i am oh so curious about yteh :0 if you don’t mind me asking, what are some of the roleswaps for the main cast? :)
OMG YOU THANK YOU FOR ASKING IVE BEEN WANTING TO RAMBLE ABT IT FOR SO LONG
emiri and sara swap
michiru and joe swap
sei and kai swap
anzu and kanna swap
kurumada and kugie swap
ranmaru and gin swap
hayasaka and mishima swap
mai and nao swap
real hinako and alice swap
sou and shin swap
qtaro and reko swap
keiji and megumi swap
maple and meister swap
i’ll elaborate under the cut so that i. dont clog up ppls dashboards.
emiri and sara swap - woo emiri becomes the protagonist and sara becomes the laughing doll! not too much to say about it (lying)
emiri still has sara’s high survival rate, but sou’s not really that concerned about survival rates as much as he is about candidates/non-candidates, so he has less of a Weird Thing about her than shin does about sara. emiri is a lot grumpier than sara, especially after losing michiru. the main people she directs this grumpiness at are sou and megumi - especially megumi post-chapter one, since she blames her for revealing that michiru had the sacrifice. their relationship finally starts healing up at the end of chapter 2, though. emiri’s reaction to the hallucinations is slightly different from sara’s, but it’s still very unsettling.
as for sara, her floormaster name is gi rinny, a pun on "grinny"! ironically she doesn’t smile or laugh very much - she doesn’t take nearly as much pleasure in the role as miley does. like how in canon emiri was recruited because of her fiance, sara here was recruited because of joe (and to a lesser extent ryoko). asunaro had both of her friends under their thumb, and try as she might the only way to stop asunaro from hurting them was to join them. she’s been with asunaro for a few years now (they got her and joe when they were 15), and helped a lot in creating "kai", so she’s very attached to him! they’re kinda like siblings ehe
michiru and joe swap - michiru pulls the sacrifice card and dies, joe becomes the crying doll.
michiru as a support isn’t too different from joe, all things considered. it’s true that she is a bit more… not weak-willed, but more emotional perhaps? she’s a lot less openly distrusting than joe was, and mostly confides those feelings in emiri. however, while joe was only a little bit suspicious of keiji, michiru DOES NOT trust megumi’s ass. she’s also a lot more earnest in trying to escape with emiri than joe was - both of them are to be honest, they just get attached less easily than joe and sara did. before michiru’s death, she says my own spin on that one line - "i-it’s kind of hard for two girls to say things like this to each other, b-but—! i-i love you, emiri! you’re my best friend!" if you’re thinking this may be gay, you are correct.
joe’s floormastersona is tiad ropp, a pun on "teardrop". he’s even more sympathetic to the participants than safalin, and actively tries to help them out in the most inconspicuous ways possible. he’s still a bit crazy though (cut to the scene with the michiru doll and emiri). like sara, he’s also pretty close to "kai"! they bicker a lot but in the end they care about each other a lot. in this au, joe also manages to salvage "kai"’s consciousness after giving him his positive emotions back, so the floormaster trio can stay a trio! yippee
sei and kai swap - kai died in the assassin battle royale when they were kids instead of sei (also, having been able to grow up and learn about Gender, sei uses they/them)
sei was made to keep an eye on emiri by asunaro! unlike with kai and the chidouins, they don’t really harbor many positive feelings towards her, or so they says hsjsksk . they’ve kinda grown a bit affectionate towards her, but would NEVER admit it. unlike kai, they didn’t fail at being an assassin, and so they’re still an assassin to this day. also, when the dying kai asked sei to kill him instead, sei actually obliged with it! they have been carrying this guilt for a decade! also, being a qkai shipper, i realized that the equivalent to that in this au is sei x reko and i can’t decide if i think it’s cursed or blessed.
kai satou died long ago, but asunaro crafted a replacement for him - ream aster (a pun on "remaster"), the dressup doll. as previously mentioned, aster is close with joe and sara (or ropp and rinny as he knows them), and sees them in a rather familial light. he’s not quite as openly dickish as ranger, but he definitely has his moments hshgshsjksksk. as for the clothes aster wears, they’re kanna’s bucket, kurumada’s bandages, sei’s mask, hayasaka’s tie, and michiru’s glasses! the aster equivalent to rio laizer is ream aker (remaker), and like i said in joe’s section aker actually gets to exist for more than ten seconds! i’m still kinda conflicted on what i want to do with him though.
