#the dialogue was just easier than explaining it but also its not like. fixed entirely to be in their voices this is too open for amy lmao
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I don't think I've posted about this before (way back when I first had the idea) but here's my pitch for an Eternal Darkness TV series:
One season for each of the three Ancients that Pious can align himself with. Each season has the same basic plot and structure--Alex investigating Edward's death, finding the Tome and reading about past incidents until she's ready to fight the Ancient--but the details change.
The season premiere would always be about Alex coming to the mansion and searching the place until she finds the Tome, and then we see how Pious aligned himself with an Ancient. The Ancient would be different each time of course, but so would other things. The scenes would play out the same way, but the dialogue, the way things are filmed, little visual and aural touches, would all change to suit the given Ancient's modus operandi. In particular, the characterization of Pious would shift in such a way as to emphasize why he would pick which Ancient over the others. I'd want these details to be subtle enough that if you went a long time between seasons you might not notice them, but prominent enough that if you watched the seasons close together, you wouldn't feel like you were watching the same episode over again.
From there, the season would unfold with each episode focusing on a different chapter of the Tome, but each season would feature entirely different chapters. (Seasons would probably be about 6-8 episodes total.) The ten other player characters from the game would be spread out over the three seasons, and be complemented with newly-created characters, drawing partially from cut chapters from the game. New settings should be added, and we probably wouldn't visit the same place twice in one season--the feeling of revisiting a location and being surprised by differences could be done across seasons rather than over a single run of the story. Unlike the other characters, Edward would probably get an episode every season because he's important enough to warrant it, and because his possession of the Tome is how it enters the story in the first place. I wouldn't want to rely too much on the "subtle changes to the same scenes" gimmick, so his episodes would probably all have very different versions of how he found the Tome.
I'd want the tone of each season to shift slightly in accordance with its Ancient as well. Each play-through of the game couldn't change the game mechanics, but we could achieve a similar effect to that in a TV series. The Chattur'gha season would lean more in the direction of action-horror, like a zombie movie, where the feeling of fear mostly comes from constant overwhelming physical danger. The Ulyaoth season would introduce magick and focus on characters trying to understand the threat they're up against, which they only can to a limited extent, but the horror would be in just knowing how out-matched they are in the bigger picture. (A problem I have with the game is that everything is a bit too clearly-explained and grounded in literal terms; I'd try to fix that.) And the Xel'lotath season would hardly include any fighting at all, but be rooted in psychological head-trips, constantly keeping the characters and audience uncertain of what comes next on a moment-to-moment basis. The seasons would probably go in that order as well. Chattur'gha is a simple introduction to the story, Ulyaoth elaborates a bit on the cosmology and lore, and Xel'lotath should definitely be last because it's easier to undermine audience's expectations when they've had two seasons to form some expectations.
This shift in tone would also inform which characters are in which season: Michael Edwards and Edwin Lindsey, for instance, would be perfect for the Chattur'gha season because they're tasty in a fight. If an Edward Roivas episode were in only one season, it would be the Ulyaoth season because he's the one collecting all this information and passing it to Alex. Maximillian Roivas would be talked about in the other seasons but his episode would be in the Xel'lotath one since it's all about his complete mental breakdown. The nature of the final confrontation with Pious and the Ancient at the end of each season would also change in nature to suit the theme.
Finally, shameless self-promotion: if you enjoyed this why not check out my Let's Play of Eternal Darkness. It's eight years old now and it was only my second LP, but I revisited it recently and I actually think I did an all right job, which is not something I easily say about my own work. That link is to the subtitled LP, which I did first. There's also two versions I did with voice commentary, (one without commentary cut from the cutscenes, one uncut) but I never felt I was very good at that. Maybe that's just because I don't like my own voice and verbal ticks. Anyway, I'm working on getting better at it.
#Eternal Darkness#Eternal Darkness Sanity's Requiem#Alexandra Roivas#Alex Roivas#Mantorok#Edward Roivas#Pious Augustus#Silicon Knights#Tome of Eternal Darkness#Chattur'gha#Xel'lotath#Ulyaoth#Nintendo#also since this is all pie in the sky anyway my ideal casting would include#Florence Pugh as Alex and Mark Rylance as Edward and Willem Dafoe as Pious
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ooh Idea- donna is AMY’s assistant for the au asks?
