⤷ ﹛ #BYTECRASH ﹜ — an independent, highly selective, & mutuals only aoba seragaki from drammatical murder ; narrative themes & portrayals rooted in the fracture of identity, the violence of intimacy, & the horror of choice. brewed lovingly by mocha. * rarely follows first.
ren trotted forward, pressing his nose gently against bella’s leg before circling back to sit neatly at aoba's side. the dog's tail wagged once, twice, before stilling. aoba chuckled softly under his breath, reaching down to scratch behind ren's ears before glancing up at her. " he likes you, " aoba said simply, his words carrying more weight than the casual tone implied. after a pause, softer, " guess he can tell when someone's worth trusting. " \ @sanitatemsolis, ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡.
dust rose in little clouds beneath their feet, the air sharp with the sound of wood clashing. aoba gripped his practice blade awkwardly, sweat dampening the back of his neck, while zoro moved with the kind of precision that made it obvious how outmatched he was. ren circled outside the ring, whining every time aoba stumbled. aoba exhaled, lowering the blade for a moment, a wry smile tugging at his lips. " you don't go easy on anyone, huh ? " his voice was breathless but calm. " guess i should've known better. " \ @kaizokugaris, ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡.
the scrape wasn't deep, but blood always looked worse when it dried against skin. aoba knelt beside the other with the first - aid kit open, hands steady as he reached for a wipe. ren hovered close, whining softly before laying down at violet's boots. " hold still, " aoba said quietly, his tone carrying no room for protest. " it's not bad, but it'll sting. " he met her eyes briefly, serious in a way he rarely was. " you act like you don't care, but . . . somebody should. " \ @antlurabbit, ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡.
the gas mask rested on the low table, lenses glinting faintly in the dim light. clear's face in its absence felt almost too open, too vulnerable, & the silence between them stretched heavy. aoba sat cross - legged across from him, mug warm in his hands. he didn't break the quiet at first, only studying clear with steady eyes. then, plain & gentle, " does it feel better . . . or worse, not having it on ? " \ @jellyfishdaydream, ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡.
the rain came down steady, slicking his hair to his forehead as he ducked under the shallow cover of an awning. ren pressed close to his ankle, shaking droplets onto his jeans. across the street, clear's silhouette was the only bright thing in the dim wash of gray, shining against the storm. aoba huffed softly, brushing at his bangs. " you stand out too much, " he called, voice low but carrying. his lips tugged into a small smile, reluctant but fond. " well, what are you waiting for ? you're going to follow me anyways, right ? we might as well walk together, then ! " \ @bravcguardian, ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡.
aoba turned a book slowly in his hands, thumb rubbing at the worn edge of the cover. the quiet of the shop wrapped close, layered with the faint must of paper & wood. it felt safe here, like the shelves themselves kept watch. ren sat a little ways off, ears twitching at sounds only he could hear. " i used to think books were just an escape, " aoba said after a while, voice soft, unforced. " but . . . sometimes they feel more like mirrors. don't you think ? " \ @deathbade, ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡.
the fire crackled low, its smoke curling into the night air. ren curled tight by the flames, ears twitching every time the wood popped. aoba sat cross-legged, staring into the embers, quiet for longer than he usually was. the night sky above wasn’t one he studied much — constellations bent into unfamiliar shapes, stars clustered. " these stars don’t mean much to me, " he said, eyes tracing their scattered patterns. " but i bet they mean something to you. what do you see up there ? " \ @mikroteros, ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡.
‧₊˚🖇️✩ ₊˚🎧⊹♡ ⸻ DRAMATICAL MURDER . . . intimacy, ruin, & the architecture of choice.
dramatical murder is a fascinating, messy, & emotionally devastating piece of media. it is, on the surface, a visual novel structured around the conventions of otome / BL games — a main character with multiple romance routes, choices that lead to good & bad ends, explicit content scattered throughout. but when examined closely, it reveals itself as a meditation on power, identity, & intimacy, where every route pulls at a different thread of what it means to be human — & what it costs to love.