anzu and kanna swap - kanna and kugie both die in their first trials, anzu and kurumada are siblings
like kanna, anzu’s really torn up by kurumada’s death, and for a while blames herself for it. i’ve said before how emiri is so much gruffer than sara, and how this usually works to her disadvantage - however, anzu ends up associating emiri with kurumada, just like how kanna associated sara with kugie! anzu’s a lot sadder in this au, only just barely becoming the happy clown girl we know and love on the third day of attractions… and, considering her role and the choice we make during the second main game, we all know how that turns out :(
kanna gets to not only be a dummy, but have her sister with her! she does end up dying eventually in the roulette, which is sad, but uh… at least she has kugie there with her? or something? her taking anzu’s role means that she’s the dummy assigned to either q-taro or hinako! if the former, she gets a father figure, if the latter, she gets a close friend. common w in the kanna kizuchi community.
kurumada and kugie swap - kanna and kugie both die in their first trials, kurumada and anzu are siblings
kurumada sadly dies very early on, which i feel bad about since he never got too much screentime in the first place… at least his ass can haunt the narrative?
kugie, on the other hand! in comparison to kurumada, she gets a wealth of plot relevancy. instead of hugging maple to stop her from attacking/kill her, like kurumada did, she hugs meister to comfort him… of course, it’s the same end result :( she’s even more stubborn about the whole "don’t charge me if i’m going to die anyway, save it for the others" thing than kurumada is, except unlike him she doesn’t lie about the reason lol
ranmaru and gin swap - ranmaru is the main support character/emiri’s favorite, gin is the dummy assigned to emiri
ranmaru!!! he sees emiri as a big sister/mother figure, but unlike gin he’s not vocal about it since he’s embarrassed. i really want to keep his crush on sara in this au since it’d be funny, but that would mean him seeing the "doll" that’s clearly working with their kidnappers and thinking "ok but she’s kinda hot tho" so idk. unlike gin’s reason for not taking people’s tokens (him seeing it as being too close to gambling), ranmaru views the sub-game as having some kind of nefarious hidden purpose and as such choosing to abstain. which he was right about! just… didn’t go about it in the right way :p
I FELT SO BAD ABOUT THIS SWAP ONCE I REALIZED WHAT IT MEANT FOR GIN IN THE LOGIC ROUTE. GIN BABY BOY I AM SO SORRY. in logic route his motive isn’t ranmaru’s whole one-sided crush thing, but he kind of views emiri as his mother and as such it’s easy for her to manipulate him. im so sorry gin. in emotion route instead of planning to upload michiru’s ai into his body (since that’d be weird considering she’s a thirty-year-old woman and he’s a twelve-year-old boy) he tries to upload it into her doll instead. doesn’t work out though.
hayasaka and mishima swap - hayasaka dies early on, mishima is a dummy
hayasaka is sort of mai’s teacher in this au! he doesn’t teach her officially, but he tutors her in data entry (since that’s his job pretty much). they have a sort of sibling-y dynamic, which is why he wants to protect her. i’m personally of the belief that mishima knows a bit more about the death game than he’s letting on, although i couldn’t give you a reason why lol, so swapping him with the guy who’s been involved with asunaro made sense to me.
mishima and nao don’t survive their first trials, making mishima a dunmy! he’s assigned to ranmaru, and they’re good buddy chum pal friends. his and nao’s relationship is the same as canon in this au. his presence in the story means being able to unlock some additional info in the office - that of sara and joe! when emiri realizes that sara and joe are rinny and ropp, she’s like… oh shit, i’ve been being a dick to these LITERAL SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLDS. also, why the hell are LITERAL SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLDS our floormasters. did asunaro really have no better ideas.
mai and nao swap - mai and hayasaka are friends, nao is a dummy
like i said in the last section, hayasaka tutors mai on data entry! she’s a medical student as well as a baker in this au, for the reason of I Think It’d Be Neat. she also ends up with the sacrifice in chapter two, and begs emiri to tie the votes for her. massacre ending my beloved………..