ooh boy okay!! this got really fucking long because of course it did! yk, the post said 5+, so!! there’s like 11 bullet points that are all very long under a cut
donna still does go to the bartlet campaign first. i think she maybe leaves a little bit in because she realizes she doesn't like campaigning that much, because you aren't getting anything done yet, and she wants to be getting things done now. or maybe, actually, when she leaves the bartlet campaign for her boyfriend, she's too embarassed to go back after breaking up with him, and ends up looking for other ways of working in politics
how she ends up working for amy, and where amy is working are really, really funny conceptually to me. because i'm a little obsessive about where amy is working when but the timelines don't make a ton of sense? she'd either be at now or the wlc, probably, and either is fine bc tww is also pretty vague on what amy actually like functionally does? she's a political director iirc, but i make her more of a lobbyist, bc she does some lobbying in canon, but she also gives speeches and does debate prep? idk. anyways, i like the idea of donna just going into the wlc or now bc women's rights! but i also think it's kind of hysterical if it's more pointed/less random, like josh either suggests it or mentions amy in passing and donna is like oh that sounds fun. i feel like she may actually apply in this case, but who knows? anyways, amy is impressed by her work ethic and sense of humor and her experience with the bartlets and josh (and her reasons for leaving, if its about not liking campaigns) and hires her on the spot
oh god, the banter is so fun to think about. i mean, i've genuinely written so much about just like. how amy and donna bounce off of each other, because it's fun, and because it's them it's probably flirtatious, but amy would absolutely not genuinely make a move on her assistant. i think they also both help a lot with the other's self doubt or whatever, with donna pushing amy to do more but also to take care of herself and take a step back sometimes, and amy just showing that she cares about donna's opinions and insights into whatever they're working on, and sort of forgetting that she's her assistant and not her co-conspirator, and sort of calling donna on her constant bad dates in early seasons, too ("don't go on that date, donna" "jealous?" and maybe she is, sort of, a bit, but that's really not the point. "disappointed in your taste. or your concept of yourself." "what's that mean?" "you could do better." "could I?" "yes." "then give me something better to do tonight, amy." and amy doesn’t ask her to stay) (don't think about amy finding out about dr. freeride and the conversation that would follow don't think about it don't think about it)
oh but things get fun once we get to a point where amy's there in canon, because you now have donna working with josh again in a roundabout way, and she left him, and she still feels guilty about it, and she can sort of see the glimpse into what it would've been like, if she had stayed. and amy and josh are like. just a mess, obviously. my brain is also stuck on the concept of that conversation amy and josh have in women of qumar but in reverse ("are you dating donna?" "no." "i heard you might be" "i'm not" "she's cute." "she's my assistant." but it also has a lot more. implications for him to hear that than for her to, so. that's fun). i kind of have no idea what amy and josh's relationship would look like in this au so. not gonna dwell on that. (except to say that the concept of donna "gather ye rose buds"-ing amy about josh is Really fucking funny, partially bc amy would just be like "he's a thorn not a bud")
when amy gets fired, donna's upset with josh about it, because she's spent the last... three and a half? years working with amy, so she's probably more on amy's side here, even if she will admit it was kind of reckless. donna's given a chance to stay at the wlc, but she goes with amy, which amy is baffled and terrified by, because she doesn't know what to do with that kind of loyalty (”you’ll never lose me amy” “please don’t say that”) and because she... doesn't have a job, really, at the moment. she pays donna, anyways, and makes sure she has a job with the stackhouse campaign with her if she wants it. donna takes it, and doesn't question why amy's doing it. she doesn't question why amy leaves, either, and amy doesn't get why she comes with her, again.
around when amy gets hired by abbey (and brings donna on with her if she wants it, which of course she does) amy kind of snaps and asks her why she keeps working with her, why she won't stay somewhere and climb up a ladder or go anywhere, she's qualified as hell and could and should be working a better job, should be doing anything other than following amy over cliff after cliff, should not be working for her at this point, and... donna kind of thinks its obvious. she loves working with amy, loves that they do new things all the time, that the work feels important, loves the opportunities amy has given her and that the work feels important. amy sort of lets it rest and throws herself into work with abbey, and we finally get to have donna with the whole group again somewhat, but its a conversation that they sort of keep having without really having, until donna finally snaps and says something like "do you want me to quit?" or "do you want to fire me?" or "do you want me to leave?" idk, and amy maybe says yes, and maybe doesn't answer, and that's commencement (of course the idea of donna and josh doing "you have to get amy" and "are you in love with amy" is also really. interesting to me bc of how you'd have to make it work and i don't not have thoughts)
once things have settled, a little bit, after zoey's gotten back, donna goes to amy and tells her like "i'll resign. if you don't want me here... i'm not gonna make you fire me, but if you don't want me here, i'll go." and amy is a mess of a person, so she's like. "okay." and donna's naturally upset by that, and oh, this is happening during constituency of one, by the way! so donna leaves, amy gets yelled at by jed, goes to josh's office and sort of has a breakdown about everything, and when he says "apologize, you gotta apologize" he means to jed and to donna, and she goes to jed and quits and everything ('this building isn't very conducive to relationships’ hits here, huh) and tells him that he or abbey should hire donna, that she's incredible and one of the best people she's ever worked with, and she leaves.