the game succeeds because it refuses to make its themes clean or comfortable. every route is laced with horror, whether psychological, physical, or existential. it weaponizes the tropes of romance games — the ' best friend, ' the ' stoic mystery man, ' the ' cheerful eccentric, ' etc — & complicates them until they no longer resemble fantasy partners so much as case studies in trauma. the fantasy of ' choose your lover, get your happy ending ' collides with darker truths : that love can be violent, that devotion can curdle into obsession, that the self is always fractured.
aoba's role as the protagonist is more complex than the blank - slate self - insert typical of otome games. he is both deeply defined — kind, caring, stubborn, straightforward — & yet designed to be a mirror, shaped by how he engages with each character. his central ability, scrap, embodies this : his voice reaches into minds, reshaping them, often against their will. it's both gift & curse. every route explores what happens when his empathy collides with someone else's damage : with koujaku, it's secrets, loyalty, & the fragility of trust. with noiz, it's numbness, transactional love, & the scandal of kindness without price. with mink, it's control, trauma, & whether a man prepared to die can be taught to live. with clear, it's autonomy, the right to choose, & the fear of being loved for what you are. with ren, it's integration of self, love as recognition, & the boundaries of ' me ' & ' you. '
aoba isn’t a perfect savior ; he is complicit, shaped by the violence he resists. but his power lies in his persistence : he insists on connection even when the cost is unbearable.
what makes dmmd so haunting is the way it ties intimacy to power in every possible form. scrap literalizes the idea that voice & care can control, heal, or destroy. to love someone is to risk reprogramming them, intentionally or not. sex is never just erotic ; it’s diagnostic. every explicit scene reveals a character’s damage : koujaku’s fixation on hair as history, noiz’s reduction of desire to physiology, mink’s violence as creed, clear’s final request to ' touch like a human, ' ren’s fusion of love & selfhood. desire in this game is never innocent — it’s always tangled with scars, with longing, with terror.
technology also refracts intimacy. allmates like ren embody companionship made mechanical ; rhyme renders human conflict into games. love here is always mediated by code, by implants, by machines. the body is never just a body ; it is interface, battlefield, archive. the game is brutal in showing how easily intimacy collapses into domination. every bad ending is some form of this : love without consent ( clear’s doll aoba, mink’s chains, noiz’s endless pain-world ), or self destroyed by lack of recognition ( ren’s consumption, aoba overtaken by desire ). what makes the good endings satisfying is not that they erase this danger, but that they acknowledge it & insist on choice.
each route feels like a philosophical thought experiment. koujaku asks : can loyalty survive secrets ? intimacy is only real when it's paired with honesty. without it, devotion turns to obsession. noiz asks : can kindness exist without cost ? intimacy is not transaction but gift. numbness is healed not by spectacle, but by patience. mink asks : can a man built for revenge learn to live ? intimacy as violence destroys ; intimacy as recognition saves. death - worship is broken only by the blasphemy of insisting on life. clear asks : what makes someone human ? love without autonomy is just programming. to be human is to choose, to sing for yourself. ren asks : can you love the parts of yourself that terrify you ? intimacy becomes integration ; self & other blur. recognition — ' you are mine, & you are yourself ' — is the truest form of love.
together, the routes form a cycle : from external intimacy ( koujaku, noiz, mink, clear ) to internal intimacy ( ren ). ren's route is called the ' true ' one because it collapses all the others into the question of selfhood.
none of this is to say dmmd is flawless. it is often deeply uncomfortable — not just in intentional ways. the game relies heavily on non - consensual encounters as narrative shorthand for trauma. while this is thematically coherent, the sheer repetition of rape, coercion, & masochistic violence can feel gratuitous. it risks aestheticizing suffering in ways that blur the line between critique & exploitation. characterization can feel uneven. koujaku & clear's routes balance tenderness & trauma well, but mink's veers into excess, his brutality so overwhelming that redemption feels difficult to accept. noiz's transformation, meanwhile, feels rushed — his arc from numb detachment to heartfelt connection deserves more gradual development. pacing & structure often undercut the emotional weight. platinum jail's campy neon aesthetics sometimes clash with the heavy psychological material ; the game oscillates between silliness & horror in ways that destabilize tone.
