personality (and problems, motivations, etc) of every one of the girls. This includes Monika, and I think makes for a very interesting character study for how Monika became who she is in the main game. That's something I played with a good bit in Coil, if you haven't read it. Monika isn't aware she's being watched and in fact isn't aware of any of the nature of her reality, and thusly puts significantly more of who she actually is as a flawed person on display.

I'm digressing, but only a little bit. Something else this clarifies is the question I asked earlier regarding whether or not Monika was explicitly adding negative traits to the other girls, though it isn't an exact answer: Sayori does have a lot of the same mental health issues displayed in the main game, though clearly not to the same degree. Yuri clearly demonstrates a more obsessive personality, but it's in more of an autistic hyperfixation "I am incredibly passionate about my interests and will talk about them for hours if you don't shut me up" kind of way. I think there's definitely still some factors which are up in the air about Yuri (knives...that's all I'll say), but I think it's clear to see the basis of what was done to her here.

And Natsuki is, well...still pretty ambiguous.

I should be clear; Natsuki's raw personality is still very readily apparent here, and it does do a great deal of exploration of her character, showcasing the real depth of who she is and why she acts the way she does, but there is one critical question which isn't explicitly referred to.

The obvious thing you're thinking of, probably because I mentioned it at the start. Any reference to Natsuki's home life is absent, and it was all I could think about throughout the entirety of her story.

What it's instead "replaced" by in this instance is bullying from a toxic group of mean girls esque "friends". I put replaced in quotes because they are clearly what the emphasis is placed on in lieu of an explicitly bad home life, but I'm not sure I'd call them a one to one replacement. (I put friends in quotes, because...well.)

To be more specific, I'm not sure they're a replacement at all. I think what they are is more a suggestion of deeper issues Natsuki has.

I think Natsuki's behavior and overall attitude when talking about her other friends is very telling with regards to how she views relationships in general. Her immediate knee-jerk reaction whenever anyone says anything negative about them is to, in the first place, minimize anything they did or said as "just playing around", or "making fun of something stupid". Her next response is to immediately place the blame on herself for being so sensitive.

The way she immediately seeks to dismiss and push off any attempts to address any issues with how her friends treat her is heart-wrenching, and constantly blaming herself for responding poorly is doubly so. I think it's also behavior we'd commonly expect of people undergoing abuse, and I'll be frank in saying that I think that her relationship with these people isn't just toxic, it's outright emotionally abusive.

But being in one destructive relationship doesn't necessarily mean she's in another, does it? What is it about this entire situation in particular that leads me to believe there's something deeper here?

It's maybe a little bit of a stretch, but follow me here.

I think Natsuki demonstrates that she is attached to these people, despite their actions toward her. Her immediate defense of their actions, the particular way she chooses to defend them, and her intense fear to even the prospect of cutting them off tell me she doesn't want to let them go. Even further, I'd say her immediate response being to defend them when others attack them is multifaceted, and I think that one of those facets is that someone pointing out how her friends shouldn't treat her that way is probably giving voice to a feeling Natsuki herself has. I think one of the reasons she's so quick to defend them is in order to suppress her own urge to say something.

But why is she so hesitant to say something in the first place?

She doesn't want them to leave her.

This is something which, on the surface, might sound a little strange, but I think more than anything else, greater than any fear of the abuse she might endure at the hands of these heartless weirdos, is a crippling fear of being alone.

There are various things I think underline this trait, big and small (I mean, she outright brings it up when she talks about cutting them off), but I think her entire attitude regarding her friends is representative of someone who desperately wants attention from someone, anyone, whether positive or not. The reason she places all of the blame on herself and defends all of their actions is because she thinks if she brings it up at all, they won't want to hang out with her anymore. She's the problem, because she can't bring herself to put up with it, but she doesn't want them to leave her.

And I think that this, in conjunction with a lot of other elements to her personality, indicate that Natsuki likely doesn't have a very kind home life, either.

I think the biggest thing that illustrates this to me is her sheer willingness to treat the entire situation as normal. To everybody else looking at Natsuki's situation from the outside, particularly as she describes and defends a variety of their actions, it's blatantly obvious what's happening, and Natsuki finds herself confused not only over how other people respond, but how she herself feels.