donna takes the job (i'm not sure about specifically what job? i do really like the concept of her being abbey's cos for a lot of reasons but idk if she'd be like "qualified" for it at this point? maybe she gets taken on as like an interim cos for her but abbey just keeps her, anyways. or it could be something in legislative affairs bc i loved angela and donna working together) and feels too weird and sort of hurt to reach out to amy even though she does get amy well enough to sort of get it, she's also too insecure to really get it. someone mentions, in passing, at some point, that amy told jed to give donna a job, and she's sort of touched and sort of insulted and it's all complicated, and abbey or whoever reassures her that she has this job because she deserves this job, not just because amy recommended her. very highly.
cj probably points out a lot of stuff about amy and their relationship to donna in my no exit analog bc i love a good bottle episode, and cj being friends with both of them and being super perceptive is so important to me. i will also not be discussing gaza here bc i honestly don't think in this au that donna would be going
she and amy run into each other either at some fundraiser thing abbey and amy are both speaking at, or in some lobbying meeting or something, and amy's glad to see her doing well, and it assuages a little of her guilt over the whole thing. they have a really awkward conversation, something like "are you enjoying the new job?" "yeah, i really am. i guess i should thank you, since i hear you helped me get it." "you don't... it kind of felt like the least i could do." "yeah, well. thanks, anyways." "i miss you." "then why did you tell me to leave?" "you're the best assistant and probably the best friend i've ever had, you know." "so you decided to ensure i was no longer either?" "i was kind of only going for the first one." “well, you always were an overachiever.” and then they have to like. go and do their jobs bc they’re very busy people. but things are a little better between them now
finally, at some point, god knows when or how or why, donna’s probably made a joke about it, or something, and amy just says something like “i didn’t want you to work for me anymore because i knew you could do better, could do more, than being my assistant, but i didn’t want to tell you to leave.” and donna, who gets amy just nods and says “i appreciate that. i really did love working with you, but i appreciate that. could’ve said that then.” and amy laughs and rolls her eyes, and donna gives her a look. “is that the only reason you didn’t want me to work for you anymore?” and amy just shakes her head, and donna starts to say something, expects to have to say something, but amy kisses her and says “i’m really glad you don’t work for me anymore.” and donna laughs and says “i am, too.”
#asks#answered#claudiasjeancregg#amy gardner#donna moss#tww#honestly this was really hard for me bc one of the things i really like about donna/amy in canon is that donna has never worked for amy#like theres power dynamics obviously but that amys never been a part of the chain of command that donnas in. not really#but this was fun to think about and figure out how i could make it work#i also genuinely think amy would've either promoted or gotten donna to run way earlier but need that maximum drama#ALSO this just turned into fic whoops#the dialogue was just easier than explaining it but also its not like. fixed entirely to be in their voices this is too open for amy lmao#also of course i made this gay :) i would also love it just as an amy donna brotp concept but yk
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The Late Shift - Part 2
Characters: Paul Sevier x Female Reader
Words: 2k
Warnings/Tags: Little inklings of sexual themes. Otherwise we’re still in PG territory. Oh and mutual pining from two idiots. My favourite kind.
Authors Note: One shot? I don’t know her. Honestly, I don’t have any excuse. I just felt the urge to continue on with this dumb fluffy story because it makes me feel a little warm and fuzzy inside and I needed that. Will we drive this car straight into smut town afterwards? Ah you’ll just have to see.
Catch up with Part 1 here
*
Paul always considered himself a smart guy. Perceptive, knowledgeable, with years of grueling education behind him to be where he is today.
His schooling, work, almost every minute of his waking moments was spent in the realm of artificial illustrations of correspondence. He could happily spend hours sifting through the words and numbers that made up all types of message transmission, might even admit he had a talent for decoding their significance and origin. Exchanges born from machinery were easy to analyse – they had set rules and gave little room for differing interpretation. He was comfortable in that world. Knew how things worked, what paths data and carefully devised information would take.
Human communication was infinitely harder to navigate. It was a skill he knew he was lacking in, compared to others at least. His words never came out the way he wanted, he struggled to say exactly what was wished to convey and agonised over the fact expression and tone could morph any remark into something with a whole different meaning.
Every day, he encountered people who used this as a tool - a weapon to obscure the truth and conceal hidden agendas. It was hard not to, working for the US government. In time, he’d become cynical. Wary of what people spoke aloud, assuming it was all said without much sincerity or reliability unless proven otherwise.
And then after another arduous day, there you were. Out of nowhere. Kind. Honest. Genuine. Within such an excruciatingly short interaction, you’d exuded all these traits so effortlessly. A breath of fresh air after being smothered by the smog the rest of his life contained.
Paul would easily admit his attraction to you was surprisingly swift. The rapturing smile you wore when you’d looked up from your notepad had him snared from the moment it appeared, an aura of natural vibrance and radiant energy shimmering out from your animated expression. What he’d expected to be a dry, tedious endeavour turned into a spark-filled scene, where an excited stranger made him feel both horrendously nervous and unusually at-ease. It had been a long time since someone made him feel like that.