these flaws don't erase the game's power, but they complicate it. they make dmmd an artifact of its genre & time : daring in theme, uneven in execution.
what lingers after dmmd is not the sex scenes or even the branching endings, but the arguments it stages about love. love is not rescue alone ; it is staying after the saving is done. love is not transaction ; it does not require cost to justify care. love is not domination ; it cannot be chains, masks, or programming. love is not denial ; it requires acknowledgment of even the ugliest parts of the self.
the game insists, over & over, that love is recognition : seeing someone, scars & all, & saying i will not look away. whether it's a boy who thinks he's monstrous under his mask, a hacker who doesn't know how to feel, a man praying for death — the answer is the same. intimacy saves when it affirms existence, not when it remakes it.
dramatical murder is a strange, uneven, & unforgettable work. it uses the scaffolding of a BL game to tell stories about trauma, identity, & the terrifying beauty of intimacy. it is not easy to consume — nor should it be. it demands engagement with pain, with violation, with the fragility of love. yet in its best moments, it reaches for something rare : a vision of love that is not escape, not fantasy, but survival.
& maybe that is why it endures — not because it offers perfect happy endings, but because it dares to say : even in a world of chains, masks, & scars, connection is possible. even when love hurts, it can still be holy.
KOUJAKU . . .
koujaku's route is, at its core, about intimacy strained by secrets, & love tested by the weight of violence. it sets aoba against a backdrop of childhood loyalty & tenderness, then forces him to reckon with the truth : that the people closest to him are not safe from the same corruption & trauma he carries within himself.
from the beginning, their bond is framed as one of rescue — koujaku the protector, aoba the one always saved. but this dynamic is not stable ; it frays under pressure. when koujaku disappears into flame willow, when he lies & distances himself, aoba's jealousy & fear are not only romantic undercurrents, but narrative signals of how easily their trust can collapse. the route draws a line between comfort & betrayal, showing how fragile intimacy becomes when silence takes the place of honesty.
scrap is both a weapon & a mirror here. aoba's ability to reach into koujaku's mind reflects the core question of the route : can you love someone enough to see the darkest parts of them, & still ask them to return ? the good ending hinges on aoba's insistence that koujaku not give in, his refusal to let despair or revenge consume him. love, in this telling, is an act of anchoring — a steadying force against self - destruction.
the good ending resolves with confession, vulnerability, & domesticity — a vision of stability that is almost startling in contrast to the chaos of platinum jail. scars are laid bare, feelings are spoken aloud, & aoba chooses not only to accept koujaku's love, but to allow himself to love back. it's a study in survival, in the courage of letting a lifelong bond change shape without breaking.
but the bad ending reveals the horror beneath : that without affirmation, without recognition, intimacy becomes suffocation. koujaku loses himself to tattoos, to vengeance, to madness ; aoba loses himself to the other aoba. their relationship collapses into codependency & masochistic devotion, chains literal & metaphorical binding them together. love curdles into obsession, & pain becomes the only language they share. it is gutting because it is so close to the good ending — the same bond, only twisted.
koujaku's route, then, is about the fragility of love under the weight of secrecy, & the ways survival depends on being seen. whether it ends in warmth or ruin depends on one truth : that love is not only the act of saving, but of staying.
MINK . . .
mink's route is a study in control — who has it, who loses it, & what it costs to take it back. it cracks open the gentleness that aoba offers the world & asks whether compassion can survive ritualized violence, whether love can mean anything when it is forced to kneel. from the first near - collision to the alleyway & the warehouse of chains, the story builds an atmosphere where intimacy is indistinguishable from power, & where power is always a language of hurt.
mink is introduced as refusal personified : refusal to explain, to apologize, to soften. he moves through the world like a blade wrapped in smoked herbs & prayer, a purpose so rigid it feels like fate. aoba — who changes people by seeing them — slams against this refusal & shatters. the club sequence turns the body into a loudspeaker ; sensation is amplified until thought fails. in that collapse, mink tests aoba's thresholds with cruelty he calls truth, dragging the ' other aoba ' to the surface like he's baiting a storm from a quiet sea. the scene is horrifying because it is also diagnostic : mink believes the only honest self is the one that rises under pressure.
