#this fandom seems to gloss over how fucked up this entire part of the plot was
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the second arc of hellsing
#another horrible creation on my behalf#loud warning i think#oh and of course creds to pebblezone for the inspo bc i need to hop back on seras radiohead grindset#alu was just taking a slight detour heehee#he was on his carnival cruise#honestly tho#this fandom seems to gloss over how fucked up this entire part of the plot was#i dont want this to seem tasteless i literally struggle with episode 7 i just skip most of it when i rewatch so#this is honestly coping with humor#so yay to progress!#hellsing#seras victoria#alucard hellsing
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L0ne St@r 2x12 Hate Watch
DO NOT REBLOG THIS ONE - thanks, I’m trying to fly under the radar with my negative opinions here
Usual disclaimer, and I mean it this time: If you watch and love this show, that’s great and I hope you continue to enjoy it. Please don’t read this - simply go about having a lovely day.
If you do love this show and T*rlos and are braving this anyway - do not come in here. I mean it. This is not a T*rlos friendly zone. I do not ship it. Please enjoy your ship in peace and harmony. I have no intention of getting into arguments with anyone, I will simply ignore you.
I have done everything I can to avoid this showing up in the tags, whatever the LS tags are. Don’t send me hate on anon because I’ll delete them; I don’t care if you think I should stop watching the show, I’m not gonna. I like to suffer.
Eddie Diaz for calm and strength and to centre ourselves:
Hate, as always, under the cut:
Let's do this fucking thing, I've heard bad things about this episode
And I already know I'm wrong about the arsonist which is ANNOYING but maybe also too obvious so that's okay, I also know who the arsonist is and all the main plot points but I’ve still got to watch it to really appreciate the subtle nuances of the episode:
Oooh Billy
I ship it
Billwen for the win
This show is so dumb
Billy is smarter than Owen, maybe he should be the captain of the 126
I miss his lightning scars though
He's TWO HOURS LATER FOR DINNER
TK is looking as bland as always
They seriously waited for two fucking hours for this guy
Maybe should've put some deodorant on before going to dinner there Owen
You know I can't imagine the OG doing a storyline as dumb as this
So Carlos' dad thinks it's someone who works at the 126 or just a firefighter in general?
Well gosh darn it, it looks like Owen fits that profile exactly!
At least we get some Judd early in the episode and I love him
Angela Bassett is executive producer on this show as well? I hope she gets paid cash money for this
Billy is the red herring and I fell right into their trap
I just really wanted it to be him
Ooh Grace was listening
Oh it's 100% the arson investigator and Billy is 100% turning Owen in, I love him
Billy is amazing
He's my favourite character on this show
I hope he's not working with Owen to get the arson investigator? I hope he's actually this devious
I want him to be THIS DEVIOUS
Why the fuck does Owen wear that hoodie everywhere
TK is now having a little bitch fit
"they can't do that, can they?" he asks in a monotone, his face blank and devoid of expression
TK's real real dumb
Oh ho ho is this the shoving scene
IT IS
God Ronen CANNOT ACT
Okay so while I think it is wildly unbelievable that they would send TK's boyfriend to tell him that his father had been arrested by HIS father – it seems like a conflict – I would like to say that Carlos is being calm and reasonable
And TK is acting like a little BITCH
This is escalating quickly
Oh TK you so dumb
THE SHOVING
Wow
FOUR TIMES
Wow
Your fave is problematic, yo
Carlos deserves better than this whiny little piece of shit
And now, an interlude while I rant:
Let's talk about how Eddie Diaz yelled at Buck once in a supermarket and the fandom has never forgotten it; how his character has been villainised despite everything else going on in the show at the time, for that one fucking scene – let's talk about all the fics where Eddie hits Buck, or punches him, or rapes him – because you know those fics exist – let's talk about the "Eddie is violent" narrative that parts of this fandom like to push because Eddie yelled at Buck, one time, once, in a supermarket
Totally ignoring the fact that at no point at all, in any other episode he’s been in, has he been violent towards Buck, at all - let’s talk about how the street fighting arc was out of character for Eddie, because he was struggling to cope and looking for an outlet - let’s talk about how Buck and Eddie moved past that whole storyline and strengthened their relationship; how they built a family together, how they’re a team and they have each other’s backs no matter what, and how, not once in the entire show, have they ever been violent towards each other or pushed each other around in anger - NOT ONCE.
And let's talk about this scene, where TK, ya boy, ya sweet tender boy, just shoved the man he says he loved four times, violently, in front of people at the firehouse.
I betcha any money he doesn’t get tarnished with the Eddie-Diaz-is-violent brush, because he can do no wrong. He’s the fan favourite, and this is totally glossed over by the end of the episode and nothing will ever be said about it ever again.
Because wow, you guys. Wow. If this was my ship, I’d be pissed.
Back to the hate watch:
And I know that whole fight is for nothing because I know the plot twist – I know that the dads are working together in order to reveal the real arsonist, the investigator – so they've basically turned their children, who are in a relationship, against each other?
Also why is Billy allowed to be watching the interview?
Goddamn do we really have to show the gruesome burn victim photos
I really want Billy to be devious by the way, and not in on the plan
Oh here comes TK, looking like the little bitch he is
God he's a fucking awful actor
This is the dumbest plotline ever
Equating OWEN STRAND WITH THOR? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
BLASPHEMY
THOR IS THE GOD OF THUNDER
OWEN IS A DUMBASS
THE TWO ARE NOT EQUAL
Uh oh here comes the evil investigator
Do either of these men – Owen and Carlos' dad – stop to consider that what they're doing has kind of an impact on their children, who are currently in a relationship? No? Okay
Because this is one hell of an awkward situation
Does Owen genuinely think that Billy is the arsonist?
Interesting that the arson investigator wants any info Owen didn't give Carlos' dad, and he turned off the cameras/mics etc
This show is stupid
Arson investigator also knows that the sons are dating, interesting
"And you can pound sand!" oooh great comeback Owen
This episode is so BORING OMG
Why the fuck am I watching a shitty Law & Order knock-off when I should be watching a bonkers 911 episode
Oh no Judd's at Billy's
I really do think Billy Burke is good looking and it is a flaw of mine, I don't know what it is about him and he really doesn't look that good in this show but I really love Billy Burke okay
And I WANT HIM TO BE DEVIOUS
Oh Judd
Oh Judd thinks Billy is the arsonist
See this is why YOU DON'T LIE TO THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU
Oh he punched him
God damn everyone is violent in this show
Judddddddddddddd
Uh oh here comes trouble to the "vagrant's" hospital room
Oh it's the arson investigator, their little bluff worked, incredible, amazing, flawless etc
Wow how amazing
It was the ol' switcheroo
Judd punched Billy for nothing
TK and Carlos nearly came to blows for nothing
Now Owen is allowed to watch the interrogation? They'll just let anyone watch those things these days
OH MAN ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT BILLY WAS IN ON IT WITH OWEN THE WHOLE TIME?
Damn it I wanted DEVIOUS god damn it
Fucking cowards
"I assumed it was probably a trap at the hospital which is why I went there anywhere"
But why is he lighting fires
A FEW MONTHS?
A man is dead
Pure theatre
So annoyed that Billy isn't devious
But the Billwen ship sails on, clowns 🤡
Do we think the arsonist has the hots for Owen? 100% yes, right?
He's very happy to see him wink wonk
This doesn't even feel like an episode of 911, it's so goddamn dumb
"I knew you had darkness in you too" – that dude definitely wants to fuck him
Why is he lighting the fires?
They're so dumb
"And now I'm going to repay the favour" – he's talking about YOUR SONS
WHO HE KNOWS ARE TOGETHER
Wow these two dumbasses really have no fucking idea do they
OH HE'S BURNING HIMSELF ALIVE
Wow this is graphic
What the fuck is up with this show and the horribly graphic scenes lately?
That dude is dead yo
"Take away everything that's important to me" AND HE CALLS THE FIREHOUSE FIRST
THE FIREHOUSE IS THE FIRST FUCKING CALL???
Oh okay it did blow up and TK was there so I'll allow it
But hey look on the bright side – Owen gets to remodel again!
And isn't that what he's the best at?
Yo your firehouse is on fire dudes, better call the fire department
Does Judd apologise to Billy or no
Oh here we have TK and Carlos and their perfect love
And Carlos is the one apologising?
No.
Please tell me no
Carlos you are allowed to be pissed at him – ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME
"nobody has to apologise?"
YOUR BOYFRIEND PUSHED YOU AROUND
Oh my god
Wow
Okay.
Look I'm just saying that to me this would be a GIGANTIC RED FLAG but wtf do I know
I'm just saying because I have to – if Carlos was a woman and TK did that? Whole different story gang
Whole completely different mother-fucking story
This show, wow
Wow.
Wow. This is bad.
Domestic violence happens to men too, just saying.
Wow I'm so annoyed that I've paused it to type furiously and rant that wow, they're just not acknowledging that TK was totally out of line? Okay. Wow.
And everyone's just fine with it?
Oh they're just figuring out that he set more than one fire
Maybe there's something else you care about other than the firehouse, Owen
Maybe?
BILLY IS THE ONE WHO FIGURES IT OUT
See this is why Billy is the best
Oh no TK and Carlos are in danger
Oh it's so romantic isn't it? They're gonna fuck now that everything is okay
Wow he left a lot of bombs in Carlos' house
Damn Carlos is hot
No smoke alarms?
That fire has really taken ahold there guys
I'm gonna assume you do have smoke alarms and he disconnected them
Wow he really covered all bases didn't he
Put the bombs in the bedroom as well
RIP Carlos' nice house
"I love you too" after I violently shoved you around today
Oh who needs a fucking fire department when you've got Owen fucking Strand right?
"Carlos" he says flatly. "How are you doing?" he asks in a monotone
"I should've had an extinguisher in the bedroom" DUDE NO ONE DOES
And if TK wanted one in there, he's the fucking firefighter, he should've checked when he moved in instead of assuming like a dumbass
God this show is dumb as fuck and I hate it so much
Billwen for the win
"just a couple of crap magnets" fucking a-men Judd
This show sucks
Oh no TOMMY OH NO
WHAT'S HAPPENING
OH MY GOD
WHAT THE FUCK
What the fuck
Is he dead?
TAKE OWEN AND TK INSTEAD
I’m going to say one more thing about this T*rlos storyline - if they’d done this to Buck & Eddie in the OG, I’d be fucking devastated. Like... if Buck or Eddie pushed the other around the way TK pushed Carlos around, I’d be absolutely gutted. It’s really horrible that they went down that path - whether it’s OOC or not, and you can probably argue that it is - they shouldn’t have included the scene like that in the show.
It just raises a whole slew of questions, like... is TK violent? Is Carlos used to being pushed around in relationships? Is the show saying that it’s okay that they got a little physical because they’re both men? Domestic violence is never okay, and this is kind of... saying that it is, in certain circumstances?
That is problematic as fuck and such bad writing.
These two are in a relationship where they are living together and supposedly love each other, and this is how the writers choose to portray it? If you’re a T*rlos shipper and you’re upset about this episode, I get it. It’s really fucking terrible that they included that scene - and I would bet cold hard cash it’ll never be addressed again.
This is why LS is a bad show. It’s shitty writing. Shitty storylines. Characters who are interesting are shoved into the background and glossed over in favour of the male white characters. The OG doesn’t have this problem - for everyone complaining that Eddie hasn’t been featured as much this season (and yeah, I hate it too) - you can’t complain that the characters of colour don’t get equal screentime.
With LS - it’s the Rob Lowe show, and everyone else is just in the background. And that’s why it’s so frustrating to watch - they have a great cast, and this could be a really good show, but it’s just not.
Do you think the LS writers patted themselves on the back after this arc and were like, "yeah we nailed it, we're amazing?"
This episode is -1,000000/10. This show should be cancelled.
Two god awful miserable fucking episodes to go.
Diaz to cleanse:
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Redemption arcs and Jonerys
So, I’ve had a few comments on my recent Tormund story that got me to thinking and I wanted to share this with you guys. I’ve had a few people ask me “how can you possibly put Jon and Dany together after he tries to kill her?” And I guess my answer for this comes from my shipping past.
Some of you may know by now that I was/am a Dramione shipper (Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger - Harry Potter) from starting in like 2002/2003 and I wrote the most recent fic for them in 2017. I don’t actively write for that ship anymore but I do still read stuff from my favorite authors. But I’ve digressed.
So, all those years spent in the Dramione fandom I had to find ways to work around the fact that Draco Malfoy is essentially a bad guy and Hermione Granger is the golden girl. So, let’s look at their pasts. Draco was raised in a wealthy Pureblood family who believe that only Purebloods should be allowed to do magic. He’s a bigot. He’s a bully. He’s basically a shitty human being. Then you have Hermione who champions House Elf rights, helps Hagrid with his case for Buckbeak, is the smartest witch in an age and is the exact thing Draco grew up hating: a Muggleborn. But I shipped them because I saw little sparks of there being something more to Draco than meets the eye. We know Draco became a Death Eater, those who sought out Muggleborns and killed them, but there were so many interactions with Hermione that left you going ‘huh, maybe there’s something there’.