It had also been a long time since he’d asked someone out on a date, for more than a few reasons. The more prolific Paul became in his job, the more unpredictable and unstable his life outside of it was. It took him across the country at a moments’ notice and consumed most hours of his day, meaning forging even short relationships was fairly difficult.
Plus… he just wasn’t good at it. Putting himself out there. He was shy, paralyzingly so. It’s not exactly something he could refute. His confidence was always born from experience and understanding, in knowing the reasons behind why things worked the way they did, along with being able to calculate what would happen next. No textbook could ever cover the entire spectrum of human personality, and there was no way to truly predict what a person might do or say.
So, without the security of knowledge behind him, uneasiness and apprehension took over in most of his social interactions, particularly with those he felt a magnetism to. It’s exactly how he thought he seemed during his time with you. Awkward and floundering. Not exactly the most charming attributes for a man to have. And yet, the longer he was in your presence, the more he sensed those foibles fade into the back of his mind.
Talking to you was easy. Easier than it had been with anyone during a first meeting. What hadn’t been easy was enduring the seconds your touch grazed over him in your delicate workings while taking each different measurement - his heart beating a little faster, his muscles becoming a little more tense. When you’d eventually let your stare reach his, he’d seen how your eyes moved to trace the lines of his mouth, and it set his insides on fire. He’d been frozen by the unique type of burn, his body locked in place while a rare impulse begged him to sink his lips onto yours. In the past, he struggled to kiss a woman even after several dates, unable to push past the fear and doubt to turn his desire into action. However, in that moment, he’d been all too eager. His hand had moved on its own accord, fingers slinking up your waist, about to pull you closer when interruption instantly shattered his resolve.
The urge was still there in the dialogue that followed, although the promise of seeing you tomorrow made it easier to walk away, safe in the knowledge he had another opportunity to ask you out when his confidence was properly steeled. For once, he could be smart about this. Use his natural intellect to plan and act accordingly, giving him the best odds of securing more time with you.
Oh, but that all went to shit when your text message popped up on his phone screen. Seeing those words, even if they were meant for someone else, made his excitement reach an unfathomable peak, and in turn made him recklessly send a response without taking a second to think about the consequences.
And now, Paul had never felt so stupid in his entire life.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, the phone in his palm lit up with your conversation on display, he felt his stomach spasm with anxiety. Were you going to reply? What would you say? What if his bluntness freaked you out? What if you weren’t even talking about him? Was this all something his mind conjured up?
As the minutes passed without any sign of a response, the initially minor sense of panic began to compound, weighing heavy on his chest, the chaos of his mind soon melting into one certainty - he’d totally fucked this up.
About to slump his forehead into the steering wheel in a display of despondency, Paul suddenly felt a flash of courage at remembering the view of your face peering up at him. He knew the image of it would haunt him if he didn’t do something. He had to fix this. Explain himself. But it needed to be in person. He wouldn’t let technology mess this up for him again.
With a purposeful breath, Paul exited his car and began to retrace his steps past the other shopfronts, silently rehearsing what he wanted to say to you. He hoped to surrender himself to a collectively embarrassing situation, laugh off the turn of events, having it all culminate in an offer of dinner once your shift had finished. He already had a place in mind, only a street away, a little dumpling house that was always open late. Perfect for a cosy, quiet date after a chance meeting.
When his eyes latched onto your figure through the glass window, he stopped his hand from reaching for the door handle. You were crouching down in front of a small boy, his mother behind him cradling a newborn baby, your hand gesturing towards an array of child size suits. Paul couldn’t help but watch as your warming smile beamed, guiding the boys hands to touch and feel over the material, your words evidently making him feel more at ease as his expression slowly relaxed out of its worried frown.
Creeping backwards to make sure you didn’t catch him in your periphery, Paul felt a wave of relief wash over his skin, having evidence that your lack of reply wasn’t due to any of the worst case scenarios he’d been fretting over. You were just busy, concentrated on your work, giving your time and expertise to others in the same way you’d given to him.
The realisation was enough for him slink away, still impatient for your next encounter but assured in it being set within the next day cycle. He just had to wait.
Although, waiting wasn’t exactly a talent of his either.
*
You were dying inside.
A friendly grin was plastered on your face as you conversed sweetly with the woman in front of you, making idle chit-chat while her son changed out of the suit you’d picked together, but the smile had never felt so insincere. Usually you loved when children came in to pick out ensembles for weddings and similarly formal events, but at the moment your mind was stuck on a small battery-powered rectangle sitting at your desk with a half-written message remaining under your lock-screen.
In the time before Paul’s response came through, you’d never felt more humiliated in your whole existence. Evaporating into thin air would have been a welcomed miracle. But when the returning text slid into focus, your whole mindset shifted.
He felt the same. He wanted you too.