The amount of time she spends excusing the emotional torment they put her through, and her constant insistence that this is normal, and that she's perfectly fine, she just needs to grow a thicker skin, demonstrate to me that Natsuki doesn't really have a good concept of what "normal" is. I don't think this is all just a conscious denial of reality; I think she genuinely has trouble understanding what's wrong with the situation, beyond that they're acting mean towards her.

"It's just the way things are!"

"I'm the only one who ever has a problem with it."

I think her ready ability to normalize this kind of abuse speaks volumes to how she views relationships in general. I think this is indicative that she doesn't have many good models for what a "normal", healthy relationship would be.

I think that a lot of Natsuki's broader personality, particularly in how she responds to the situation with her friends, and Monika and Sayori's attempts to connect with her, is a pretty fair indication that she doesn't really have a good space outside of her interactions with people at school.

I'm, rather ironically, finding it increasingly difficult to really express everything which showcases it to me in a way which all fits together nicely, but I think if nothing else, that's the point I really want to drive home. It really seems to me based on the way that Natsuki acts that at the very least, she doesn't have a good, safe space at home.

If she did, she would have a much better point of reference for all of this, and I don't think she would be so quick to trap herself in this situation. I think that a big reason she turns to the Literature Club and is so insistent on trying to be friends with everybody in it, despite herself, despite all of the problems and conflicts they have, is because she's desperately searching for a safe place where she can just be herself.

I think she constantly feels like she needs to be on the defensive--in my opinion, a big part of why she finds it so hard to just be nice, outside of something simple like baking for other people, is because her only experience is other people being mean to her, and needing to make a biting comment back. I think that's also why it's so difficult for her to accept others being kind to her: She is so used to just shutting out other people and ignoring them because they're mean to her, that when someone is nice to her, despite her desire to accept it and return it in kind, she instinctively snaps at it, because if she lets anyone in, if she shows any sign of vulnerability, someone will hurt her. Maybe she'll have to admit that the other things people said hurt her, too.

It's like a feral kitten instinctively clawing and biting at the hand of someone just trying to pet it. It's so unusual to them that someone could touch them for any reason other than to hurt them that they feel the need to strike first, until they eventually realize there's nothing to be afraid of.

I think that all of this, in conjunction with how everything else in the Side Stories is presented in reference to the original game, suggest that Natsuki likely doesn't have a very good situation at home.

I think it's vitally important to acknowledge that most people's perception of Natsuki's home life, if it's at all fleshed out, is based on fanon, not canon, similarly to how this whole analysis is really just fan theorizing, and not necessarily 100% accurate. While there are certainly some things explicitly said in the main game, we don't know all of the particulars which go into her home life, and I think this is another example of intentional gaps left by canon that I talked about in my blurb on the Protagonist.

In this case, from what we're able to glean about Natsuki's home, her father is the main parental figure in her life (At the very least, there is no mention of her mother {to my knowledge, it's been a while since I played it}), and from Act 1, he's implied to be extremely strict. Details here are actually one of the reasons I assume this to be correct, because explicitly, Natsuki keeps her manga collection in the clubroom because she doesn't want her dad to find it. In Act 2, this is pushed even further, which is where we get a certain famous line about him physically abusing her, but of course, it's more likely that this is Monika's doing.

I think it's virtually impossible to get an actual understanding of Natsuki's home situation in the Side Stories, because...well, they don't bring it up, but I think it's safe to say that there is reason to believe it's not good. I think it isn't as bad as it is in Act 2, but judging by how things play out in Natsuki's story across the Side Stories...well, let's just say I'm glad she has the Literature Club.

I think excluding any mention of this is probably intentional too, and not because it's an intentional gap being left. I think it would be incredibly out of character based on what we've seen of Natsuki here for her to bring it up at all, both because of her warped sense of normal, and because she wouldn't want everybody around her worrying about it.

This is a subject for fanfiction, I think. Is that foreshadowing? Who knows.