To be a Draco/Hermione fan, I had to find LEGITIMATE ways to work with the source material, which I usually did. I was one of those people who thumped my dog earred, comments in the margins books screaming that it was canon and the movies were someone’s interpretation. It was always about a redemption arc for Draco. Hermione would never be with him how he was, so there were things in the stories where he had to grow. That was always the fun part, exploring the growth.
All that being said, I think it’s why I can find a way for Jon and Dany to still be together. A this point, I’m going to put up the hide content thing cause I’m going to get into the spoilers for the last episode.
So, according to the spoilers, Dany is killed by Jon. She just committed mass genocide, and Jon kills her. While I think what Dany did was reprehensible, having Jon kill Dany is an enormous hurdle to climb in terms of suspension of disbelief. Could she ever forgive him for that? Could he ever get over what she did?
I’m approaching it thinking that there is a redemption arc on both sides. When Dany and co attack King’s Landing, she’s had a rough fucking time lately. The man she loves tells her that not only does he have a better claim to the things she’s worked and suffered for her entire life, but he’s pulling away from her because of the relationship (which makes no sense in a feudal system as aunts and nephews being icky is very much a Western thing). She’s losing her lifeline that she developed to cope with the new world she was living in. She lost a dragon to save his life, she opened herself up to him, fell in love with him, and he pushed her away. She might have been able to tolerate all the other heartbreak if she felt like she truly have one person on her side who still loved and believed in her. The man she wanted to cling to when it seemed like the world was crumbling down upon her. She lost her oldest friend in Jorah, who died in her arms after giving his life to protect her, she lost the intimacy she had with Jon, she lost another dragon (her child) and was helpless to stop it, and she lost her closest friend in the world, Missandei. All of those deaths were traumatic for her to witness. She’s seen trauma, but she had never experienced it to such a degree as she had these last few episodes. She lost her husband and child but walked out of the fire with three dragons. I’m not saying they are a substitute for a live, flesh and blood child, but they did bring her comfort and a purpose, as did the people that stuck with her.
I’ll also say that when she had it confirmed that Sansa told Tyrion about Jon, it confirmed that Jon had done the one thing she had begged him not to do. BEGGED. We’ve seen Dany pretty low in this series. She didn’t beg Khal Drogo not to rape her. She didn’t beg Viserys not to sell her. She didn’t beg in the House of the Undying or to the Dothraki. She was not a person who begged anyone for anything. But she begged the man she loved not to tell this secret that would not only ruin her claim but put her life in danger. He told someone she already recognized as her enemy, that he was naive enough to trust. Sansa didn’t tell Tyrion because she thought Daenerys was unjust. She told Tyrion for the very reasons that Daenerys said, she knew he would spread it without her having to tell anyone else. She knows Varys is plotting against her. She knows Tyrion has at least thought about it. The only other person she has to lean on is Grey Worm and he’s seething in rage and hurt just as she is. So, when Dany starts burning innocent people, it’s not Dany anymore. It’s a shell of Dany. The real Dany made points along the way about preserving the innocent and especially children. It’s easy to say, “Oh she snapped” but maybe she really did snap.
Then we have Jon. She still loves him. Know that he sold her out to Sansa, she still loved him and wanted to be with him. He was still her lifeline. So, now, that the rumor is that Jon kills her, is seized by Grey Worm and forced to take the Black, you also set up a redemption arc for Jon. Because while Daenerys did do something horrible, her death didn’t prevent her from doing it. It’s not like Jaime killing the mad king. This is if Jaime had killed him after the fact. We have Jon betraying Daenerys and killing her. Jon not only becomes a Queenslayer/Kinslayer, but he also becomes an Oathbreaker. That’s the biggest disservice done to Jon Snow besides making him virtually ineffective throughout this season. Jon Snow has proven to be an honorable man. He values that more than just about anything and to have him kill a woman he loves, his family, too, just feels like it goes beyond whatever feels right.
I think that’s the part people are taking issue with. How could Dany ever forgive him for trying to kill her? The truth is she probably shouldn’t. How could she trust that he would never do it again? The truth is she probably shouldn’t. But I think if these two found one another in a different time, in different circumstances, where they had both made mistakes, done things they regretted and hated, then it would change things drastically.
But I got back to a redemption arc. So, let’s assume Dany doesn’t die but lives through it, which if we believe what happens, Drogon takes her body and leaves. She could still be alive. She wouldn’t embrace him with open arms. That’s illogical. And no matter how she might have felt about him, there’s no erasing what he did for the “greater good”. And as for Jon, she’s not the woman he fell in love with. It would take them being isolated again. Jon and Dany always connected better diplomatically and otherwise when they were alone, without the counsel of others. I think that’s where you start. You have to make it realistic. You have to acknowledge what they’ve both done to bring them to that point.
Glossing over Dany's madness doesn't make what she did less terrible or make it not happen. Glossing over Jon killing Daenerys doesn’t make it less terrible or make it not happen. The point, for me at least and how I’m coping with this is how do they get beyond that? Can they? Is there a middle ground to be found? Is there a catalyst that brings them together? Is there something more than what meets the eye? It doesn’t have to end just because D&D lost their fucking minds and forgot who these characters are and their journeys. Instead, embrace what happened and write something compelling. Hell, they might not end up together, but there could be something more. Explore it. Roll around in it. Invest in it.
Now, I realize I’ve rambled but my ultimate point is I am a firm believer in redemption arcs. It’s why I grew to love Theon and Jaime(less Jaime now). People are capable of growing and learning from their mistakes, but these are more than just mistakes for Jon and Dany. They are huge milestones in their lives. Conscious choices each of them made that they will have to live with for the rest of their lives. And personally, I’m exploring that in my Tormund fic from his POV.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents.
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Chapters: 10/10
Fandom: Dragon Ball
Rating: Mature
Summary:
Unwittingly, Vegeta and Bulma come together to seal a fragile treaty between unlikely allies. Both have much to gain and much to compromise.
It is an arrangement of convenience. They collaborate, and each gets what they need. Attachment is not part of the agreement. They certainly don't have to like each other. They barely need to interact to reach their intertwined goal. They just need to stay focused.
But, focus can become... elusive, when your enforced not-really-your-spouse is so damned—
—distracting!
A lot of people like this fic! I read it MONTHS ago and then over on The Prince and the Heiress Discord we are doing a Fic Club (which is basically a book club, but for VegeBul fics). If you are interested in participating, while I am dumb and don't know how to post a Discord link, but here is one to the TPTH Tumblr, which has a discord invite I think.
Now, on to my thoughts, below the cut!
First and foremost, I am TRASH for some of the tropes in this fic. Like, arranged marriage that turns into love? YES. Hard, bad man who won't tell anyone except his woman that he's a big teddy bear? FUUUCK YES. Wonderful characterizations and deep world building??? YES YES YES!!!!
And lets be honest, @rutbisbe drew some amazing art for this fic... which is what drew me to the story in the first place! I mean... I needed to know what amazing story brought me this amazing picture of Vegeta playing with Scratch.
It might be one of my absolute favorite pieces of fan art for a Fic ever.
But I digress, this is not about Rut’s amazing art, it is of course about the story!
I would like to begin with something I loved, but also low key hated about this fic. This world was so rich and beautifully designed. Like the writer worked SO HARD to create a rich Saiyan heritage and it is wonderful to see what different writers come up with in regards to Saiyan culture, which is something I love about the AU’s that have all the Saiyans alive. The stuff that the writer came up with was just fantastic. From King Vegeta bonding with Vegeta over riddles, to the Trials, and the Mating ritual, it really felt like this story was being built up to some sort of epic in which we eventually see Trunks going off to Trials, and Bulma and Vegeta dealing with the stress and aftermath of this practice. While I enjoy all of this information, it was painful to read in context of the story. It almost seemed like the writer got this fantastic idea for some culture, and threw it on the paper. So much of the Saiyan Culture is explored through these huge exposition dumps that have little to do with the plot. It gives backstory and maybe some insight to character motivation, but it is delivered in a dump of information. I feel like the information would have worked better and kept flow of the story if it were delivered in bits and pieces throughout a chapter or even the entire story. It also felt almost like the writer was trying to pad her chapters to make them longer with the inclusion of this information and it just didn't work for me.
Not to beat a dead horse, but another thing that bothered me was that while it seemed like the trials were this huge important part of the story, there was no real use of them after the info dump. The ONE bit of info dump that I felt was central to the story, was just glossed over. The Mating ritual necklace. Like I wanna know more about it. Do all families have this? Is there some other significance? A vow? is it just fucking with the necklace? I mean.. inquiring minds need to know!
I have one more criticism then we will get to my favorite parts of this story. I realize I will probably sound like a heartless bitch here, but I mean.. Bitch is in my username so what are you looking for here? The story started off SO WELL. The flow was fantastic, the story felt multifaceted. There was character interactions that felt real. And then a few chapters in, it just lost the spark the story had in the beginning. It began to feel like there was more filler and that it rushed to the ending. It seemed like the story just needed to be over. Now I realize that in the AN there are some issues that were addressed and maybe the author just needed to be done with the story to deal with their own real life problems. and I get that. but I feel like the story really really suffered because of that. Do I blame the author? Hell no. Real Life definitely comes before fandom. but it is something I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't say anything about it in this review.
With that out of the way, what was fantastic about the story? The characters were characterized really well and were kept in character throughout the story. The world was built really well (I just feel like the delivery of the information was BLAH). I wanna talk about a few moments that I really loved. First: Bulma is giving birth to Trunks and she mother fucking orders King Vegeta away via ChiChi. She pulls out her formal title and ancient Saiyan law. It is a fantastic scene. One of the best in the whole fic, and if you don't read anything else, you need to read it. It’s at the end of Chapter 8, you're welcome.
I also loved (obviously) the scene where Vegeta is playing with Scratch. But I'm kinda a whore for Vegeta being soft for animals. I love the idea of them bonding over fucking exercising, and how freaking sadistic Bulma is when it comes to Vegeta and those gravity cuffs. Also the scene where Vegeta has just gotten blown up in the gravity room is just really wonderful. I feel like this particular description is a little artsy for the audience, but other than that I loved the scene and smelling colors and such (this description “Sound was the screeching banshee of stereocilia”. please just tell us that every sound was fucking loud and hurt his ears, this was too much)
If it was not obvious already, I am not a huge fan of this story because it feels SO rushed, and this world is so rich and developed and it just ends. like build this world, and extend it beyond this Freeza conquest... and then you open the story up to so much more than a Freeza defeat story. Like I wanna see how not being a slave by Freeza has changed Vegeta, and I wanna see how Trunks gets raised in this hybrid Earth/Vegeta-sei world.
But I digress - This writer really knows how to write slice of life. I want so many more moments of real life between Vegeta and Bulma. That is really the shining star of the whole fic, and it is the thing that kept me reading till the end. If what you re looking for is a fic that has moments of brilliance, then this fic is for you. I hesitantly recommend this fic, but mostly because I had some issues reading it myself (mostly when it comes to the exposition dumps and later conflicts). The world is really well built, the writing is good, but there are problems.
If you liked this review, after you check out this fic, head over to my A03 and check my stuff out too!
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I'm sorry, I know I don't usually post discourse on my blog. I'm just... really hurt right now.
At the age of 24, after spending my entire childhood forcing myself to believe I was straight because that's what my family and religion said I was supposed to be, I finally acknowledged that I was bisexual. Even then, I was still second-guessing myself: What if I only think I'm bisexual because the internet/social media makes it seem like the "In" thing? What if my sexuality is just a mask and not who I really am? What if, what if, what if. It was hard.
Then I saw Voltron. Lance seemed to have a bisexuality arc laid out for him, and it was obvious that he didn't quite know he was bi and/or wasn't emotionally ready to acknowledge it.
That was just so validating. It made me happy to know that being confused about your sexuality -- not being sure if you're the sexuality you think you might be -- was common enough to include it in a kid's show and it made me feel so much better! I was so happy, and with Lance's help (and the help of my friends and therapist), I was able to finally accept my sexuality for what it was. And I'm an adult. Think about how many kids his arc could have helped! Kids who were questioning, kids who were unsure, kids that might not being surrounded by a good support system and have to hide who they are. Lance was shaping up to be someone kids could really look up, admire, and in turn accept themselves for they are because of him.
And now that's washed down the drain. It meant so much to me, perhaps meant so much to a lot of kids that needed that role model, but it clearly meant nothing to the writers and that is just so disheartening.