You’d been in the middle of typing out a hasty invitation to come back and make true on his intentions when this overwhelmed mother with a fussy baby caught your attention. Her eldest son had done his best to iron out his only formal suit for the role of ring bearer in an aunt’s wedding this coming weekend, unfortunately resulting an a house full of smoke and a clump of burnt wool.
Personal matters withered into the background at the comprehension of her drained, exhausted demeanour, all your focus pointed back towards the job you’d been distracted from. Well, mostly.
You couldn’t avoid the thoughts and questions glinting in the back of your mind. Of what might have happened if this woman never appeared. What might be happening in an alternate timeline where you’d been able to send that waiting reply. Without intention, your wonderings turned into moving pictures – leading Paul into the back workshop, being roughly picked up onto the cutting table, his lips and yours finally connected in a heated clash, shedding all of his clothing until that heinous mustard shirt was crumpled on the floor-
The high pitched beep of the receipt machine snapped you back into reality, noting the relieved smile the mother wore while her son excitedly grabbed at the bags containing his dashing new suit.
“Thank you!” he hollered without needing to be prompted, waving his hand vigorously before skittering away to the door.
“You’re an absolute lifesaver,” the woman echoed, taking the receipt from your outstretched hand. “I’m really sorry for keeping you so late.”
“Oh don’t worry about it.” The time on the monitor screen just ticked over to 8:17pm, long after you would usually shut up shop and head home to your empty apartment. “I've got nowhere special to be.”
You each said your goodbyes, waiting until the precise moment her silhouette was out of sight before jumping to your phone. The same half written message was there, but now it felt impossible to finish. All traces of adrenaline had long since worn off, and the bravery that made you type out the risqué proposition was reduced to almost nothing. Your timid nature rushed back in full force, a thumb pressing hard on the little x button to erase all evidence of your out of character impulses.
Who were you kidding. You weren’t this person. Unashamed and brazen enough to dive into a fiery entanglement with a handsome stranger in the same evening you’d met. You wished you could be. There was never a time the concept was so enticing. But… it was a fantasy not meant for you to live out. They were destined for the outgoing, the cool and composed, the bold and sure-footed. You rarely felt like any of those things. And Paul, like most men, probably reserved their interest and attraction for those types of women. It was so silly of you to think any different. Getting your hopes up was foolish, and would only end in-
The tingle of the shopkeepers bell sounded, internally groaning as you slid your phone back onto the desk. “We’re closed,” you hawked, a coldness in your tone you couldn’t hide. Eyes snapping up to the intruder, a bolt of lightening shot through, barely able to stop the delight mixing into your blood.
“I just, uh, figured out something more that I needed,” Paul said softly, scratching the back of his neck, clearly nervous.
“You did?” you breathed. “W-what was it?”
His chest rose and fell with a calming exhale, making sure your stares were secured before giving his answer. “…You.”
*
Tagging some lovelies who might want to read. Feel free to let me know if you don’t want to tagged in future works!
@tlcwrites @roanniom @princessxkenobi @hopeamarsu @blowthatpieceofjunk @mariesackler @leatherboundriot @foxilayde @modernpaw @cornmousequeen @direnightshade @mylifeisactuallyamess @caillea @jynz-andtonic @paterson-blue @miraclesabound @prismaticpizza @millenialcatlady
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'Golden Girls' Polishes Its Scripts: Daily Revisions Geared to Sharpen Story and Hone Those Laugh Lines
TRUE OR FALSE:
Actresses Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan and Betty White write their own dialogue for "The Golden Girls." (FALSE)
Older female writers write all 25 episodes each season because no one else could understand the problems of older females. (FALSE)
In order to keep the shows consistent from week to week, one writer prepares all the episodes. (FALSE)
Ten staff writers work together to prepare a season's worth of scripts. (TRUE)
It's a Monday morning in early October and on a sound stage at the small Renmar Studios in Hollywood, the "golden girls" have gathered to read a new script. This will be episode No. 60 of the series and it will air about three weeks later — on Halloween.
Everyone in the room has heard about this week's story line: Rose writes a letter to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. But apart from the writers, no one has seen the final script until now. It was completed on a Saturday, photocopied 150 times on Sunday and distributed this morning to NBC; co-producer Touchstone Pictures; the show's creator, Susan Harris; the show's lawyers and researchers, and the "Golden Girls" cast and crew.
"Hopefully, they'll laugh," murmurs head writer Kathy Speer as she prepares to hear the "table reading." "If they don't, we'll be here fixing the script for a long time."
The table reading really is at tables — eight of them arranged in a rectangle. The actresses and guest actors sit on one side, facing the writers. To the actresses' left are director Terry Hughes, executive producers Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas and co-executive producers/head writers Speer and Terry Grossman. To the actresses' right sit NBC representatives, the show's casting director and props and wardrobe personnel.