nao is very silly here. she stabs reko rip. i only realized a bit after making the list that naoreko and qmai swap so thats kinda funny to me. she has shins hands probably (still working out the details but yea)
real hinako and alice swap - hinako lives through their first trial and alice dies, an imposter alice takes his place in chapter 3 (i’m still working out the kinks with this swap)
(trigger warning for suicide discussion.) hinako lives through her first trial yay! however, like alice, she hides in the locker like a dumbass. her fake name is miyado yamada. she takes up the fake name due to not wanting to be recognized - about a year before the death game, she attempted to kill herself. it didn’t work, however, and she became the face of suicide preventation in japan. she also comes from the same orphanage as q-taro!
i’m still back and forth on the fake alice lore tbh. for now, alice had a secret twin who got separated from him at birth, permanently borrowed by asunaro. this secret twin, whom we’ll call arisu because it’s easy, ends up taking alice’s place as a dummy in chapter 3. with the help of the alice ai, he’s able to imitate him almost perfectly. even reko only notices a few discrepancies.
sou and shin swap - Oh Boy.
sou desperately wanted to be a participant in the death game, but asunaro wanted him to be a floormaster. to that, he said fuck you. he called up shin like "hi shin" "HIYORI YOU’RE ALIVE?!" "shinnnnn do u want to steal my identity :3" "CAN WE GO BACK TO THE PART WHERE YOU’RE ALIVE?!" in the end shin agreed to swap places, simply because sou told him about the 0.0 survival rate and he was not having that. sou erased his own memories so that he could go into the death game completely blind. however this had the side effect of him ending up hating the death game and asunaro and wanting to destroy it. him and anzu have that sibling dynamic, which is sweet until you realize that the chapter 2 main game exists. he steals shin’s identity because his first trial told him about the canidate/non-candidate thing, and so he stole shin’s identity because shin was a canidate!
shin is forced to take sou’s role as the fourth/fifth floor’s floormaster. he’s really grumpy and lackluster about it, but he’s really upset that him being the floormaster also means he’s pretty much doomed to die because WHAT THE FUCK HIYORI YOU NEVER TOLD ME THIS?! he’s really one-sidedly grumpy at sou, who doesn’t really get why because as previously mentioned he erased his own memories.
q-taro and reko swap - reko starts selfish and gets development, q-taro may or may not die
like i said in hinako’s section, her and q-taro come from the same orphanage, so they have a sibling relationship like alice and reko but without the "i hate you now because you’re a murderer" thing. q-taro gets replaced with a fake in the room of lies, leading to the route divergence! if he lives and hinako dies, he mourns not being able to protect her more or tell her what she meant to him. if she lives and he dies, it’s pretty much the same, except hinako has it even worse due to being Actively Suicidal and the one person she cares about on this shithole died because of her. fun times
reko acts more like pre-alice-murder-case reko, simply due to not having changed over time like she did in canon. by chapter 3, she acts more like her canon self. when arisu dies in the ch3 roulette, she talks about how she had a feeling that he wasn’t the real alice. she gets pinned to the target with ranmaru, but is much more willing to sacrifice herself than q-taro is in canon, and takes the first dose of venom.
keiji and megumi swap - keiji fucking dies
in this au, their first trial had a hidden gimmick - if the switch is pressed to take off megumi’s chains, the chains switch to keiji instead. there is a way for both of them to survive, by the switch being pressed again… but megumi doesn’t press it again. keiji fucking dies.
megumi is super sus to emiri and michiru, although she puts up a good front to most of the others. she ends up slowly becoming less corrupt as time goes on, though! and in chapter three her and emiri are actually real allies instead of fake allies. hip hip hooray.
maple and meister swap - maple is in charge of the roulettes, meister is the most powerful obstructor
maple is in charge of the roulettes yay! this means she does NOT have to have a crush on sou, and she does NOT have to die tragically. yippee! she feels very bad for everybody but she is simply doing her job
meister also doesn’t have a crush on anybody since he is a grown-ass adult and that’d be weird. instead he’s coded to see shin as a son. he usually acts like regular meister but his emotional state does fluctuates the same way maple’s does in canon.
