So almost 2 years ago, my great aunt died. I inherited the responsibility of keeping her Christmas cactus alive in her stead. The original plant belonged to her mother, my great-grandmother, and has been in the family since the 70s. Both women had incredibly green thumbs so you can imagine the pressure to keep this thing alive or else be haunted by two incredibly angry ghost ladies.
I was getting nervous because it hadn’t bloomed since she passed, but I noticed some pink buds on it a few days ago, and this morning, I saw this : )
Why is the Christmas cactus is blooming in May, you ask?
I’m… not even questioning it at this point (•_•)
y’know, I’ve joked for a while that the kids I nanny for are straight up cartoon characters, but having a closet door dropped on my head by a one-and-a-half year old yesterday morning, then walking in to work at 8 AM to find that same baby lugging around a box of tannerite for whatever reason made me finally realize that im the roadrunner in this household.
Here me out on this one, guys. Spoilers for DRDT, the mainline games, as well as Danganronpa Another lay below the cut - you have been warned.
Whenever people talk about the mastermind in DRDT, there's a crucial element that I always forget about until I look back at the original games; that being that it's never just the mastermind, within the student body in all three games, there is also a traitor.
For those who are confused, the traitor and mastermind are not the same person. The mastermind is the person who creates the game, like Junko, Izuru, and Tsumugi. Meanwhile, the traitor is a character that works with the mastermind, often unwillingly.
In THH, this is Sakura, who's family dojo was held hostage. In Goodbye Despair, Chiaki is the traitor, though in her case she was working against the killing game, but couldn't say anything. Then, in V3, Keebo was unknowingly the traitor, being used an an audience surrogate for Team Danganronpa.
This trend can be seen in various fangans as well, the most prominent that comes to mind being Kinji in DRA, who was told an orphanage's worth of children would die if he didn't work with the mastermind.
In Sakura and Kinji's cases in particular, they were fed instructions by the mastermind, though they remained in the dark as to their true identity. Both of these actions related to killing someone themselves if the game began to lag.
With how closely DRDT's world intertwines with that of canon Danganronpa, going as far to have allusions to the tragedy, Monokuma, and even Naegi, if some theories are to be believed, then why couldn't there be a traitor among the cast?
Now, while the idea of a traitor works perfectly on its own, I have another theory - more speculative - about who the traitor could be - or if I'm right - who the traitor was.
Namely, Xander Matthews, the Ultimate Rebel.
You see, there's this one line in chapter 1 that stands out to me. It bugs me every time I rewatch the scene, and I've never been able to figure out why, but with this theory, I think I know.
There are a couple ways to read this line:
1: He's talking to himself, ruminating on something someone told him in the past.
2: He's speaking to someone in the room, possibly hiding, watching the botched murder go down.
3: He's talking to someone watching from somewhere else, knowing that they can hear him.
Now, I may be reading too far into the VA's delivery of the line, but I've always thought it sounded a little too pointed to be just a "oh why would someone ask me to do this?" lament. To me, it sounds directed at someone he expects to receive an answer from.
Of course, this is flimsy evidence, but walk with me here.
We know nobody was physically hiding in the room, but we do know that everything we see in the series is recorded for television. Someone has to be behind those cameras. That someone being the mastermind.
A reminder of the chapter 1 motive: The loved ones motive.
Something unique about DRDT is that we never get to the implimentation of this motive, Xander acts before the time limit is up.
What if that was intentional? Now this is HIGHLY speculative but what if MonoTV never had any intention of releasing the motive, and is just following the motive narrative laid out of THH, the game it's seemingly drawing the most inspiration from? What if the mastermind ordered Xander to act sooner than later so the truth about the outside world, whatever that may be, wouldn't be revealed to the students.
Remember: the first thing we see in DRDT is Xander post fork attack, mulling over his order to kill Teruko, which means someone told him to do it before the series began - this is why I don't think it was David who told him to do it, like most people think. While I agree with a lot of the reasoning, it doesn't fully make sense. David and Teruko weren't close or enemies in chapter 1 and he seems pretty confused by Xander's reason for doing what he did in chapter 2 (although that doesn't stop him from blindly trying to finish what he started).
So, who told him to do it? The mastermind, of course, if this theory holds up, but who exactly?
I think it was Mai.
I fully believe Mai is the mastermind, you can see my reasoning in my LGI analysis (which I'm gonna continue, at some point)
So, Mai and Xander are heavily tied to each other. Teruko talks about how similar they look, and seriously, look at the them side by side and tell me their designs aren't intentional.
Red hair, yellow eyes, white shirt with red neck accessory, dark pants, both have jackets (although they are admittedly different colors) and both wear gloves.
We're meant to draw connections between these two, and combined with the allusions to some investigation regarding Hope's Peak the two were involved in, mastermind and traitor seem like a pretty good bet under this theory.
Which brings me to the last bit of evidence, still flimsy, but hold on a little longer, I swear this makes sense.
Look at the fools table MV.
Teruko, stabbed in the stomach with a knife similar to the one Xander used to, let me check my notes... stab her in the stomach.
then a moment later in the MV
Mai, in front of Teruko, positioned in front of her stomach, holding a knife out to the camera, as if she's giving someone the knife, urging them to take it.
There are different ways to interpret this frame - Mai can either be defending Teruko or hurting her. We obviously won't know for sure until later in the series, but this only adds more fuel to the fire that Mai had something to do with Teruko's stabbing.
So, what do ya'll think? I'm sure I'm not the first to point these things out, or even put together a "Xander is the traitor theory" but I haven't personally seen one, so I figured I'd throw it out there.
If you have anything to support or debunk this theory, please let me know!!!