This isn't even about shipping. I love K/ance with all my heart, but I would be okay with any endgame ship so long as it was written well. This includes keeping the characters in-character and allowing the romance to help in their character development. Keith was the most likely candidate -- he really did make Lance a better person and vice versa -- but if someone else filled that role and filled it well, I would have been perfectly fine with that! But that's not what we got. Instead, the boy who has been insecure ALL SERIES has to spend his only romance building up his partner and have that not be reciprocated. That most-likely-candidate boosted him up more than Lance's actual romantic partner, and that is just bad writing. That's not a good relationship. Relationships are two-way streets; you can't have only one of the partners be supportive -- they have to be EQUALLY supportive. And A//urance was not that. A//urance was rushed, did not help the characters develop in the slightest, and took away TWO great role models.
I don't like Allura. I think I've made this clear before, but I really don't like her. I was neutral to her in s1, then the whole Not-All-Galra arc happened in s2 and my opinion of her started going down at that point.
But she didn't deserve the hand she was dealt. She was the only woman of color in the main cast, and they KILL HER??? WHY????? I may not have liked her, but that doesn't mean she was a bad character! On the contrary, she was a great role model and I'm sure many girls of color looked up to her. And then they just kill her? First they take away the great role model Lance could have been as a confused bisexual character, and then they take away the only woman of color on the main cast. WHAT. THE. FUCK. You can't just do that! I feel so horrible for the kids who looked up to those characters only to have it all ripped out from under their feet.
Oh, but there was a random gay wedding at the end, so that makes it alllllllll better~
Except it doesn't. Adding in a gay wedding/kiss with little-to-no build-up is more likely to cause confusion than anything else. And it doesn't erase how dirty they did Lance and Allura. Both characters deserved better.
On the topic of shipping, yes, it was queerbait. I refused to believe the showrunners were doing that -- I absolutely refused because I trusted the showrunners completely. Surely they wouldn't have ALL OF THESE ROMANTIC PARALLELS between K/L with other canon romantic couples for nothing. Surely they wouldn't have developed K/L's relationship more than any other relationship unless there was a really good reason for it. SURELY THEY WOULDN'T BE OKAY WITH VAGUING ABOUT THE SHIP MULTIPLE TIMES AND BEING OKAY WITH DW USING K/L FOR MARKETING PURPOSES IF IT WASN'T GOING TO HAPPEN.
But nope. All of the media techniques to subtly hint at a romance used specifically for K/L meant nothing. It was just bros being bros nothing gay here.
And that is BULLSHIT.
Honestly, the whole season just screams, "SHOCK VALUE," to me. They wanted to shock people, but I don't think they really considered the repercussions of how they were doing it. I get shock value, bringing up the interest and encouraging audiences to rewatch the series to understand why the shock was actually built-up from the beginning, but there's right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. Voltron took the wrong way and screwed it up royally.
To be clear, I am not against straight ships. Far from it, some of my favorite ships are heterosexual. Nor do I fetishize mlm relationships -- K/L is only the second mlm relationship I've come to really love (the first being Hau and Gladion from Pokemon Sun & Moon). It's just that K/L really struck a chord with me and with so many other people, and to take that away for the sake of a straight ship and some shitty shock value? Dirty thing to do to the show's audience. Don't build up proper LGBT+ rep UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING HAVE IT. The only rep? Shiro, and a hastily-added Zethrid/Ezor ship. Blaytz, too, but that was glossed over tbh and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the audience (not on tumblr because we analyze everything to death lol) completely forgot about Blaytz's interaction with that make Galra. That's not proper rep. That's throwing it in and thinking, "It exists so our job is done."
Media in general has being doing LGBT+ rep dirty for SO LONG. Even when we had positive LGBT+ characters in media, they were still characters based off of gay stereotypes. They were good positive characters, but were still perpetuating a certain bias against LGBT+ by displaying these stereotypes as fact. Times are supposed to be different now. We're supposed to be progressing, making it BETTER. I really thought Voltron was going to be part of that progress, that it would give us a well-written, well-developed, well-loved LGBT+ representation for kids of this generation to look up to and admire and learn acceptance -- about themselves and about others -- from. Instead, the showrunners three half-assed, tacked on LGBT+ reps and called it a day.
THAT'S NOT COOL.
This isn't about ships. This is about proper media representation for the LGBT+ community -- something that is really scarce, even now -- and how it affects the LGBT+ community when it's done badly. This also goes for racial rep. You can take two misrepresented groups and treat them horribly and then call it good rep. IT ISN'T. The poor representation of the LGBT+ community has proved to be detrimental in society's view of them. THIS DOESN'T HELP.
*sigh*
Off the topic of that, can we talk about how shit the writing was? Because it was really shit.
I'll admit that while I like s7, it wasn't written amazingly-well. Still, it wasn't bad and did have plenty of interesting episodes. Even with all of the asspulls we got in the last episode, it was still awesome because we got to see Shiro back in his element after losing almost everything in prior seasons. It was a mix of good writing and bad writing, but the good writing made up for the bad.
The seasons previous to that were well-done. Maybe not s4, but the other seasons were well-written and really enjoyable! There's a reason the show took off; the plot maybe standard, but the characters, character dynamics, and relationships were fantastic and were the true driving force behind the series and its success.
So why was s8 so all over the place? Why were plot threads that had been hinted at or outright confirmed left hanging or tied together hastily? So many things were alluded to in previous seasons only to lead to NOTHING. WHY???
Why did everyone BUT Lance get an arc?
What was the point of Lance getting a sword if it was never going to be brought up again?
Why was Keith's arc suddenly thrown to the wayside?
Why did Allura have to DIE for her arc to reach its conclusion?
WHY?
So many people complained about bad writing in Voltron, but I had always believed that the writing in Voltron was relatively good. Sure, it had its problems (like the entirety of s4, and the MFEs being boring as shit), but it was mostly a well-rounded show with well-rounded characters.
And s8... just threw all of that away.
All of that potential, all of those good arcs -- wasted.
The writing went downhill SO fast, and it's just such a shame. Something that meant so much to me has dissolved into the mess s8 was. It's disheartening.
I also want to apologize to all of my followers who followed me because my K/L optimism and metas. I'm sorry if I got your hopes up; I really thought K/L was the logical conclusion -- everything was building up to it, right from the first episode and even continuing in s7 (hell, even s8 added to it) -- and I truly thought the writers were going to follow through with all of the logical conclusions the previous seasons built up. I had faith in them, but I was wrong. For that, I apologize. I know it's just a cartoon show, but I also know how influential and meaningful media can be -- especially for marginalized groups -- so if my hype bringing you up made your fall harder when s8 was released, I am so sorry. You didn't deserve that; nobody in the fandom did.
I'm so jaded and disillusioned right now. Voltron has been a major inspiration for me; I originally decided to be a cartoonist to bring LGBT+ representation to children's media because of Steven Universe, but it was Voltron that really motivated me to reach that goal. I looked up to Voltron -- it was my muse, my main inspiration. I've learned so much about writing -- writing character arcs, relationships, etc. -- from Voltron and all of the analyzing people did. Seeing it devolve into what it did is upsetting. Something I loved so much has let me down, and I'm hurt and disappointed.
But more than ever, I want to create cartoons that don't do this; cartoons that tie up its loose ends, follow through with obvious character relationships, puts the main characters through complete arcs, and give proper development to them all. Cartoons that have proper LGBT+ and racial representation -- with LGBT+/characters of color that can be admired, that won't fall flat, that will teach the children of the generation about acceptance of others and acceptance of yourself regardless of sexuality, skin color, gender identity, etc. Voltron failed in that aspect; it was a compelling show that failed in everything it needed to succeed in. I refuse to make that same mistake.
With that, let's all look ahead to future and enjoy the fanworks that do these wonderful characters justice. Let Voltron's failure inspire you to create and make something better, something that will be much more impactful, much more meaningful.
Don't let it get you down; let it bring you up.
#voltron#voltron s8 spoilers#discourse#negative#im sorry to have this on my blog#but i needed to let this out#my post#reika rants
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Do you think Sansa Poole was a curse or a bliss? I think that is a bliss considering how much they fucked up Bran and Arya plots. At least we will be kept in suspense about what will actually happen in the Vale.
Dear nonny, Well, I'm not entirely sure tbh. I mean somebody (D&D?, not sure) said that Sansa won't be much longer in the Vale and that they cut that storyline short - maybe to get Sansa to the North earlier. So, all in all it has Sansa reunited with Jon and them reclaiming Winterfell. So that was good, and although I suspect Show Sansa is not as caring and kind as BookSansa is right now, it us possible that Sansa even in the books will reach that point, although I doubt that BookSansa will deed Ramsay to his dogs. Ramsay will be eaten by his dogs, I'm sure, but I think it will be more of poetic justice than Sansa doing it.So, I would argue that Sansa like Bran and Arya has been done a bad turn by the show writers. They don't seem to understand Bran's arc at all and gloss over the magic. They made Arya a killing machine who threatens to take of her sisters face (still not over that - even if it was all a play on Arya's part it was so mean to do this to a victim of Ramsay 'skinning' Bolton), whole her arc in the books is about letting go of vengeance. I must admit that ShowSansa in season 7 seems to me to be at the point where BookSansa is headed: A competent Queen loyal to her king and caring for her people. So despite the fact that the Sansa Poole arc led to Sansa's rape by Ramsay (gratuitous if you ask me) I think they managed to at least reach the point where BookSansa is headed, while I don't really recognise BookArya or BookBran...As for not knowing what will happen in the Vale, I'm not so sure. Despite purist book readers adamantly refusing to see even the remotest possibility of Sansa coming North, I think this is exactly where the Vale arc is headed. Littlefinger's plan will fall to pieces, Harry and/or Sweetrobin are going to die and Sansa will flee and be the third and real 'girl in grey'. Just my take of course. The show actually have us hints what will happen in the books despite merging Sansa and Jeyne's storylines. On the other hand Sansa Poole has led to even more Sansa hate... Ary@ stans claim Sansa has 'stolen' her storyline (how??? It is Jeyne's storyline?) and they claim that it is bs that Sansa and Jon are the first Starks to be reunited because it us clear it will be Ary@ and Jon (although the fact that Jon and Ary@ want this so much should tell you that they are not going to get it). Sansa shared screen time with Jon in season 6 - a deadly offence to any Sansa hater - and they only could reconcile themselves with this development by repeatedly claiming that Sansa hates Jon, undermines him, bullies him etc. Indeed the rumours of Sansa trying to depose Jon on season 8 have already started. And I'm do fed up with that.Of course Sansa Poole gave us the reunion of Jon and Sansa and many people beginning to look at potential Jonsa. I myself would have never looked at the book evidence for Jonsa if it weren't for season 6. I fully admit that I didn't see Jonsa before that, but revisiting the books and reading all the theories made me board the MS Jonsa... But there is also a rather big part of the fandom that makes fun of Jonsas as show viewers only. They mix up the fact that season 6 might have been an instigation to look for Jonsa foreshadowing but that doesn't mean that very real foreshadowing isn't there in the books and can be the reason why we stick to the possibility despite Jon€rys being 'fucking canon'.As you can see nonny, I'm of a mixed opinion on Sansa Poole. I doubt that without season 6 the Jonsa ship would be as big as it is now, but on the other hand it also led to even more Sansa hate (as if there hadn't been enough already) and the common conception of 'delusional, show-onlys, crack shippers, teenager, soccer mom' Jonsas. And I really wish that any of the Antis would just admit that Jonsa is a possibility... But that might mean that they would have to admit that is indeed a strong possibility.... And none of the people who thought they figured out how it is all going to end with Jon, Da€nerys and Tyrion riding on three dragons to save the world is ever going to admit that they were plain wrong or even that they might be wrong. Watch them after season 8 claiming that this is all D&D fanfiction and that none of this will ever happen in the books in a remotely similar way.Sorry, I got carried away, your ask just made me realise how much I want TWOW and the Vale story that will lead Sansa to the North and Castle Black. Thanks for the ask!,
#anon ask#Jonsa#Sansa's arc in the Vale#Girl in Grey#Sansa Stark#Show vs Books#Anti Sansa hate#sansa stark defense squad
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Top 16 Shuichi Saihara ships
Another Amino copy/paste and this probably be extremely controversial, but let’s give it a go posting it. This is my Top 16 Saihara ships, including crossover ships as an entry. And yes, this is my quick opinion and I know there will be controversial choices but I do explain my points and I am aware which choices are controversial and why. Major spoilers under the cut:
Art source: https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=62325101
Hiyo, and finally, I’ll be actually listening to my poll results. And here, I’ll be going back to discussing two things that set this fandom on fire: Shipping and opinions. Yes, I know, the horror.
If you hadn’t guessed from the title, this will be ranking the ship of Shuichi Saihara, the Super High School Level Detective. It’s 16 because Saihara is pretty much shipped with the entire cast and more.
We’ll have NDRV3 spoilers from here on out since Saihara is a major character in the game so plot and character details will be discussed. Also, I’m unsure but I’ll add the warning anyway: This list may contain the mentions of adult themes and a bit of foul language. Since the title is so straightforward, I don’t really need to explain much with this OP so let’s begin.
