#winter_fandom.txt

[winter-wondering]

["Riz Doodles"]

Hi, guess who's been watching Fantasy High! @akari-of-moonlight convinced me to draw the feral aroace loser detective in yet another example of nerds saving me from art block. Working on other stuff, too, might be a little bit, though.

[winter-wondering]

I'll just drop this here (rant in tags).

[winter-wondering]

Scheduled Post #2:

See, to me, Teruko will always be a criticism of defeatist mindsets and negativity bias. "Nothing comes of resignation," and all of that. And, personally, I love stuff like that, because I'm sick and tired of media treating pessimism like it's inherently more mature than hope.

So, with that in mind, I need someone to get Teruko into Nietzsche.

[winter-wondering]

"Hear me out." On what? Sex? No, you hear me out on my DR:DT theories.

[winter-wondering]

One thing I enjoy a lot about DR:DT is that Teruko doesn't really have a singular support character.

Spoilers under cut.

I know a lot of people simplify it to Xander in chapter one and Charles in chapter two, but I don't think that's really true. For most of chapter one, Xander is her main support, yes, but Min also fulfills that role, especially during deadly life. That's why Min's death is important: because she specifically was one of Teruko's closer connections during this part of the story.

In chapter two, Teruko has Charles, yes, but Rose and Eden both have a similar dynamic with her, just in different fashions. Charles is her main support for the trial, but Eden takes on a lot more of the emotional/moral aspects of the role, and Rose does a bit of both. All three of them contribute to her arc in their own ways. Eden is the most positive and emotionally open; a lot of her actions are to get Teruko out of her shell. Charles is the most similar to Teruko as a person; he understands her outlook and relates and appeals to her position. Rose is the least pushy; she's not actively asking Teruko to change, or even really forcing her to talk about anything she doesn't want to, and her closeness with her is actually more from Teruko reaching out to her than the other way around. It's all of their different ways of connecting to her and her ways of pushing them down and away that establishes a lot of her character in chapter two.

What I'm saying is that there doesn't have to be a single support character in this kind of story, or even one at all. There can be multiple characters who fulfill or don't fulfill the role in different ways, and that can lead to a lot more interesting group dynamics.

[winter-wondering]

Other than what I think is unnecessarily graphic cruelty, I think that I've finally pinpointed why the BLUE motives (especially chapter 3) are odd to me.

The point of Danganronpa (at least, the original DR) is that the motives are meant to be things we as the audience consider weak. We're supposed to think, "A couple thousand dollars isn't worth a human life. A random secret isn't worth a human life. Group conflict isn't worth a human life. Why would any of them kill each other?"

One of the biggest themes in that game is that, no matter how small or unimportant something might seem, there's someone it matters to, perhaps enough to commit a murder. You can't assume that everyone has the same morals as you do, and you can't assume that even the best, most reasonable of people don't have things they'd kill for.

The "despair" in DR1 is based on the idea that humans are naturally willing to betray each other over such seemingly trivial motives. It's a Death Note situation where the audience is meant to think that they wouldn't commit murder because murder is wrong, but the point of the narrative is that, no matter how stupid it might seem, no matter how normal a person might be, they are still susceptible to immorality. The "hope" in DR1 is that even when there's a natural human inclination towards selfishness and cruelty, there's also a natural human inclination towards kindness and mercy.

Obviously mainline Danganronpa isn't perfect, but that's the premise of the first game, and it's one I think works quite well.

The motives in BLUE (and in parts of PINK as well) rub me the wrong way narratively because a lot of them essentially necessitate murder. Which, while that works sometimes, can feel like it's almost robbing the characters of agency instead of highlighting it. Logically, this is what a person would eventually have to do, so it doesn't really feel like a point is being made about human nature. "Humans, when left to their own devices, can and will kill each other over personal stress, grievances, experiences, and motives, no matter how small they may seem" is, in my opinion, a much more emotionally compelling story than "Humans will kill each other in order to avoid even more people, including them and their victim, suffering and inevitably dying," because the latter makes the motive too logical. You don't wonder, "Would someone kill over this?" You wonder "When will someone kill over this?" And, while there are definitely benefits and interesting aspects to both (for example, I actually quite liked PINK chapter one's motive), the ways that Tetro works with that second idea sometimes come across as, in my opinion, lackluster.

I don't know, that's just what's on my mind right now. Might delete this later.

[winter-wondering]

[Spoilers: Tetro Danganronpa BLUE Chapter 3]

Staffside right now:

[winter-wondering]

I'm going to be honest. I'm not listening to the rest of BLUE. The voice acting is great, and that carried me through almost three hours of it, but I've gotten a summary, and I'm not going to force myself to listen to it for my own health, as it is incredibly (and, in my opinion, unnecessarily) graphic. Please be respectful of others who do the same.

I'm probably not going to post more Tetro stuff, as I don't feel comfortable doing so. My Tetro posts will stay up, but I'd rather not discuss Tetro anymore. This includes in DMs. Sorry, and thank you for understanding. Thank you to the fans and voice actors for all of the fun, but for my own sake, I think it's best that I step back. Have a great day.