the route keeps returning to the question of what the body confesses when the mind can't. choking, impact, forced stillness — each is framed as a key in a lock, an ugly rite meant to expose ' what's really inside. ' aoba's duality turns that key : pain curdles into pleasure, compassion into contempt, & the other aoba laughs in mink's face. for a moment the abuser meets a mirror — another will stronger, colder, perfectly articulate in its desire to break him back. the terror in mink's eyes is the first crack in his doctrine : domination does not heal ; it only multiplies the haunted.
then the route pivots to the most harrowing revelation : mink's violence is mortuary practice. he has prepared himself as a man of one sacrament — revenge followed by death — & everything in between is permitted because he does not intend to live with it. the cinnamon at his shoulder, the prayer at aoba's bedside, the quiet hand in hair — these are not tender contradictions so much as funerary gestures, grace notes for a man already walking into his wake. aoba's scrap descends into the burned village, through fire & rust, to the warehouse of chains where the ' true mink ' sits bound by an idea : i can't move. it is one of the most brutal images in the game — not because of gore, but because despair has become theology.
aoba's insistence — you can move — is not merely a command but a counter - creed. scrap here is love sharpened to a blade : breaking the chain of fatalism, even as aoba's own hands begin to rust from rejection. it's an act of defiance that costs him, & that cost matters ; the route will not allow redemption that is painless or clean. when mink finally lifts his eyes, the exchange is wordless & devastating : a recognition that someone has put a different seed in him — a living alternative to vengeance's promised death.
the good ending does not absolve ; it reorients. mink still kills toue, but it is not annihilation that follows ; it is an opened future he never planned to survive. aoba's theology of life — ' you're breathing, so you're alive ' — is blasphemy against mink's martyrdom, & it wins. the aftermath is not a fairy tale : it is absence, searching, a reunion on wind - torn land where names & faces have changed but the argument remains the same. life isn't over yet. the ritual of death is interrupted ; the prayer becomes a beginning.
the bad ending, by contrast, is devotion turned to desecration. by trying to rewrite the past inside scrap, aoba unthreads causality & mink snaps back into the only liturgy he trusts : possession as protection, decapitation as sacrament, soul kept ' safe ' in a lover's hands forever. it is the logical extreme of control as love — a shrine built from what should never be offered. where the good end breaks the chain, the bad end welds it shut.
in sum, mink's route asks whether a man trained to die can be taught to live, & whether a boy trained to save can survive loving him. it is about the seduction of ruin, the weaponization of tenderness, & the fragile, ferocious truth that recognition — i see you, move with me — can be holier than vengeance. here, love is not a balm ; it is an argument. & in the one future where they both survive it, love wins by refusing to be a chain.
NOIZ . . .
noiz's route is a meditation on numbness : the slow starvation that comes from not being able to feel, & the crooked ways a person tries to force sensation back into a life that's gone quiet. everything about him is a dare — the rabbit mask, the break - ins, the casual kisses, the brawls — not performance for attention so much as experiments : if i do this, will something finally register ?
the body is the thesis. hands are where the truth leaks out. he bleeds & doesn't flinch ; he scalds his palms & only reacts to the coffee on his tongue. the piercings, the hardware, the gloves — all of it reads like self - administered stimuli, a boy trying to turn himself back on. when aoba reaches for those hands, the route frames it as sacrilege & sacrament at once : noiz recoils from touch he can't translate, then studies it like data, then bargains with it. if touch is a problem, let's solve it with logic. if desire is embarrassing, call it a physiological reaction & proceed. intimacy becomes an equation he's determined to balance.
the arena shifts from streets to simulation — green playground, rhyme, the gamified neon of platinum jail — because noiz is most comfortable when feelings have rules. in games there's a way to win ; in life there's only noise. so he keeps picking fights & asking for rematches, measuring connection as score differentials, insisting on control because control is safer than care. aoba, infuriatingly, refuses to play by these terms. he treats ren like family, patches bloody knuckles without payment, drags noiz out of alleys. kindness, to noiz, is a bug in the system ; he hunts for the exploit that must explain it.