16.Saiharu
Let’s start with one of my least favorite ships in the series. Also known as Harusai and Saikawa, Saiharu is a really poor ship in my opinion. Pandora hearts spoilers but, for those who read it, do you remember when Sharon and Reim randomly got married at the end for no reason other than both of them being Break’s friends? That’s how this ship feels to me. Except worse.
First off, Saihara and Maki’s personalities are way too serious so despite the many interactions they have, specifically in Chapter 3, they never find any particular dynamic making their chemistry seem weak as well and almost non-existent. The only, and I do mean the only, good exchange between the two is in Chapter 3 when Maki gets mad at Saihara for the implication she’s overweight and claiming the only woman Saihara has ever touched was his mother.
So that alone makes me feel neutral, leaning towards dislike, on the ship. Their chemistry being bland as fuck. However, that’s not what seals the deal. What does that for me is in Chapter 5, Maki tells Saihara and the others that she will not go into the hanger and attack Ouma and the group decide to believe her. What does she do? Go into the hanger and attack Ouma. When the group finds out about this, they have no reaction, Saihara included. When Maki thinks she’s the killer, she tries to sacrifice everyone, Saihara included, just to make sure Ouma’s dead. She put her personal bias against Ouma over the lives of Yumeno, Kiibo and Saihara who she knew were innocent.
Normally, I’d think this would be interesting. Relationships with conflict are actually well done. However, they don’t do anything with this. They do show concern for Maki’s attempt to kill everybody but it’s glossed over too quickly to notice. After the trial, Maki talks to Saihara about Kaito and it’s supposed to be a heartfelt scene between the two but at best, it feels plastic. At worst, it feels manipulative. I can’t believe this conversation after she tried to get him and the others killed and it’s not actually brought up past this point.
My final reason is why I hate this ship is because it feels the only appeal it has is because Kaito is dead so why don’t his two best friends hook up? I hated it when Pandora hearts did it in canon(keep in mind that Pandora Hearts is my favorite series of all time) and I hate the idea of it here. Thankfully, Japan agrees with me and dislikes the ship strongly with very few fans so making them canon wouldn’t help sales very much.
15.Saiguuji
Thankfully, Saiharu is the only Saihara ship I dislike. Let’s get to this weird ship. It’s fairly popular on twitter for some odd reason and while it’s fanbase is small outside of that, it’s few fans are incredibly vocal. I am fairly neutral on this ship.
This one is really personal taste, however. I just find it weird. I understand why it’s shipped but the fanbase’s treatment of it makes it sound like a tragic and canon love story gone wrong.
Like, if you want my perception of this ship, try looking at Korekiyo’s love hotel. That is how I see this pairing. So looking at the fanbase compared to things like that, I just… Ehh?
However, the incredibly bizarre fanbase aside, I actually do enjoy the dynamic between these two in Korekiyo’s FTEs. This is where I find the major appeal of the ship and definitely my favorite part of it. Korekiyo talking about anthropology and folklore tales to Saihara who’s patiently listening is actually very nice. I can see where people are coming from when they ship this. Even Korekiyo says he finds Saihara worthy for his sister.
Another thing to bring up why I can’t really grow to like this ship is because of their main story. Not only does Saihara expose Korekiyo as the killer, Korekiyo being rather pissed off about it, but Saihara finds Korekiyo absolutely disgusting in terms of his motive, even to the point of being relieved he dies. What also doesn’t help is he says “I will never understand you…” if you check his door after his demise which is probably one of the harsher comments protagonists give out we’ve had so far. Understandably so. So yeah, it’s not exactly a healthy ship and I personally have no care for it but eh, I see the appeal.
14.Saimugi
Another ship I am neutral on but can see the appeal for. This is really the ideal ship for those who like psychologically abusive villain X protagonist ships. I have seen some fans for it who pretty much enjoy it for the reasons I would assume they would.
Mugi seems like everyone’s friend for most of the game, Saihara included, and the two also have some optional scenes together. There’s also that scene when exploring for lab where she talks to Saihara more about her life outside of cosplaying.
However, in the final chapter of the game, you find out their friendship was a lie and Mugi was just a role for her to play inside of the script. While they weren’t close or anything, you could still feel they were friends. So not only is it heartbreaking for Saihara, but the final trial nails in Saihara’s suffering all caused by her. Having her be Amami’s true murderer, exposing his whole life being a lie, showing his audition tape of who he once was and all gloating about it as Saihara falls to a despairing state. It’s quite hard to watch and definitely impactful.
There’s also her Salmon mode ending(I stopped calling it prison mode since the localization says it this way) where she appoints Saihara into working with her in the cosplay business only for her true self to leak out implying she’s going to do worse things to him than what he expects she will. So with things like that, I can see the appeal of this ship. Although, it isn’t to my taste exactly.
13.Sairumi
Not a very popular ship but I can see the appeal. Although, outside of the goth aesthetic which I like, I am pretty much neutral on this ship. I do admit that Kirumi’s love hotel is my favorite and I actually do like her interactions with Saihara throughout the game. They’re both surface level with each other and get along swimmingly.
However, what lowers this ship for me is Kirumi’s pure salty and petty hatred for him in the second trial. I mean, he does have a nice line towards him after the trial to imply she doesn’t hate him but she was so furious he got her found out as the killer that she’s the only culprit who voted for Saihara out of pure spite.
12.Saihamatsu
Ah yes, the most popular ship in the fandom is only number 12. I’ve made a post going into detail on how I feel about this ship but I guess I’ll briefly repeat myself here. I have neutral feelings towards this ship. There are things I like about it, things that irk me about it and things that make me not care for it.
I do admit that it’s very cute and tragic. While I have my issues with Chapter 1, I actually really like how Kaede’s trial is done and thought her slow manipulation to exposing Saihara was amazing.
I also like certain moments between them in Chapter 1 like when Kaede asks Saihara if he’s looking up her skirt and he apologises, but unlike other anime girls where she’d get all pissy at him, Kaede took it rather maturely and didn’t mind. Another moment is in the investigation where Kaede finds a porno magazine, Saihara wonders why it shocked her so much and she fails to persuade him not to look with her which results in the two incredibly embarrassed. “It’s just Moobies- I mean movies!” got a laugh out of me.
However, my issues with this ship is the same issue I have with the anime Clannad. It’s pretty much “Look at this thing, isn’t it adorable? Oh fuck, now it’s dead. Feel sad” and then you have to angst over how the OTP was destroyed for the rest of the game because the game told you to. They don’t exactly expand on their relationship outside of them being cute and that’s fine, I like simple ships like Momoharu, but this one feels so plastic and forced in a lot of areas. Like when they’re investigating Amami’s corpse, she claims her heart skipped a beat when Saihara touched his corpse. I know it’s because she thinks she’s the killer but blind players are just gonna turn their head questioning why Kaede finds Saihara looking at a dead body hot.
And then there’s Chapter 6 where their relationship takes over and overshadows Mugi’s character a lot which genuinely pisses me off since we don’t get to see much of her true self. Instead of Saihara holding a grudge against Mugi for making everyone suffer throughout the killing game, they have him hold a grudge JUST because she was Amami’s true killer making Kaede falsely executed. Yes, that’s an asshole move but I think writing a script for a killing game and manipulating everyone to death is far worse. It’s like if one guy murdered a man and the other set fire to a school and killed every student inside, and you get mad at the guy who murdered a man.
11.Crossover ships
I don’t usually care for crossover ships outside of talent plan interactions like Mikan X Tenko(I really love this crossover ship due to their talent plan interaction) but I think Saihara has some nice ships in this category.
Ones I enjoy include the obvious Saihara X Kirigiri and the strangely amusing Saihara X Komaeda. Unfortunately, I don’t care much for Saihara’s crackships myself so this is a quick one. Honorable mention goes to Sakura X Saihara because they’re canon(Voice actor joke.)
10.Sairuma
Now this is a strangely popular pairing. I didn’t understand it very much at first since Saihara shows a lot of distaste towards Iruma and her love hotel… Sure was something. However, once I did her FTEs, I could see why this was liked. I wouldn’t exactly consider myself a fan but it sounds nice. Her FTEs actually imply that Iruma may have developed feelings for Saihara in which he accepted said feelings, although not agreed.
Said implication carries onto the third trial in a back route, funny enough. I wasn’t expecting Saihara to be able to tolerate Iruma the way he manages in his FTEs almost to a level where she can pretty much be considered another member to the group of V3 characters fighting for the Saiharabowl alongside Kaito, Kaede, Angie, Ouma, Kiibo and Yumeno. And yes, Iruma is the only one where they actually explain why she gives you her underwear after her FTEs unlike everyone else. What a treat.
9.Amasai
I do like this ship aesthetically and it has some really well done fanart. I’m going to have to replay Amami’s FTEs in order to talk about this more but I’m saving that for my FTEs review post which should come eventually since I finally managed to get my vita copy of the NISA version of the game. That aside, I can safely say that we’re getting into the ships I officially like starting with Amasai. Not saying this is OTP or even BROTP tier but I do genuinely like this ship. The issue is I can’t exactly put my finger on why.
I could say it’s because their personalities work so well with each other, but that’d be too simple of an explanation. I’d say it’s because of Amami’s FTEs and his Salmon mode ending. For those who are unaware, Amami is the Super High School Level Adventurer and upon learning his talent in his FTEs, he tells Saihara about his adventures of travelling across the world. He also explains to Saihara his situation involving his sisters and how he views himself as a terrible brother to let them go missing.
In his salmon mode ending, Amami offers Saihara to travel the world with him and look for his missing sisters together in which Saihara accepts. It’s one of my favorite Salmon mode endings and I found this a very sweet exchange between the two. My only issue with this ship is Amami’s kind of a dick to Saihara in his FTEs whether it’s outright or subtle. I don’t know if that’s just me but he seems a lot nicer with Kaede and a lot douchier with Saihara. Maybe it’s because he’s discussing his missing sisters which is a tough topic to bring up.
8.Saigoku
This is somewhat of a rarepair but it does have it’s more obvious fans and I can see the appeal of this one. Consider it a BROTP of mine actually. Gonta kind of acts like a respectful little brother to Saihara despite obviously being the taller one of the two. Their interactions are very pleasant and Gonta’s FTEs do show this.
What seals the deal for me though is Chapter 4. Unlike the other culprits, Saihara is incredibly firm and gentle with Gonta. Not even Kaede was given that type of exposure. Saihara is aware that Gonta doesn’t even remember murdering Iruma and is taking it easy on him because of that and being as calm and reassuring as he can to him. It’s a way that helps Gonta understand what’s going on, even if he is in tears while establishing so.
I can easily see why Chapter 4 brings tears to so many people and this touch is one of the many reasons. Saihara doesn’t want to believe Gonta is the killer even to the point of suggesting a personality switched, but he can only focus on his goal as a detective to accept that every bit of evidence points to him and the pieces connect the scenario too well. Even after Chapter 4, they try to hammer in Saihara sacrificed Gonta and he definitely feels that way.
7.Saihoshi
This is another BROTP of mine. Throughout Chapter 2, Saihara seemed like the only one who wanted to actively help Ryoma. A strategy I noticed Saihara uses on Angie, Ouma and Ryoma is that he wants to reach out and changed people thinking that’s the right way to go about it. Ouma points out why that’s wrong but I’ll get to that eventually. Here, it actually is the right decision.
Ryoma and Saihara are both able to read the surroundings which results in the two of them able to see eye to eye with each other’s ideals and the two of them refusing to go along with each other’s ideals. Saihara wants to help Ryoma while Ryoma thinks it’s useless. Throughout Ryoma’s FTEs, Saihara keeps bugging Ryoma and asking him to talk about himself to Saihara in order to gain his complete friendship which Ryoma catches onto quite easily.
Ryoma’s final FTE and their last main-story encounter made this BROTP for me. I’ll go in more depth on why Ryoma’s FTEs are so great in his Free time event review but it basically shows that Saihara’s attempts to reach out to Ryoma actually do work and Ryoma becomes willing to give a chance. In the main story, before Ryoma and Saihara get separated ending in Ryoma’s unfortunate demise, Ryoma says that he’s willing to find a reason to live in order to fight alongside everybody and Saihara’s conversations with Ryoma throughout the chapter is a huge motivation to get Ryoma to do so.
6.Saimeno
Now unlike Saiharu, this is actually a GOOD survivor type ship. What a surprise.The reason I like this ship is because Yumeno and Saihara are actually fairly similar in some ways and share a lot of chemistry.
The two of them both like to suppress their emotions, although Yumeno to a higher extent, and became more attached to the people around them as the game goes on. The dojo scene with Tenko shows that the two are similar in this regard.
They also have their differences as shown in the later half of the game. Saihara is more serious and reserved while in the second half of the game once Yumeno has opened her emotions, she’s more optimistic and throws jokes around a lot more to keep everyone’s spirits up.
I also really like their interactions in Chapter 4 and Yumeno’s love hotel. They’re extremely cute like Yumeno asking Saihara that if he was lost in thought from her beauty and then getting flustered over complimenting herself. Also, Yumeno’s artbook comment is really adorable “*pet pet* Good boy!”