They begin. Director Hughes reads the stage directions: Interior, kitchen — day. Sophia is seated at table. She is reading book entitled 'Magic Made Easy.' Dorothy enters.
Bea Arthur, as Dorothy, reads: "Hi, Ma."
Estelle Getty, as Sophia, reads: "Give me your watch."
Another week is under way. As the actresses go through their lines, everyone else listens intently. They laugh (or don't laugh) and take notes. By the Friday-night tapings, this script will need to play at 22 minutes. But Friday is a long way off.
As soon as the table reading ends, the writers, producers, director and an NBC program executive huddle to discuss script changes. Then, while the actresses begin rehearsals using the first draft, the writers rush off to their yellow stucco two-story building nearby to begin rewriting.
"The secret of TV half-hour comedy shows is the revisions," explains Dean Valentine, NBC director of current comedy and also the program executive on "Golden Girls." "What they start out with is 75% away from what they end up with."
"I don't think this episode is going to need much work," co-head writer Terry Grossman announces cheerfully on his way back to his office. "It got a good response at the table. We just have to cut it, smooth out transitions and clarify some story points. New jokes will be the tough thing." He anticipates a few hours' work.
"Early in the first season we were throwing out whole scenes," he recalls. "Now we know what works for each lady and what she does best. That's the advantage of being in the third year of the show. The disadvantage is that stories are harder to come by."
Grossman heads into the office he shares with his wife Speer, who is also his writing partner. They are in charge of the writing staff. "That means we are the two who get yelled at the most when something goes wrong," he jokes.
Also piling into the conference-sized room are supervising producers Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan and producer Winifred Hervey. Despite their titles, Grossman explains, "We're all writers."
"We are the five most dull people," Nathan insists.
"We're much funnier on paper," Hervey adds.
These five, all in their 30s, met when they worked on "Benson," an earlier Witt-Thomas-Harris series. They have been with "Golden Girls" since the beginning, and every Monday they jointly rewrite the script being taped that week. They jokingly call themselves The Gang of Five.
While they start rewriting, the show's other five staff writers — Chris Lloyd, Jeff Ferro, Frederic Weiss, Robert Bruce and Martin Weiss — go back to their own offices to work on new scripts.
"To keep quality, you like as many writers as you can afford," Speer explains. "This year, we have six 'entities' (writing teams) — four sets of partners and two individuals. And we also use a few free-lance scripts each season."
Approximately 25% of the show's budget goes to the writers, executive producer Tony Thomas says. Staff writers on a comedy series earn a weekly salary plus separate payments for completed scripts. A free-lance writer who does a story outline, a first draft and a second draft can earn about $11,000. (Note: All outside script submissions must come through agents.)
"A good comedy requires a lot of teamwork, a lot of people sitting in a room working together," Thomas emphasizes. "A good team is rare, but it's not extremely rare. It's like winning the NBA title. We had it in 'Soap,' and we had it for some years in 'Benson.' Obviously this is one of the most successful staffs we’ve ever put together."
Both Witt and Thomas deal with day-to-day details on "Golden Girls." Harris, who created the series, is less involved this season because, according to Thomas, "She is working on a feature for Disney with us. But she reads all the scripts and is familiar with most of the stories."
Flashback to the previous Friday, a week when "Golden Girls" wasn't taping. Every fourth week during the season, the show shuts down, giving the actors and crew a rest and allowing the writers to catch up.
The Gang of Five is trying to explain how their writing process works. They insist on telling, rather than showing, because, as they say, they're shy. "At the beginning of the season, even having our new writers in the meeting made me a little uncomfortable," Grossman admits. "It slowed down the process."
"One of the most important things that exists with this group is that the bottom line is making the show as good as possible. It's still very difficult when your script is read for the first time and the material doesn't work. It hurts for a moment. But there's no time to take it personally. It didn't work, and the clock is ticking. You better keep moving and get it right."
Like all sitcoms, "Golden Girls" has a "bible," a book that synopsizes everything that has happened on a series. Thus, new writers don't have to watch all the previous episodes. But there is no master plan of what will happen in the future.
The idea for "Letter to Gorbachev" surfaced last May at a beginning-of-the-season meeting of the writers and producers. "It was one of 20 or 30 story notions kicked around," Barry Fanaro recalls. The obvious similarity to Samantha Smith's letter to then-Soviet leader Yuri Andropov isn't mentioned.
"Most of them didn't work,” adds Fanaro's writing partner Mort Nathan, "but this one sounded amusing. Because Rose is a childlike character, we wondered what would happen if she wrote a letter to Gorbachev about world peace. We started fleshing it out, but we couldn't think of a second act. We went round and round, and finally six weeks later we came up with a way to make the story work."
"The five of us went over it scene by scene and agreed it was workable," Fanaro continues. "Then Mort and I went off and wrote it. It took about 10 days because we were also working on other things."
