I feel like GameFreak really struck sympathetic villain gold with Guzma and have been failing to repeat the formula since. Like XY before him trying to act like Lysandre is at all a good person while his motivation is that he really fucking hates poor people was laughable and Piers, much as he is my literal favorite Pokemon human of all time, doesn't belong on all the Pokemon villain lists he ends up on because he just straight up never was one. Guy was barely even the "leader" of his "evil" team. Guzma though was juuust the right amount of shitty yet entertaining while still being a misled outcast that felt chewed up by the world in the end.
I suspect that most people don't actually fear aging, they fear the closing off of possibilities. Which unless you have illusions of athletic fame or have based your entire self worth on being seen as fuckable by the 18-24 age bracket, is pretty much entirely artificial external pressure you should be allowed to say "fuck that" to.
Much of the rest, I suspect, has to do with the fear of developing disabilities, which really says so much about how horrifically capitalist societies treat the disabled. That something pretty much everyone is going to experience some day if they're lucky is treated with horror and revulsion rather than as something inevitable to be accommodated.
Humans are so weird y'all, I was looking up pictures of coconut crabs and a lot of results were about the same pics of one eating a bird with the tone very much being "omg the ugly thing killed and ate the pretty thing 😭" No one shows any respect for the prowess of the large arthropod or fascination with nature. If something isn't aesthetically pleasing it's an abomination acting out of malice rather than hunger.
While I'm just over here like "hell yeah, you get you some food little dude"
Maybe I’m just semantical but “all those hate accounts” is not correct.
The britt3 account was not a hate account. Nothing was ever said about Britt, she was never diminished or spewed upon. The account only exposed what Britt said, without even providing commentary. Just black on white quotes
The Amber account was a hate account. It was vile, mean, bitter, degrading,...
My mom was a teen in the 70s, during a time where conservative catholic parents were still a thing in Belgium. The teens and young adults, however, had gotten major influences from the sex-revolution and 60s-flower-power mentality. I mean, anyone could do anything and it would be accepted by this younger generation. It was truly the forefront of acceptance of being LGBT, trans, business women, immigrant, genderfluid, anti gender roles, non-conformist, ...
She told me stories about her straight male friends wearing make-up and tight jeans, about people exploring sexuality and not labeling themselves, about her gay friends having their own place inside friend groups without needing to come out, about women saying no to their ‘traditional’ marriage and go on their own with multiple lovers - male and female - and living together, about movies filled with explicit sex scenes and nudity where nobody batted an eye about it, about bumping into a transgender m-to-f the women’s bathroom and complimenting her perfect make-up, about people of all backgrounds (wealth, color, sexuality, ...) partying together in one club and having their own style, ...
I mean, in a time where the traditionalists still killed people or shunned them for being different, the teens and young adults all formed powerful allies. Where did this go? This power? This stance? How did society change in 30/40 years, that we somehow went backwards, needing to do evolve like this all over again? Growing again to a society who accepts? Where did the teens/young adults from the 70s go in their mentalities?
!!immediate warning: thoughtpost containing very heavy drv3 spoilers will commence below!!
after looking through a lot of fanart and theory/thought posts about drv3 now that I've beaten the game myself, I see a Whole Lot of people who seem to believe the implication in trial 6 that all of the ndrv3 cast had vastly different personalities before they entered the killing game.
and this isn't a post attempting to say "you're 100% wrong" or anything, but there's several strong pieces of canon evidence which convince me that this is Not the case? more specifically, I'm convinced that none of the characters' "personalities" were actually altered, or if so only very minimally, despite what the mastermind claimed.
I'm not great at analytical posts like this, but I just wanna try and look at those points one by one, to help explain my reasoning better. readmored for length and spoilers. also it’s kind of picture heavy
1. the Intro Scene
we get two "versions" of the intro scene where kaede first finds herself in the academy and meets shuichi. one at the very beginning where they're "normal" students:
and one not long afterward where they're "Ultimate" students:
one very noticeable thing about both of these versions is that other than the updated outfits, they play out nearly identically. in fact, throughout the entire scene where kaede meets shuichi and right up until just before the monokubs first appear, much of the dialogue, descriptive text, and voice clips for both of them are exactly the same. almost to the letter.
even the things that aren’t exactly the same are still very, very similar.
(this one also strongly supports that the students’ names are their real ones and not false ones fabricated for the killing game despite tsumugi’s suggestion to the contrary)
things only begin to truly deviate when kaede "remembers" a piano melody she thinks will help shuichi calm down. but even then, her attitude and her way of speaking are still very much the same as before. in fact, it was so eerily similar that when I first saw them, going into the game totally blind, it made me extremely suspicious that some kind of trickery/manipulation was up regarding everyone’s “talent”.
2. The "Meeting Everyone" Scene
this is the only scene in the entire game where we ever get a chance to look at the "real" (with heavy quotation marks) characters before their memories are altered, and everything happens so quickly that most of them aren't given any real focus. most of the spotlight in this scene goes to kaede, shuichi, and the monokubs. the rest of the students either don't speak at all or speak so little and so sporadically that we can't get any real grasp on what kind of people they actually are.
except for miu.
3. Just Miu.
it seriously deserves its own bulletpoint because one single line is all it takes to see that normal schoolgirl miu
is not the Least Bit Different from legendary inventor miu.
4. the audition videos, and the ambiguous nature of Danganronpa itself in-universe
tsumugi presents these audition videos to make the remaining students believe that their current feelings, personalities, and entire sense of “self” are all a lie.
but I think there are two important things to consider with these auditions...
numero uno: the fact that they are just that, auditions.
all of the characters wanted to be part of Danganronpa, so they came before the judges and put on a performance for them.
when people audition for things, they exaggerate the truth, play themselves up, even tell outright lies if they think it will get them accepted. the same way you would lie or tell half-truths on a resume or in a job interview to get a good job.
numero dos: the emphasis on the fictional nature of Danganronpa.
the Danganronpas of the past were implied to be fictional, so the applicants to this “ultimate real fiction” may well have believed that this would be the same. Fiction. an Act. a Mock-up, if you will. in other words, it’s possible that the people auditioning did not believe they or anyone else would be in danger of actually dying.
this puts many of the “depraved” things they said in their audition videos in an entirely different light, doesn’t it?
and finally...
5. some particular lines from Tsumugi
in chapter 6 tsumugi (as chiaki) says these lines to you that I feel are important:
this may seem like another form of cruel deceit at first, but if you take some time to think about these lines.
if these were the talents assigned to everyone, and if these were the talents that best “suited” them... then isn’t it reasonable to believe that their “normal” selves were the same, or at least similar to, their “exaggerated” Ultimate selves?
this is further driven home by one particular line from kaede, as far back as the prologue:
it’s such a brief, easily forgettable line, but at the same time it feels so important.
the “real” kaede may not have been the Ultimate Pianist, but who is to say she wasn’t still passionate about the piano?
and it’s the same for the other “Ultimate” students. they may not have truly been the “Ultimate” at their talent, but who is to say that they weren’t still devoted to that talent? that they weren’t still Passionate about it? and that it wasn’t still Important to their overall identity?
...
and that concludes my analysis.
maybe there are some errors or lines that I overlooked, but I hope others will still take these things into consideration once they complete the last trial. I hope it still offers them a light if they get too depressed by the ending of this game... y’know?
Honestly for as much as I am literally, genuinely obsessed with Mettaton from Undertale his fight gimmick is honestly the one I'm the worst at by far. Memorization and prediction have never been friends of mine