5.Sainaga
This is a bit of a controversial choice, but I actually really love this ship. The reason for this is Angie’s FTEs and her love hotel. I just love the dynamic of the weird quirky girl dominating over the serious and submissive boy here. Strange, I wouldn’t think I’d enjoy a dynamic like that but apparently I do.
Angie’s final FTE has Angie admit that she’s in love with Saihara due to his aggression, and while said aggression was not Saihara’s intention, it sure got Angie to take a liking to him. And I can’t explain why but I loved their interaction. Angie’s quirky and ambiguously bizarre attitude played off of Saihara’s straight man side perfectly. It’s also a part of the FTEs that give some characterisation to Saihara as well as the one he’s hanging out with.
4.Saiten
Ah yes, I can hear people screeching in the distance. I clarified before that Tenko isn’t confirmed a lesbian, just incredibly likely is. In fact, I headcanon her as a lesbian. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a crime against humanity to ship her with a guy. If you guys can ship Komahina despite Hajime likely being straight, I can ship Tenko with Saihara and Kaito. With that out of the way, yes, I ship Saihara with Tenko.
Of course, this ship is incredibly unlikely or got a long way to go. I guess you could say Saiten has still got a ways to go. So why do I like Saiten? Well, as many people have picked up, Saihara seems to be the boy Tenko tolerates the most. She was a bit rude when her dojo showed up(not when they entered) and didn’t let him participate in the celebrity experience, but those aside, she seems to like Saihara. Or at least, she likes Saihara and doesn’t realize such considering her degenerate males thing is only delusion.
These two generally have some nice interactions throughout both Tenko’s FTEs and the main story. The dojo scene and her first FTE in particular shows that she does care about Saihara and respects him to some level despite constantly berating him for being a boy. The part of her FTE where she flips Saihara so hard he passes out, but she feels guilty and brings him to his bed soon after is one of my favorite moments in the FTEs of any of the V3 characters, really.
3.Oumasai
I have a full ship thoughts post on this and while it’s a little outdated, it still holds up opinion-wise. I find their main story interactions quite lacking outside of half of Chapter 4 and Chapter 3 but I really love the dynamic between these two in Ouma’s FTEs, Salmon mode ending and other bonus content. And yes, I am aware of how popular this ship is which results in it having a lot of fans and haters. That means that my liking to this ship and not Saihamatsu is probably going to get me some flak.
First off, I absolutely adore the aesthetic between these two. Ouma’s black, white and purple blends very well with Saihara’s white, black and blue but not in a way where they contrast so much. Saihara’s a detective and Ouma’s a supreme leader which can be bended into a cop and a phantom thief too, so their talents go hand-in-hand. Funny enough, Ouma’s love hotel is quite similar to that scenario.
Getting into their interactions and personalities, Ouma has trust issues and uses his coping mechanism to both keep himself alive and to avoid attachment to anyone. The reason for his ideals is currently unknown. However, despite everything, Ouma wants a friend. Someone who can see his true self and gain his trust. Since Saihara was a detective, he was Ouma’s opportunity to do so. Ouma’s FTEs are his attempt to get closer to Saihara and have a friend who can understand him and figure him out.
The game also implies that in the process of this that Ouma developed feelings for Saihara which is where the love for this ship spawned, thank you single-chapter-4-line-that-caused-an-entire-community-to-go-nuts. I also adore Ouma’s salmon mode ending. Not even the Super High School Level Detective can ace everything perfectly. Ouma calls Saihara out on trying to change him to reveal his true self rather than finding his true self through the fake one which is a pretentious attempt and not a strategy if you want to gain someone’s trust. However, Saihara does take up on Ouma’s idea and agrees to see his true self underneath. Unfortunately, the main story didn’t go as well and while Saihara couldn’t understand Ouma by the end, he still viewed him as his friend. Unfortunately, it was too late for that and Ouma was violently killed off.
2.Saimota
This is the true BROTP right here. After Kaede’s death, Kaito felt the need to carry on her wish and role as leader and tried to train Saihara’s confidence up and understand him like Kaede did. As a result, Kaito ended up understanding Saihara more than Kaede did. He’s what kept Saihara in line the whole time after Kaede’s death. As a result, he, along with Ouma and Kiibo, was the one who ultimately brought Saihara to confront his fear of exposing the truth and prepared him for the consequences in doing so.
Their main story summary aside, these two are pretty much the definition of a bromance. They’re a Kamina/Simon duo(I don’t like calling Kaito a Kamina clone because he isn’t, but Saimota does have a Simon/Kamina feel to it) in which there’s an unconfident but intelligent member and an arrogant but dumb member. What I find interesting however is the way they handle the Simon and Kamina type of relationship in which they have Kaito grow jealous of Saihara for being able to talk with both his mind and his heart while he can only do the latter and focus on his beliefs.
However, after Chapter 4, Kaito gains a lot of character development in which he learns to put his bias aside, use his head a little more and apologise to Saihara for venting out his jealousy onto him. It’s good that V3 gave character development to all of it’s main characters unlike the other games(DR1 had Kirigiri develop, SDR2 had Hajime develop, but DR1 still left Naegi and Togami(until the series went on and he became more of a friend to the group) for development and Chiaki and Komaeda focused more on being endearing characters than having development which isn’t a bad thing) and both Kaito and Saihara are no exception.
Also, can I just point out how Saihara acts like he has a crush on Kaito in his FTEs, like can we just talk about that beauty?
1.Saiibo
I had already made a post on this, but yes, I fucking love Saiibo. I love it a lot. It’s so cute and pure and sweet and comfy and perfect and- I really like Saiibo.
Okay yes, I admit that my favorite thing about this ship is just how cute it is. It is absolutely freaking adorable and even when I try to have a serious discussion on it, I always let my inner fangirl slide which I am proving as I type. Kiibo tries his hardest to be seen as a human and Saihara tries to help out every now and again only to end up comforting him on his failed efforts which is shown in Chapter 5.
I love how this ship is mostly background noise in the main story so it’s easy to appreciate and there’s no strong interactions nor conflict between the two so it also makes it a nice friendship in the background. In Kiibo’s FTEs, Saihara tries to help Kiibo get a career of some sort to help him feel more human and learns more about his history in the process. I’ll go in further depth in my FTE review but Kiibo’s FTEs are amazing for more reasons than the Saiibo scenes. My favorite part in Kiibo’s FTEs is his singing which is so bad Saihara is frightened by it.
And let’s not forget Chapter 6. With Kiibo bringing Saihara back to his senses, the audience erasing Kiibo’s AI through the survey poll and Saihara quite literally breaking his chains to save him. It’s definitely my favorite part of Chapter 6 and a really well done climax. And then you have Kiibo sacrifice himself for the survivors. One of the saddest moments in the game for me. There’s also Kiibo’s love hotel which is also really cute. Kiibo tries to learn romance with Saihara which results in the two holding hands.. Which Saihara points out isn’t really holding hands and just shaking hands.
And those were my top 16 Saihara ships. This was a bit of a short list, especially for one that took so long, but I thought it wouldn’t be fair if I gave in depth paragraphs to Saiharu, Saihamatsu and Oumasai while Saiibo, Saiguuji and Sainaga got almost nothing. I hope you enjoyed this quicky at the very least.
#danganronpa#ndrv3#new danganronpa v3#ndrv3 spoilers#danganronpa v3#shuichi saihara#saihara shuuichi#shipping#maki harukawa#korekiyo shinguuji#tsumugi shirogane#toujou kirumi#kaede akamatsu#miu iruma#amami rantarou#gonta gokuhara#hoshi ryoma#himiko yumeno#angie yonaga#tenko chabashira#kokichi ouma#kaito momota#kiibo
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Thoughts on Black Sails
Overall, I really liked it, though perhaps not exactly for the same reasons that the fandom (or at least the parts of it that keep showing up on my tumblr dash) does. This might seem like a strange thing to say, but I think the thing that caught my interest, quite early on, was the fact that this is a workplace show, even if that workplace is a pirate stronghold in the Caribbean in 1715. And by workplace show I mean not what anglophone TV usually produces when it makes workplace shows - soap operas where the main focus is who hates who and who is sleeping with who - but a story where the work, and how the personalities involved combine to accomplish it, is what’s paramount. The ur-example of this type of story (and I realize this will seem like a weird comparison point, but I really did end up thinking about it quite a lot while watching) is Mad Men, though The Good Wife is also relevant. They’re all shows where what really matters to the characters is the work - whether that’s landing a Coca Cola account or securing a shipwrecked Spanish treasure galleon. As in Mad Men, in Black Sails sometimes you have to work with people you dislike because they have the skills you need. Sometimes you end up liking people you thought you wouldn’t because you work well together. Sometimes people you thought of as friends become unbearable because they’re focused on their own project or actively undermining yours. And ultimately, loyalty is impossible, because when people get too old or too distracted to give their all, you have to leave them behind. A true workplace show recognizes the inherent transience of that place, and I think Black Sails does that too.
I think I’m less invested in Flint than a lot of the fandom. Not that I don’t like him - he’s a great character and a great performance - but he feels more like the engine of the story than the protagonist of it. I’m more interested in the characters that change over the course of the show, like Silver or Max, or even the characters who don’t change but do learn, like Eleanor or Jack. Flint, in comparison, feels like he keeps going in circles, repeating the same dynamic with different people. To bring this back to Mad Men, he feels like a very Don Draper sort of character - someone of incredible intelligence and sensitivity who is so damaged by the tragedies that have happened to him, and the things he’s had to do to survive those tragedies, that he’s fundamentally incapable of growing beyond them. Especially in the later seasons, how the other characters related to Flint reminded me a great deal of Don’s fall from grace in the later seasons of Mad Men, with everyone in his vicinity collectively coming to the conclusion that, yes, we love this guy; yes, he’s better at what he does than anyone else; but the emotional and practical toll of dealing with his bullshit is more than we’re willing to put up with anymore.
To continue the Mad Men analogy: Silver starts out as Pete and becomes Peggy. Billy starts out as Joan and becomes Harry. Poor Eleanor starts out as late-season Peggy and becomes early-season Joan. Max is Shirley the secretary politely telling Roger Sterling to fuck off.
All this said, I think one of the things I like about Black Sails is that it isn’t a straightforward antihero show (and not just because everyone in it is an antihero, or even a straight-up villain whom we’re expected to care about). It’s not about a single rebellious person in a generally functional environment whose chaotic behavior threatens to overturn it. Here, it’s the environment that is chaotic, and the fact that so many of the characters are forced to behave like villains is a direct response to that. And what most of them are doing, throughout the course of the show, is trying to make something more orderly out of their environment so that they can maybe live a more conformist (and even more just) life within it. That’s not something that a lot of TV shows, antihero stories or otherwise, are concerned with - trying to make a better world. And while I have reservations about how well the show achieves this, it’s definitely worth celebrating.
Another thing I really like is the plotting, and how it refuses to gloss over, and even relies on, the difficulty of achieving the characters’ goals, and the complications that emerge along the way. The first two seasons are all about trying to orchestrate a single score. The second two are driven in large part by the difficulties that emerge once you have that treasure, and the need to secure it and convert it into spendable cash. This is not a show that is afraid of complications - every time a character, even a mastermind with a great deal of power and control, comes up with a plan, someone or something throws a spanner in the works, whether it’s a clash of personalities, or someone you trusted deciding to strike out for themselves, or even just the weather (I really like how this show uses storms to get in the way of the characters’ schemes; it’s the ultimate “men plan, god laughs”). The only other show I can think of that is this concerned with the practical considerations of how things get done - in how information travels, how people get from one place to another, who has which resources - is Better Call Saul (and before it, Breaking Bad). It’s nice to find another show that cares about that sort of thing.
I do not get the point of Charles Vane. Like Flint, he moves the plot along, though without anything resembling the character complexity. And I suppose he serves a purpose in that he’s the only character who isn’t trying to order his environment, who is perfectly happy with chaos as a way of life. But guys, that’s a garnish, not a main dish. Why we needed to spend so much time with the guy I have no idea. (It really doesn’t help that alongside some pretty impressive 18th century costuming and styling, Zach McGowan looks like a stoked 21st century beach bum who wandered on to the set; in fairness, this is also a problem with Jessica Parker Kennedy, but Max is a much more interesting character so I’m willing to overlook it.)
I really dislike what the show does with Eleanor in the last two seasons. In principle, I can see the writers deciding that she’s reached the end of her tether at Nassau and needs to make a change (and I can see Eleanor coming to that realization too). But the way that she sublimates herself and her ambition to Woodes Rogers is really tough to watch - and especially because, unlike with Charles Vane, she never seems to realize that she’s tied herself to a psychopath. It’s really striking how much more interesting she becomes in the few episodes in S4 when she gets to operate out from under his shadow, to once again make her own decisions and plans. But even then, what she wants isn’t what she used to want, to build something lasting, but to escape with her family. That’s not a unique choice - Silver ends up making the same sort of decision - but it means something else when a woman goes from having grand ambitions to having domestic ones, and I’m not sure the writers realize this.