Each "Golden Girls” episode is written to a formula: "the idea, the act break and the resolution," Grossman explains. "Usually there's an 'A' story and a 'B' story going. It's the natural structure."
Although Fanaro and Nathan, who won a writing Emmy last year for a "Golden Girls" episode, wrote the basic Gorbachev script, the story the audience will see has gone through the usual "Golden Girls" grinder: The Gang of Five read and dissect the first draft, adding new scenes, new lines, new jokes. "It's really a team effort," Grossman stresses.
The jokes can be the easiest part — or the hardest. "They're only hard to write when you've got one that isn't working," Grossman says. "A joke in the middle of a scene can be weak, but the 'out joke' — a snappy one-liner that ends the scene on a laugh — has to be strong."
"We may decide a scene needs a new opening," Speer explains. "There will be a long moment of silence. Then someone will ask if anybody's eaten at some new restaurant. In the course of conversation, somebody will say, 'Wait a minute. I have an idea.'"
"With five of us, at least one of us is paying attention," Hervey deadpans.
"Good writers should be able to write for men, women, old or young," Grossman says. "We all draw on other people in our lives — parents, grandparents. Part of the reason for the show's popularity is that these are very vital people. The very same story you've seen 100 times on every sitcom takes on new light with characters in this age group. That makes life easier for us.
"Also, these four actresses are sensational. To have the entire cast be able to give such high-caliber performances means you don't have to adjust your material. You write the material, and they deliver. If they can't make it work, there's something wrong with the material."
The week goes by quickly. On Tuesday morning, the "golden girls" read over the revised script and discover that one scene has changed considerably. Some lines have been cut, while others have been sharpened. There are several new jokes. A press conference scene has been shifted from a hotel room to the ladies' living room.
On Tuesday night, the Gang of Five works late. During the day's rehearsals they realized that the revised scene didn’t play well so they jettisoned it and added some new dialogue and a few more jokes.
Following Wednesday's rehearsals, they hone the script a little more. Time is pressing. By the Thursday afternoon dress rehearsal, the actresses try to be script-perfect, although they often aren't. By now, the original 52-page script has been reduced to 50 pages, and almost every page has had at least one alteration.
For instance, on Monday when Blanche accidentally spat Coca-Cola on a Soviet Embassy official, he responded by saying, "No apology necessary." Now he says, "No need to apologize. In Moscow, we have to stand in line four hours to get this."
Late Friday afternoon, the audience files into Renmar Studios to watch the first taping. The writers are standing by, just in case a last-minute problem occurs. During the 90-minute dinner break, while a new audience is arriving, the cast, writers and producers calmly discuss how to improve the second taping. A few lines are cut, the taping is completed, and it’s on to the next week.
Source: Mills, Nancy. 1987. 'Golden Girls' Polishes Its Scripts: Daily Revisions Geared to Sharpen Story and Hone Those Laugh Lines. Los Angeles Times, October 30, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-10-30-ca-11702-story.html
#the golden girls#how the sausage is made#from the archives#tv writing#i just thought it was neat#long post
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Adèle Haenel: "And the fight against racism, is that a black thing?" (March 1, 2016)
Her raw talent and her unique personality are shaking up French cinema. With two Césars in her pocket, the actress from Les Combattants became an icon of auteur cinema in Les Ogres and soon with the Dardenne brothers. Interview with a thoughtful and shady feminist.
The first vision we have of Adèle Haenel when we enter the hotel room, where she has just been photographed, is that of a tall girl in denim and worn-out suede boots looking for cotton to remove her make-up. She says that it's too much, that it's not her, that we have to take it all away - this sticky femininity - and right away.
She announces her color: strong, fierce, temperamental, a little prickly, when, during the interview, she frowns and throws your questions back to you - always with great relevance. She is beautiful and abrupt, her adolescent brusqueness (even though she is 27 years old), gives the impression of robustness: a sportswoman with the shoulders of a swimmer but the face of a femme fatale from the inter-war period, green eyes and a pulpy mouth. This is an unprecedented combination in French cinema, which tends to be dominated by young first-time coquettes looking for contracts with luxury brands. We have never seen Adèle H. at the front row of fashion shows, her appearances on the red carpet - the playground of her fellow female cast members - did not stick in our memories, and that's good.
We've been keeping an eye on her since Water Lilies (2007), by Céline Sciamma, to whom she declared her love at a César Award ceremony. She won two of them, hands down: for Suzanne, and then, last year, for Les Combattants, an emblematic film that created a new image of a virile heroine in French cinema. Adèle Haenel, an icon of auteur cinema, was thrown at the heart of the system: she is the most coveted actress of the moment and has just finished in Liège The Unknown Girl, by the Dardenne brothers, who will inevitably be screened again at the next Cannes Film Festival.