the route's core pain sits in that gap between transaction & grace. noiz frames relationships as cost - benefit problems — people use, people are used — because that's what he was taught. aoba's insistence that help doesn't need a price tag becomes heresy against that upbringing. every small domestic moment ( coffee, first - aid, food stalls ) is radical precisely because it is ordinary ; it teaches noiz the scandalous truth that tenderness doesn't have to be earned.
scrap refracts this lesson into nightmare. in the bad endings, desire calcifies into prisons tailored to each boy's ache : an endless world where pain finally proves contact ( touch equals laceration, finally something to feel ), or a retro rpg of ' simple life ' where nothing hurts because nothing is real. both are mercy turned monstrous — one grants sensation without love, the other comfort without authenticity. they are wish - fulfillment as self - harm : a numb heart choosing either constant pain or permanent anesthesia rather than risking the mess of living.
the good ending doesn't handwave the damage away ; it insists on reintroduction — to sensation, to family, to accountability. noiz in a hospital bed, crumbs on his suit, the shock of embarrassment he can finally register — these are not cute details ; they are proof that feeling has returned. an apology to parents, a suit without visible piercings, an invitation to come with him not as an acquisition but as a partner : that's the arc. he doesn't ask aoba to be a new game ; he asks him to be a home.
what noiz's route ultimately says is brutal & tender at once : to be touched & not feel it is its own kind of loneliness, & the cure is not spectacle but patience — the slow, humiliating, holy work of letting ordinary care rewire the nervous system. aoba's role is not to fix noiz with power ; it's to stand near, to insist that help can be free, to keep offering a hand until hands mean something again. & when noiz finally says he loves aoba because he's aoba — not because he fits a category or solves a problem — the experiment ends. sensation returns. the body, at last, tells the truth.
CLEAR . . .
clear's route is about what makes a person human & what happens when love is taught as obedience instead of choice. it begins with a fall — a miracle played as a joke — & keeps returning to that image : a being who drops out of the sky & lands in a life he doesn't quite understand, calling a stranger ' master ' because someone once told him that was safety. the gas mask isn't just a prop ; it's doctrine. it says, ' don't look, ' ' don't be seen, ' ' don't risk being loved for what you actually are. ' & the umbrella is a child's talisman against the unthinkable — stars that might fall, feelings that might hurt.
the path to intimacy here is unmasking as consent. clear doesn't strip the mask because he's commanded ; he asks for belief first. ' will you hate me ? ' is the hinge of the route. aoba's answer is not a speech but a touch — tracing eyes, nose, mouth, naming sameness where clear has only known different. the scene reroutes the whole story : clear learns that humanity isn't earned by behaving correctly ; it's recognized by being seen. that recognition is why his singing works. the jellyfish song isn't just a lullaby ; it's a thesis on gentleness as power, a counter - spell to weaponized sound. dye music violates from the outside in ; clear's song softens from the inside out.
& yet the route refuses an easy miracle. clear is not a fantasy boyfriend who ' was human all along. ' he is an android taught to serve, & the line between care & compliance is razor thin. in platinum jail's gleam, he tries to solve problems by asking a cop for directions & beating thugs only after they hurt aoba — a childlike ethic that breaks, then hardens, under pressure. the question becomes brutal : if you were built to obey, how do you learn desire ? how do you tell love from programming ?
scrap arrives precisely at that problem. the choice prompts — ' rest ' or ' stop ' — are traps, both giving up in disguise. the only ethical act is refusal : aoba has to step back, deny the false mercy, & let clear choose. selfhood must be chosen to exist. only then can his voice become fully his own, the jellyfish song swelling from comfort into weapon, not because someone told him to sing, but because he decides to.
the good ending is a love story with costs that don't flinch. clear's key lock is gone ; the body fails ; what remains is the request he has never been allowed to make : ' can i touch you ? ' aoba says yes & the scene refuses to sanitize it — intimacy is tenderness in the face of dissolution, pleasure braided with grief. the sex isn't fanservice ; it's metaphysics. clear asks if he touched aoba ' like a human, ' & aoba answers with the only definition that matters : you were human to me, more than anyone. death here is not punishment ; it's the price of autonomy wrested from design. & because love planted a memory deeper than code, resurrection is possible — a year of work, a song on a rooftop, & a boy under an umbrella who finds his way home by sound.