I really don’t know how I feel about the way the show handles slavery. I can accept that for the characters, even the ones who are supposedly radicals, slavery might be part of the background of their lives, an evil they sometimes ignore, sometimes make small stabs against, and sometimes participate in. (Though even then, that feels only partially excusable; you can’t tell me that Thomas Hamilton was a freethinking reformer and in the same breath reveal that his only objection to how English colonies in the Caribbean were run was the treatment of pirates.) But it often feels like the blind spot belongs to the show more than the characters. Like, take the way that slavery is so often filtered through the experiences of white people. The only main character who is a former slave, and allowed to feel angst about that, is Charles Vane. And even as a free man, the suffering of other, black slaves is used as a way of jumpstarting his inner turmoil (while Mr. Scott has to be philosophical about it). Or look at the way the show talks about slave rebellions, like when it tells us that the British soldiers captured by the free Maroons had their ears cut off and sent to their commander, or when it focuses on slave-owner Underhill’s wife and daughter during the attack on his plantation. These are clichés of the slave rebellion narrative, designed to prioritize one kind of suffering over another, and I’m not entirely convinced the show realizes it’s indulging in them, much less does enough work to counteract them.
In theory, the fact that the final arc of the story involves our heroes participating in a slave rebellion should address all these issues, but again I’m not sure the show truly puts its money where its mouth is. The fact that Flint incorporates emancipation into his revolutionary mindset (after, again, decades in which he seemed not to care about it at all) feels more like a way of moving the story along than something the writers expect us to care about. The leaders of the slave rebellion don’t get to be characters on the same level as Flint, Silver, or Max, and the one exception, Madi, has a really powerful personality but doesn’t actually get to do that much, spending most of the second half of S4 being acted upon by white men. By the end of the show, the three people whose feelings about the slave rebellion are meant to matter to us are Flint, who claims to care about it but who is probably, as Silver argues, just projecting his rage and need for revenge on a new target; Silver, who doesn’t care about it that much, and certainly not above his own desires; and Madi, who cares about it a great deal but doesn’t get to make any of the important decisions, except the one to forgive Silver for selling out her life’s ambition. I get that this is part of the story’s conclusion - that when individuals try to fight empires, the result is rarely favorable, and the best choice possible might be to carve out a tiny bit of the world for yourself and just try to survive as long as you can. But there’s a huge difference between accepting that your society victimizes the underclass, and accepting that your society designates some people as subhuman, which I’m not sure the show realizes. And, you know, sixty years down the line, a rebellion against the British crown is going to succeed. Twenty years after that, there’s going to be a successful slave rebellion. Empires are tough, but history shows that they’re not unbeatable, and when talking about slavery, it may not be fair to conclude that the fight isn’t worth it.
I’m pretty dubious about the decision to end the show on a reunion between Flint and Thomas. For one thing, I find Thomas’s survival pretty implausible - a New World plantation where the workers are white and upper class and which functions as a humane prison? Really? (I’m being inconsistent here, because Madi’s survival is, if anything, even more implausible and I don’t mind it at all, but given how much this institution dovetails with the show’s themes of how society treats the underclass, this feels a little more important.) But more importantly, I just don’t buy that this is a happy ending, or even an ending at all. If the show wanted me to believe that Flint can give up the persona he’s constructed in the years since losing Thomas, even as a result of learning that Thomas was still alive, it should have done the work of showing me this. Telling it isn’t convincing, and I’m left with the belief that after the joy of reunion wears off, Flint will still be the same person we knew throughout the show (and that’s leaving aside who Thomas has become after ten years of imprisonment and hard labor, not to mention the news of Miranda’s death). Best case, I think he orchestrates an escape and he and Thomas live out their lives in the woods; worst (and more likely) case, he never stops running and fighting, and Thomas becomes just one more person who gets eaten up in the attempt to protect Flint from himself. But James Flint (or McGraw) agreeing to spend his life in prison? No way.
Not unrelatedly, I feel like the decision not to feature a m/m romance in the main storyline of the show (that is, not including the flashbacks that introduce the James/Thomas romance, or the coda in which they are reunited) was a copout. This is a show with tremendous LGBT rep and it deserves recognition for that, but every single same-sex romance that happens in the main story is between women. Especially given how unbothered Silver and Madi are when they find out that Flint loved Thomas, would it have killed the writers to reveal that, say, Hornigold and de Groot have a semi-serious thing going on? Or that Dufresne swings both ways? It feels like a missed opportunity in a show that clearly cared very much about getting this sort of thing right.
Having said that, there’s no denying that the most important relationship in the show’s final season is a romance between men, albeit one that happens to be platonic. Not only do Flint and Silver grow closer than almost any other relationship on the show in this season, but the terms in which they address each other and describe their relationship are the sort of thing you’d expect from a romance. They talk about their feelings, about how they feel about each other, about their fears that their newfound trust and friendship won’t last. Even in shows where same-sex attraction is never acknowledged, you rarely see this kind of emotional openness between male friends. And it’s honestly nice that in a story in which m/m romance can and has happened, you can also acknowledge the possibility of close platonic friendship between men, even when one of them is bisexual, without any sort of “gay panic” on the part of the other (one assumes that the extreme romanticism with which Silver’s relationship with Madi is depicted was intended as a bulwark against this, but still).
In conclusion: good show; lots to think about; some problems; glad I watched.
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(1/2)Ok so I was reading this Silver meta that covers his entire character arc (less episode ten because I think it was written before it aired) that made some very good and interesting points. However, one thing that stuck out to me was his lost leg was kind of glossed over, and one of the assessments regarding his character, while true of many of his actions, contradicts that particular one.
(2/2) It got me thinking. What are your thoughts on it? I came late to the fandom so this has probably been discussed before, but it’s one of the defining points of Silver’s story, and I want to know everyone’s thoughts.
Ok, so this answer got truly excessive. It’s ridiculous. I thought I was barely scratching the surface of things there were to say about the significance of the loss of Silver’s leg to his character arc, but then it got longer than most of the undergrad essays I ever wrote (final word count 3110…). Yikes. I don’t know if I went overboard, or whether there really is just that much to point out, but this became a literal essay with quotes and everything. Suffice it to say, I think my one line tl;dr is: ‘if you write about Silver’s character arc without talking about the loss of his leg then you’re really missing a lot, because it ties into everything’. Either that or I’m reaching and rambling and I need to not do that.
A longer tl;dr: The loss of his leg opened up a whole world of new experiences for Silver. It forced him to feel and do and be things he had spent a long time carefully shutting out, and in doing so it didn’t just turn him into a new person, but a person who was at odds with all of the things he had built his previous life upon.
I’ll put the rest under a cut, because otherwise I’d be a dash-clogging monster.
So this is one of those questions that feels quite difficult to know where to start with, because it’s a huge and nebulous thing, but I’m aware that I actually have a lot of thoughts about it (some only half-formed, and over a year old) floating around in the recesses of my brain. Hopefully I’ll be able to answer in a way that ends up vaguely coherent, but we’ll see. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on it too (and I know that there are at least two people in the fandom who have similar disabilities and would probably have very insightful and perhaps different thoughts on the whole thing).
It is surprising to me that the profound importance of the loss of Silver’s leg could be glossed over at this point. Perhaps it’s because we haven’t seen him suffer with it quite so viscerally in season 4 as in season 3, but I still think acknowledging all the facets of that loss are critical to understanding his character arc right to the very end. And given the things we learned for certain about him in 4x09, I think it’s kind of incredible how much fascinating context those things give to a plotline that was always in some form set in stone thanks to the novel that shall not be named.
Oddly, I’d somehow managed to forget that one of Long John Silver’s defining characteristics was the missing leg and the crutch (I don’t think I ever read or watched TI as a kid), and so when it happened it was a complete shock to me. I’m strangely glad of that, because it meant I wasn’t waiting for it to happen and it didn’t colour my views of any of the storylines that preceded it. I kind of feel like that particular ‘holy shit’ moment was my plot twist, since I knew about James/Thomas before I watched 2x05. I think perhaps it also meant that I was even more fascinated than I might have been by his actions and reactions regarding it (though I know I’m not at all alone in that), because to me it hadn’t been an inevitability (‘Nothing is inevitable here’…). Also, Luke Arnold is a goddamn majestical actor and his micro-expressions have been murdering me for a long time now. You can tell he’s been acting opposite Toby ‘one facial twitch and you’re crying’ Stephens.
Right from the first moment we met him, we’ve known John Silver was a chancer, and a chameleon, and someone who had very deliberately chosen not to be a joiner. He didn’t need anyone, and he only allowed himself to be needed insofar as it was beneficial to him. I adore Luke Arnold’s line about how Silver’s ‘a guy who’s always had one leg out the door, and then they cut it off’. It’s funny, but it’s also amazingly accurate on multiple levels. When he lost his leg, he didn’t just lose a limb, and his mobility, and a life free of pain (which are awful enough), he lost access to most of the ways in which he had always known how to survive: the ability to be a chancer, and a chameleon, and the option not to be a joiner. It trapped him. The man who had seemingly spent his life demonstrating that ‘there’s always a way’ out of any situation, had it proved definitively that that wasn’t the case. He couldn’t talk his way out of what happened to him, and the futures it left open to him were a much narrower range of options than anyone would feel comfortable with, let alone a man like him. He never wanted to be a pirate, but suddenly making a life on that crew where he mattered looked like the only choice he had.
The one moment I’ve always found most interesting, and I’m not sure whether I’ve seen it discussed before, is the look on Silver’s face at the end of 2x10 when Flint’s being outrageously soft and gentle with his brand new baby quartermaster. Flint’s been talking about transitions and men who can be relied upon, while Silver’s hand hovers over the edge of the blanket, almost but not quite able to lift it and look at the consequences of his decisions, and only half listening to what Flint’s saying. And Flint tells Silver he’s been voted quartermaster, the other huge consequence of his decisions, and then says, ‘It’s a funny thing. The more those men need you, the more you need them, and it drives us to do the most unexpected things.’ And then Silver looks down at his leg again and he pulls this face:
(gif by sorenkingsley)
He looks so angry and disgusted, and I think it’s aimed at himself. It breaks my heart more than a little that one of the biggest lessons Silver learnt over the four seasons was a thing he already knew at the beginning: if you get close to people you will get hurt. The very first time he chose to do something truly selfless, because the crew liked him and called him a brother, he was punished for it by being mutilated. That’s truly fucking awful. In a story full of undeserved cruelties, it’s up there with the worst of them.
Silver said in 4x09 that the only meaning that could be divined from some of the events in his life was that ‘the world is a place of unending horrors’, and that he’d ‘come to peace with the knowledge that there is no storyteller imposing any coherence, nor sense, nor grace, upon those events’. I’d imagine that having it confirmed that no good deed goes unpunished, in a most violent way, only solidified that certainty. And to add insult to injury (literally), it was an event and subsequent state of being that came to define him, as he never wanted to be defined by the horrors of his past.
I find season 3 to be a really interesting time for Silver in a lot of ways. He really does undergo a huge metamorphosis. As much as we’ve joked about how season 3 Silver consistently fails the Flint Bechdel Test (he’s either talking to Flint or about Flint for a huge majority of the time), the other thing that is consistently unavoidable in his season 3 scenes is the impact of his disability on his life, and the ways in which he’s trying (and failing) to cope with it. Right from the outset we have the scene with Howell (RIP lovely sawbones 3) where we see exactly where we are in terms of Silver’s suffering, his struggling, and his refusal to appear weak or compromised in front of anyone. The boy’s a mess, pretending to be ok, and it sets up so much of what we see from him for the whole season. It’s all such a contrast to how he was we first met him. From ‘are you a coward?’, ‘yeah, you too?’ to ‘I cannot look weak. I cannot feel weak. I cannot be weak’. It’s fine to be a coward when you can actually run away. He’s having to hold his world together with both hands, because he doesn’t have both feet.
Weakness and a perceived lack of usefulness are a running theme throughout season 3 (and beyond). Silver has never had to rely on anybody else before, but has ingratiated himself with people by making them rely on him. In the scene where Howell explains that he has to take off the leg or else Silver will die, he is obviously panicking and terrified, but the moment when Muldoon says ‘the crew’ll look after you, don’t worry about that’ is the one where a look of wide-eyed horror settles on his face and he seems to realise all the things that are suddenly inevitable (and once again, ‘nothing is inevitable here’ and ‘there’s always a way’). When he wakes up and tells Flint the ‘truth’ about the gold, he says he’s telling him about ‘what we’ll likely face [in Nassau]’. He already knows he’s irrevocably bound to Flint’s crew now, and I think he knew it for certain the moment Muldoon said it, if not earlier when he called the crew ‘my men’. I love that even though they explicitly revisited and explained that moment with Muldoon later on, Silver’s horror at those words in particular was there for all to see right from the beginning.
When he and Muldoon spoke about it in 3x02, Silver said that he was ‘useless to them up top’ and that he had to ‘do [his] part somehow’, and Muldoon had to explain to him that the security of his place on the crew wasn’t based on utilitarianism and that, even if it was, it wouldn’t work like that for Silver. Basically, they didn’t need to need him, because they liked him. That’s a hell of a long way from the method by which Silver wormed his way back into their fold a season earlier: ‘They can hate me, they just need to need me.’ Losing his leg left Silver living in opposite land, where being a crafty, two-faced, snake in the grass was not going to do him any favours, and he suddenly needed people’s love for him to be genuine and unconditional. And these were men he had been lying to and betraying so recently. I wonder how far their love and respect for what he did in Charles Town would go towards forgiving him if they found out he stole the $5 million out from under them all?
Then, right after having that conversation about being being afraid of being reliant on others and being unable to contribute enough to make it an even and controllable relationship, Silver found himself completely powerless to save Muldoon from drowning. Perhaps he wouldn’t have been able to save him even if he had two legs, but you just know Silver would always wonder whether that was a situation that proved that his being ‘an invalid’ made him both useless and powerless. No wonder the darkness became so attractive to him at the end of the season; the power it gave him, and the feelings of control over his own fate that it restored, must have been such a welcome relief.
I really think losing his leg was a very specific catalyst for a lot of the best and worst things Silver grew into. They were undoubtedly in there all along, and they came out in the forms that they did partly because of all his other baggage and his personality, but the leg was the thing that pushed them into being. He gave a shit about the crew beforehand, certainly - it’s what got him into that whole mess - but the things we saw afterwards, like his angry defence of the men in the doldrums, and the way he held Muldoon’s hand as he died, were the actions of a man who had been forced by circumstance into truly caring about his men as individuals, and who was also terrified of losing their support and love, because it’s all that he had. Not only did losing his leg make Silver a quartermaster, it made him a good quartermaster. At least, up until he and Flint started opening doors for each other and he figured out he could beat the shit out of those men or send them to their deaths and still have their respect. Damn, son.
The flip side of the caring induced by his loss was the hate, both for himself and for others. He was so unsure of himself with Flint undermining him at every turn. ‘I told you, I just don’t see a way,’ is what he said to Billy. His world had been upturned and he didn’t know what his place in it was any more. If there wasn’t always a way, then what the hell was a chameleon trickster supposed to do about his newfound lot in life? Be honest, as it turns out. He was feeling honest feelings, so he started saying honest words. There’s so much to be gleaned from his shark date conversation with Flint, and the most fundamental thing is that he’s being horribly, painfully honest for the first time. Not just about the gold and the lying, but about himself. He lays all his cards on the table and acknowledges something that Flint used against him months before: where else would he wake up in the morning and matter? ‘Without those men, all I am is an invalid.’
That self-hatred or insecurity was something we saw more than once. Even much later in the season when he had somewhat found his feet again (no pun intended) and was on decent terms with Flint. When Billy suggested he go to the tavern to announce Flint’s return, Silver said ‘who’ll be able to take their eyes off the one-legged creature?’. It seemed as though he was already learning to use it to his advantage, and perhaps that wasn’t such an example of him hating this new facet of himself, but then Dufresne tried to use it against him. His plan had been to use his words to persuade, as he always had, and I think he probably would have continued with that method for longer if Dufresne hadn’t stuck a knife in that one wound that was still festering and painful: you are less than whole, an invalid, a creature, and unworthy of the position you occupy.
For basically all of the first two seasons Silver barely cared about anyone or anything, because he was still that drifter who just happened to be clinging onto this ride for the time being. He didn’t care about anyone but himself and so he didn’t really hate anyone either, because to hate requires you to care. He also didn’t have much pride. We know he had killed for personal gain (the cook), but what happened with Dufresne was something else entirely. I don’t know how much of that violence was in response to Dufresne hitting a seriously sore spot, and how much it was because it happened in front of a room full of people and wounded his newly awoken pride as well (likely it was a perfect storm of the two), but it was an absolute red mist moment. It was his ‘good sense escapes you’ moment. It was his Singleton moment. Deliberately detached Silver was a thing of the distant past. This Silver found himself capable of such blinding rage that he could stove a man’s head in just for insulting him and then turn it into a piece of pirate theatre for his own benefit. He’d spent however long before 2x10 carving little niches for himself in the fabric of the world, wherever there was a space for him to exploit, and all of a sudden he found that he could do it again. This time, though, his act of insinuating himself into a role wasn’t a snaking, insidious thing, allowed to happen because he made himself look innocent and unthreatening, but a brazen and violent statement that he was someone to watch and fear, after being judged to be unthreatening against his will. He took his weakness, real and perceived, and made it a new strength, learning how to use it to bend the world to his will again.
I suppose, in short, Silver’s disability, the situations it trapped him in, and the path it set him on were instrumental in forcing him to actually feel things, good and bad. But not only that, the loss itself was a fundamental reason behind why he found himself desperately trying to fill a hole that hadn’t been there before. It was becoming truly powerless that awoke his appetite for power to its fullest extent. It was being forced to feel vulnerable and unthreatening, whether he wanted it or not, that caused him to find those things so revolting and unbearable. It was needing to be loved and supported that made him open up to the realisation that the journey into the light felt just as good as the journey into the dark, and as dangerous as it might be in the long run, getting close to people was a comfort he couldn’t go back to denying himself once he’d had it.
Then season 4 happened. I think season 4 really solidified the fact that Silver had some serious self-worth issues going on, deep down and well hidden, before we even met him, and that the amputation and everything that followed only exacerbated them. His ‘would I be enough for you?’ and ‘can that be enough and there still be trust between us?’ take his season 3 insecurities and plunge them down to newly personal and upsetting levels. This wasn’t just a man who felt as though he was robbed of wholeness by one horror he had suffered, this was a man who had been running from horrors his whole life, avoiding being defined by them, and was now defined almost entirely by this one-legged persona that was completely divorced from any other versions of himself outside of the context of the war that he might once have known how to be. He found himself trapped in the body and story of Long John Silver, a fiction who mattered more than he did. Chronologically, his conversation with Flint came first, and Flint declined to answer whether Silver’s true friendship and loyalty could be enough for him. Then Madi declined to answer whether his love and the bare bones of who he was as a person could be enough for her. None of the good things he learned to feel and give through his loss made him enough for anyone, but it was too late to close that door and unlearn how to feel them. And so he panicked, and spiralled, and fell back on old tricks, like lying, and new ones, like hating.
The loss of his leg opened up a whole world of new experiences for Silver. It forced him to feel and do and be things he had spent a long time carefully shutting out, and in doing so it didn’t just turn him into a new person, but a person who was at odds with all of the things he had built his previous life upon. I think it’s incredibly fascinating how his past, present, and future were all woven together by this one event. And I didn’t even touch on the physical suffering of it and how it proved categorically that he was neither a coward nor unable to endure pain. He said in 2x01, ‘I am happy to find some other place to survive’. Perhaps it was learning what clinging on for mere survival really looked like that made him want to live a life that was something more.
#queen-max#I'm sorry this took so long#it became a beast of a thing and I'm not entirely sure how it happened#there's even other stuff I didn't mention
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Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 18 [Chapter 6 - Deadly Life]
I ended up taking a slightly longer break from this than I wanted, but oh well, let’s get back into things.
Thoughts under the cut.
This is probably gonna be kinda . . . disjointed, since there’s a whole lot to talk about and I probably don’t need to talk about it chronologically. But I’ll still probably do it mostly chronologically just because that’s what I’m used to by this point.
Anyway, the first little scene sure . . . threw me off a bit, and wasn’t what I was expecting at all. But it makes me feel even more strongly that this is all gonna end in one giant call-out of the entire Danganronpa fandom who are obsessed with this series and want to see more and more killing games happen for our amusement. I mean, the whole ‘I just want to run away from my problems, but it’s fine, because I have a reason to live! I have something to get totally obsessed with!’ part just kinda . . . wasn’t subtle at all, lol. As I said before, I’m totally fine with the game going in this direction, since it’s basically the natural conclusion to all of this. Before I forget, I wonder if it was just a coincidence that the kid in that scene had the same first name as Naegi.
I figured that we’d get thrown right into end-game investigations to set up the final trial, but it’s still kinda sad that I wasn’t able to finish Maki’s free time events. Oh well. Hopefully some of the post-game stuff will let me do all that.
I also ended up being one level off from being able to afford the skill that makes the reticle stop shaking, so that was a bit frustrating. Especially since I’d rather not remove any of the skills I have at the moment to make room for it. Oh well. It’s probably not a big deal. I think it’s been kinda rare for the shaking to actually be an issue, especially when I use the concentration feature. I might just get the skill that makes your sword slashes bigger, and maybe something else. I dunno. We’ll see.
Before I get into the important plot stuff, I just gotta say that even if it made enough sense on a plot level, the time limit thing was annoying as fuck. It was basically designed to just punish you for talking to people as much as possible. So that was annoying. But thankfully it was a pretty empty source of tension since it just pushes back your progress a little bit.
On a related note, I’m fine with the whole thing of Keebo wanting to destroy the academy in the name of hope rather than allowing the despair to continue. It was suitably dramatic for the final chapter. And honestly it was just really satisfying to see him act this way after he spent the entire game up to this point basically just being comic relief. So that was cool.
I’m jumping forward a bit, but I really want to talk about the stuff we learned about Rantarou. Even though we didn’t really learn THAT much. The reveal of his ultimate talent was a bit of a let-down compared to what I had in mind. Well, I didn’t really have anything specific in mind, but I thought it’d be something that, well, told us something new about him, rather than it just being to do with something we basically learned several chapters ago. Oh well. I wonder if Rantarou always had that ultimate talent, or if he only got it after having been involved in a killing game. I forget exactly how it was explained.
I suppose we’re meant to assume that he just found the two hints about the vault in his lab and somehow got access to it before we even opened up the main path to where it was, which I guess makes enough sense, especially if he had a map of the entire place. I’m glad that the mysterious message wasn’t a complete red herring of a plot point. I probably should have seen it coming, that it ended up being a puzzle hint. Come to think of it, I wonder how this whole plot point even worked in Japanese. Was all the text in English to begin with? That would be . . . odd, but it wouldn’t be the first instance of that sort of thing in this series.
His lab probably has one of my favourite layouts out of all of them. It’s always a bit hard to make out all of the details in them because there’s only so much that can be shown on a Vita screen before things get incomprehensibly pixelated, but still. I really like how there’s roses everywhere on the ground. It’s a nice touch.
Now I’m getting even MORE curious about what the hell is even up with the plot point of the last killing game he was part of, since that’s STILL a huge question mark at this point. I still also think that the Monokubs have something to do with it, but I’m not confident about that guess. Especially since it’d make more sense if Rantarou was the only survivor of his killing game.
I’m assuming that the killing game in question is unrelated to any of the ones we’re currently aware of, so I wonder how much all-new info is going to get sprung at us in this trial, and how exactly we’d even learn about it all.
The main thing that still sticks out to me is that he knew about this killing game in advance, and that he wanted to win it. It’s also weird, with what we know now, that the benefits he received from the last killing game were related to THIS killing game. Which makes me wonder if the last killing game had the same mastermind, or something. I guess that’d at least give us a good reason for actually finding out about it in this trial, if the mastermind knows all about it.
[Fake edit: Oh, and before I forget, I’m still not quite sure what to make of his emphasis on the rule about the killing game ending when two people are left, and how there’s some sort of ‘trick’ to it that he wasn’t allowed to talk about. I’m just not sure what to think about it. All I can think of is that the rule might be counting the mastermind as one of the two people who need to be left alive for the game to end.]
The detail with his special Monopad being all bloodied and inside the hidden room is . . . odd. I assume that it’s a separate thing from the regular Monopad he had on him when he died, but it just makes me wonder how it even got in there. The events of his death made it seem like it was his first time investigating the door, and as we more or less learned later, he probably didn’t have the key-card necessary to get inside. His special map also didn’t tell him about the alternate entrance, so it makes me think that he never entered that room before he died, in which case the mastermind probably stole it or something and took it into the room. But then I have absolutely no clue why it’s all bloodied up. The most I can figure out immediately is that the blood splatter probably happened while the person was holding it, since the hand-print part is completely clean. So that just raises the question of what caused the blood splatter.
Before I get too deep into the hidden room and all the plot details related to it, I should rewind things a bit and talk about Kokichi, since he’s important to all this as well.
So basically at this point we can tell that he was never actually the mastermind, and that he probably wasn’t even a Remnant of Despair at all. I guessed the former part ages ago, and the latter part become more and more clear as it become clear how much he was lying about things in general. And also that one scene or two when he seemed genuinely confused when people talked about him being a Remnant of Despair. We at least saw pretty clearly here that he IS a supreme leader, but just of a small-time gang of harmless nobodies, so that makes it pretty clear that he has nothing to do with the Remnants of Despair, and was just lying about absolutely everything as part of his whole plan to upstage the mastermind and take control of the game in order to end it.