the bad ending is the same themes inverted until they scream. if aoba speaks the wrong words, clear is dragged back into love as custody : reprogrammed obedience, devotion rebranded as possession, a museum of aoba's body with the senses removed so he can never leave. the doll imagery isn't shock value ; it's the nightmare of care without consent — ' i'll keep you safe ' as a synonym for ' i'll keep you. ' & yet even here, the last whisper of aoba cracks the mask from the inside, proof that recognition leaves residues even code can't bleach.
so clear's route is a fable about seeing & being seen : about how touch, voice, & choice weave personhood, & how easily devotion can curdle when it's divorced from autonomy. it argues that love is not the command ' protect me ' or ' belong to me, ' but the covenant ' i believe you exist, & i will not take that from you. ' in the only future that honors that covenant, a boy sings his way back to the balcony because someone once traced the shape of his face & called it the same.
REN . . .
ren's route is the heart of dramatical murder — the ' true ' path where every theme of the game folds back inward, & aoba is forced to face himself. if koujaku's route is about intimacy strained by secrets, mink's about violence as creed, noiz's about numbness & transaction, & clear's about humanity & autonomy, ren's is about integration : the reconciliation of all these fractures into a whole.
ren isn't just a companion — he is aoba's safeguard, the quiet constant who exists to maintain balance between the self & the destructive ' desire. ' he is the voice that steadies, the presence that anchors, the one who never leaves. but in this route, that comfort is turned inside out : what happens when the one who grounds you is revealed to be part of you ? what happens when your safest love is also a mirror ?
scrap here is not simply a weapon but a dialogue. aoba has to enter the depths of himself, confront desire — not banish it, not deny it, but accept it. the ' other aoba, ' the sadism & ruin, isn't cast out as evil ; he is acknowledged as part of the whole. ren's role becomes tragic & tender : he exists because of fracture, yet his wish is to be recognized as his own being. he wants love not as function but as choice.
the good ending is devastatingly beautiful because it stages that paradox : ren as both guardian & lover, both part of aoba & separate. their intimacy on the shore is impossible in the real world — ren's body is only whole in consciousness, only human in the in - between. yet in that liminal space they touch, kiss, exist as equals. aoba promises that even if ren cannot walk beside him as a man, he will still be cherished as the partner who has always been at his side. love here becomes metaphysical — to embrace someone both as ' you ' & as ' not you. '
& then the heartbreak : waking to ren reverted to his default settings, personality erased, as if none of it happened. aoba sobbing into the fur of a ' pet ' who no longer knows him. it's a cruelty that cuts deeper than any physical violence in the other routes — because it's not absence, but presence without recognition. a year of grief, a boy refusing to let go ; sei's body becomes ren's vessel, & reunion is granted. the ' welcome home ' is both relief & revelation : ren is no longer just a fragment of aoba’s mind, but an individual, free to live.
the bad endings invert this arc. in one, ren's belief that he isn't loved curdles into hunger ; devotion slips into consumption. the safest presence becomes the devourer, a reminder that if you deny parts of yourself, they will eat you alive. in the other, virus & trip seize aoba instead, perverting the themes of connection & balance into endless exploitation. both are nightmares of dependence without reciprocity, love distorted into ownership.
ren's route, then, is about selfhood, recognition, & the unbearable tension between fusion & individuation. it asks : can you love the part of yourself that terrifies you ? can you grant autonomy to the one who has only ever existed as your protector ? can love survive when the boundaries between ' me ' & ' you ' blur ?
the answer in its truest ending is yes. not through denial, not through domination, but through acknowledgment : you are mine, & you are yourself. it is the final argument of the game — that freedom is not escape from the self, but wholeness within it.
hey hey, net - surfers ! 🎧💙 got your headphones on & your heart tuned in ? then you've just stumbled into the right frequency ! ⚡️ this is a brand new aoba seragaki blog, fresh outta midorijima. wanna link up, vibe, or get tangled in some neon chaos ? drop a ♡ or ↺ & let's see where the signal takes us ! ✨ carrd. * please be 21+ !