Honestly I’m mostly just surprised by the fact that he actually IS the Ultimate Supreme Leader. I genuinely expected the big plot twist to be that he was the Ultimate Prisoner who’s entire identity was just an extravagant lie. I’m almost disappointed by the actual reveal, but in a way that’s probably intentional.
So if we assume that he’s not the Remnant of Despair who infiltrated the Gofer Project and set up the killing game, then, well . . . I guess I should also talk about this plot point later in the post when I start talking about the identity of the mastermind.
I really think this whole end-game is doing a lot to make me retroactively like Kokichi more as a character. I just wish he wasn’t so . . . hard to like as a person, lol. But the more we learn about how much he was lying about stuff, the more weirdly admirable he seems.
It was also kinda surprising to find out that he’d been hoarding the evidence for all the trials. I guess he was trying to figure out the identity of the mastermind and whatnot. It definitely makes it seem like he was a lot more dedicated about all this than he let on. Although the fact that he has the wax effigy of Rantarou [and only Rantarou] strung up by his bed is kinda just genuinely weird. I mean, I’m not trying to kink-shame him or anything, but . . .
Anyway, on the topic of his lab, it’s kinda amusing how it really does seem like an over-the-top and kinda childish version of what it means to be a supreme leader. But the important thing with his lab is that we found the book about Hope’s Peak Academy there, which I guess has some interesting info in it that contradicts what the characters know, but since Shuichi is being vague about it in his internal monologues, and we can’t actually read the book for ourselves, we’ll just have to wait and see what the big reveal is.
Out of all the things the game has said about Hope’s Peak and it’s history, the weirdest part of it is just that they never seem to talk about what happened with the Remnants of Despair. None of the flashbacks or anything ever mention the Neo World Program rehabilitation thing, or the fact that after the events of DR3, they all decided to live on Jabberwock Island for the rest of their lives to atone for their sins. It’s getting kinda weird how all of that’s glossed over. I can’t tell if it’s genuinely important or just a weird oversight, but it seems too major not to be relevant. I think that’s the only thing that seems immediately strange about everything. They even talk about other aspects of DR3′s story/ending, what with Hope’s Peak being rebuilt and whatnot. So the fact that they don’t talk about the Despair side of things [or anything to do with Ultra Despair Girls for that matter] is odd. I also noticed that they tried to hide Naegi’s identity in that flashback to him talking to Shuichi by just calling him ‘Headmaster’ and not voicing his lines, which felt really weird. His identity wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s watched DR3, or who at least can, y’know, identify his hair-style from behind. It’s another detail where I can’t tell how meaningful it’s meant to be.
On the note of the flashbacks, I don’t think I have much to say about them beyond that. They basically just flesh out what we’ve already been told, by giving us actual scenes and conversations related to Shuichi’s experience with being enlisted into the Gofer Project, attempting to escape it by wiping his memories, and then seemingly getting roped back into it in the end. It was definitely sad to see all of those random people talking about how the people chosen for the Gofer Project are all heroes who’ll save the world, while we and Shuichi all know how untrue that is. It’s just depressing to see people entrust so much hope onto a bunch of kids who are just being forcibly stuck in cryo-sleep and fired off into space as the rest of humanity is stuck getting killed off in a fiery apocalypse.
The most interesting flashback was definitely the one set in the cryo-sleep chamber itself. It was honestly really sad seeing the entire cast together again, even just in a flashback. It’s one of those little moments that solidify in my mind the fact that I really do love this game’s cast. Anyway, it was mostly just interesting to see that Monokuma actually woke everyone up to explain the basic situation to them before wiping their memories and stuffing them in lockers. That was kinda surprising. [Also, I noticed that Kaede had one of her weird cross-eyed moments in that scene as well, which was . . . odd.]
But getting a bit more back on topic, the plot point of the apparent discrepancies in everyone’s memories of Hope’s Peak and it’s history is obviously related to the fact that, as we learn in this part, the mastermind programmed the Flashback Lights out of a whole list of different options for what sorts of memories to show them. Which makes it pretty clear that every single thing we’ve been shown via them is now called into question. The important thing is just figuring out how much of what was shown to us was a lie, and how much was the truth. In terms of concrete facts, all we have to work on is that the world outside of the academy seems genuinely uninhabitable, and that’s about it.
I guess to be even more specific, my main question now is just whether or not the apocalypse actually happened. It’s hard to tell if it really happened, and all the different flashback options are just based upon alternate possibilities of how that scenario could then play out, or if the entire concept of the apocalypse was made up for the Flashback Lights. It’s hard to tell.
Also, on the note of the flashbacks, it was kinda obnoxious to get the same cutscene like 5+ times in one sitting. Not to mention the weird screen effects that always happened right before it. That was kinda . . . unnecessary.
And on the topic of things this game really gets it’s mileage out of, they REALLY made full use of the motive video concept, didn’t they? I wasn’t exactly expecting that whole plot point to come up yet again so late into the game.
I suppose I should finally start talking about the major stuff being set up related to the true identity of the mastermind.
So it’s pretty obvious that this is all setting up for some kind of ‘Kaede’s twin sister is somehow the mastermind’ thing, but that just seems too weird to be true, and there’s a lot of elements to it that still just don’t quite make sense. I mean, first of all, the characters immediately started pointing out how it sounds exactly like the Junko situation, so it’d be a bit weird if that was literally what it was. But it’s still where all of the evidence seems to be pointing toward. Well, other than the one scene where we literally saw what at least seemed to be Junko standing in what we now know as the hidden room.
Aside from it being too much of a plot retread to seem true, the thing that sticks out to me is the shot put ball that was apparently different to the one used in Rantarou’s murder. I get that the pink fabric thing is probably meant to relate to Kaede’s clothes, but . . . it’s still such a weird detail. Why WOULD there be a second shot put ball stuffed in a trash can???
I guess I’m being forced to consider if Kaede’s sister was, like . . . literally Junko, or something. I . . . don’t know what to make of that possibility, or anything along the lines of that possibility. Although it’d be genuinely hilarious if this is all setting up for a plot twist of Junko actually having ANOTHER sister, other than just Mukuro, who we were never told about until now for ~reasons~. I also can’t help but remember that Kaede’s Japanese VA as the actress who played Junko in the DR stage plays, and how that caused speculation in the fandom about her maybe literally being Junko.
This whole plot point is just slightly baffling to me, and I’m at a complete loss as to where this is heading. It at least looks like Shuichi’s thinking along the same lines as I am.
Also, none of this even touches upon my previously-mentioned theory about all of V3 being some sort of fictional story created by Junko that’s being ‘broadcast’ to society at large. I’m still sticking to that theory, especially after that start-of-chapter scene I talked about before.
And of course there’s the weird time loop thing from the start of the game that further implies some sort of sci-fi/fantastical element going on. I mean maybe they just knocked everyone out and stuffed them back into the lockers, but the way that things played out exactly the same the second time around made it seem more like an actual time loop or something.
There’s also been the whole focus on the entire of V3 ‘as a story’, and stuff like Kaede ‘being this game’s protagonist’. It just seems to be blatantly hinting at this game literally, well, being ‘a story’ of some kind.
And on the note of the mastermind, I imagine that they’re probably the actual Remnant of Despair person who infiltrated the system, at least if we take the whole set-up at face value, and it’s all not just part of the elaborate ruse going on. Although ‘Remnant of Despair’ might be a bit inaccurate if we’re literally dealing with Junko directly here, or something. But I still don’t think it’s LITERALLY Junko, since we saw her die in DR1 and whatnot. But who even knows at this point, especially after how DR2 went.
It’s still the most hilarious thing to me, that Junko’s entire existence is basically a meme in both the fandom and in the DR universe itself. I had to laugh a bit at seeing the characters themselves talk about Junko so much, and comparing stuff around them to Junko and how she did things. Believing that everything is Junkos [tm] is the True Danganronpa Experience [tm].
Anyway, this at least makes me fairly certain that Rantarou’s probably more or less unrelated to the mastermind, and the Remnants of Despair. He’s probably just a more or less random dude who maybe just survived another random killing game that Junko [or someone connected to Junko] held, and he got pulled back into a second one. But as I said before, we’re still clearly going to find out more about him and his backstory, so if we assume that he’s genuinely dead, then it’d make sense if the mastermind is the same mastermind who ran his last killing game, and who could thus tell us the details about it. But it does make me wonder exactly what the point of it all is, though. I’m not really sure how to phrase it, but I guess my question is just . . . sure we’re learning all this stuff about Rantarou, and getting these references to a ‘past killing game’ and so on, but how will any of that actually matter? What would any of that have to do with the trial we’re about to play through, other than I guess establishing that the mastermind behind this game has ran other killing games in the past? It’s just hard not to question what the purpose of this entire plot thread is, and how it’ll come into play later.
I’m at least assuming that the main story will end with this last trial, and that at most we’ll just get a short epilogue after it.
And on the note of how this game will end . . . it’s really hard to tell. As I’ve said before, I think that one of the big plot twists will be that none of V3 is ‘real’, so to say, so . . . that’ll probably come up, and it’ll probably mean that there’s no real hope for the characters, unless they still exist ‘outside of the story’. I also just can’t see this game having any kind of a happy or hopeful ending. If anything, this entire game seems to be genuinely mocking and parodying the concepts of both hope and despair. So the fact that Shuichi is heading into this final trial with the mentality of a normal DR protagonist seems like set-up for some kind of major subversion.
Also I’ve heard that this game’s ending is notably controversial and divisive even compared to DR2, which is interesting since this whole endgame act is reminding me a fair bit of DR2′s endgame [but a lot better and more engaging]. So I don’t exactly think it’ll play out in the same way. I’m expecting something bittersweet, if not outright depressing. And it really does still feel like this is gearing up for one huge guilt-trip aimed at the entire DR fandom, and how we keep demanding more and more killing games because we find them to be genuinely entertaining. So that’ll probably be a bit awkward and uncomfortable on it’s own.
I think that’s basically all I have to say. The TL;DR is that I feel a lot more unsure about exactly where this is going compared to how I felt right before the final trials of DR1 and DR2. But we’ll see how it goes. And as I said above, my best guess as to the identity of the mastermind is that it’s Kaede’s sister [who may or may not be Junko], as the game seems to be heavily hinting at, but I still can’t help but doubt it, and also be confused about how it’d all play out and be explained in the end.
Assuming that the next part I do will cover the entire rest of the main game, I guess that means I’ll be doing post-game stuff afterward. I’ll have to see exactly how much post-game stuff there is, but I’ll probably liveblog about most of it. I think I’ve already heard that there’s a Dating Sim Mode, but there’s also the intimacy scenes in the extras menu that may or may not be a separate thing from that. I’m not sure what other stuff there’ll be. With how some of the other games have gone, maybe there’ll be some kind of short story unlocked after the game ends? Who knows. Either way, I doubt that the post-game will take too long to get through. Though there’s some other random stuff I might make posts about, like everyone’s free time events if I can’t view them all as part of the post-game. I also think that after I’m done with the game I’ll look up all of the ‘back door’ routes in the trials, and how they work, and so I might talk about those if I think they’re noteworthy enough. [Come to think of it, I might also have to think about how to title my post-game posts in order to avoid them being too spoiler-y, depending on what the post-game stuff ends up being like].
Also on the whole note of Dating Sim Mode and the intimacy events and whatnot, I really haven’t heard anything about them other than that they exist, though I can at least easily guess what Dating Sim Mode will be like, after how Island Mode in DR2 worked, from what I heard about it. And there’s also the fact that the love hotel is obviously going to be used for it, so that kinda gives a pretty blatant indication of what to expect, lol. The intimacy events are a bit less clear to me, if they’re something separate to Dating Sim Mode, but we’ll see.
Honestly the only thing I really actively want from all of that bonus stuff is just some kind of a Shuichi/Kaito scene. That’s basically it. I could take or leave anything else. I’m just a simple gay man with simple gay tastes. I’m preemptively bracing myself for disappointment on that front, though. Thankfully the thumbnail thing for the intimacy events implies that you can see stuff from Shuichi’s POV, so you’re not just locked to Kaede’s, but still.
Now that I’m basically two steps away from the finish line, I can’t help but be nervous about the possibility that the ending might sour my feelings about the game as a whole, since I’ve heard that it’s very love or hate, to put it lightly. I don’t want to think back negatively about this game, since as I’ve said before, I really, truly like it. Even if I’m also aware that part of ‘the point’ will be me feeling guilty about liking it so much. You get what I mean. I just want to at least be able to think of this as being a good game, even if I might leave it feeling kinda uncomfortable and empty.
Oh well. We’ll see how things go tomorrow.
[P.S: Before I forget, it felt weirdly sad to me that this chapter’s just called ‘Goodbye Danganronpa’. Even in spite of the obvious thematic points being set up, I’d still feel a little sad if this is truly the end of the franchise.]
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