You have to hear her talk about cinema, with her eyes fixed and uninterrupted flow, to understand how incandescent this girl is. In Les Ogres, a choral film by Léa Fehner that talks about the daily life of an itinerant theater that performs Chekhov, she plays Mona, actress and pregnant. The diary of this tribe that travels from city to city, a tent on their back, also draws a universal portrait of actors, truculent monsters full of love and violence.
Madame Figaro - Since the success of Les Combattants, you intrigue people...
Adèle Haenel. - I can see that the demand is stronger, but I'm not chasing after advertising and I don't intend to invade the public space. I think we have to remain discreet. Notoriety hasn't changed anything in my life and it certainly won't change my desire to make films following the same line.
What is that line ?
I make a film to carry a message. I can feel when a director has something to say. I feel something, a desire, a vibration. There is a thread, an intuition, a truth that imposes itself on me. I know what I have to do, I can feel it. It is both mystical and very rational. What is interesting is to come out of a navel-gazing, to rise up, to talk about people, to talk about the world. I like the idea that everything fits together collectively: feelings, economics, politics. A film is a common story, and I want to be part of that dialogue. A film must be in direct resonance with its time: cinema is today. I do things for now, and it's not up to me, to us, to decide whether a film is going to stay, whether it's made for eternity. I feel extremely responsible.
You feel very inhabited when you talk about cinema...
I have many other reasons to live, but, yes, I am deeply interested in the representation of things. How does cinema fit into society? Who is it for? Cinema is obviously a political act. For example, even the latest Star Wars is political. I was really relieved to see so many women and different skin colors: it means that everyone can be a hero and that feels good.
It is said that in the movies women are taking over...
It's an evergreen content. They make a big deal out of it, but if you look at the numbers, it's not so true: women are still in the minority. I can't be satisfied with that.
Do you feel the prevailing machismo that is associated with cinema?
I'm not going to waste my time and energy educating these people.
Is it easier to succeed in this job when you are a man?
Your question is a strange one. Either we point out superficial phenomena - the decision-makers are men, they have the money and therefore the power - or we debate a broader question: in what world are we evolving? And there, it's always the same thing. The world is cut in two: on the one hand, there is the man, the virile, all linked to superior qualities, and on the other hand, the lower part, the woman, the secret, the moods. Of course, all our representation is linked to this division. I often ask myself the following question: in a fair world, without discrimination, what is art? Art today is in dialogue with its time, so it does not abolish anything but is involved in the fight.
As we can't classify you, you have been labeled as virile...
I'd like someone to explain to me why people should always be defined. To be a woman, you would have to be a feminine woman, right? For me, it's redundant. I don't maintain any posture, I am myself. But the way people look at me doesn't bother me: make up your mind, there's no problem.
However, you embody a renewal at the antipodes of actresses on their first red carpets...
I don't know which ones you are talking about, but I will never be against other propositions from women. After all, they also are undoubtedly dealing with their inner truth. But then again, I don't want to comment on something that escapes me completely: the gaze of others. I realize that everything is complicated for actresses who are so solicited that they end up participating, willingly or unwillingly, in a kind of general cacophony.
Are you one of those ogresses that Léa Fehner describes in her film?
I've just eaten about twenty-five croissants, isn't that a clue? In Léa's film, there is an energy close to the one in Les Combattants: action as a solution to an era in crisis. Here, it's laughter and gluttony facing a personal anxiety and an era that values suffering. I think we need to wake people up, to make them understand that fatality is a terrible and disarming discourse. We are told that the planet is warming up, that people are being massacred, that entire populations are on the move. I am not saying that we are not powerless against this, but feeling concerned and responsible is already a first step towards action.
Are actors monsters?
I don't know and I don't care. I'm not here to tell people: I'm like this, I'm like that, I'm better than you. I don't have to deal with that. Why me? I don't know.
Yes, why you and not someone else? Actor, it's an elective profession...
What is an actor? Their hypersensitivity should not be overestimated. The key is courage. That's the most difficult thing, courage and sincerity: not hiding, committing yourself with what you have, with your face and your body, with everything, with no escape. We often say: "To be an actor is to be someone else" but above all, you have to accept being yourself. It's not the most well-balanced job on earth, but a healthy actor would be weird, wouldn't it?
Precisely, you are sometimes compared to... Depardieu.
There are worse critics. What I like about him is his poetic sensitivity, which is not fake at all. You can sense his love of texts. And then, come on, what an incredible freedom of acting!
Can you play everything?
I don't know. What I do know is that the feeling of comfort is dangerous. It would turn us into a small factory. As soon as I start a film, I don't sleep anymore. The first scenes are hell.
Is shooting naked a problem?
It annoys me. In all films, there's this double injunction from society or the audience: we actresses are asked to get naked but to feel guilty about it! But no guys, I'm not going to feel guilty so you can be fully satisfied that I hold this assigned place of the whore and the well-bred girl! The commitment I make when I make a movie is much bigger than that.
Your feminist side...
I don't have a feminist side, I'm a feminist simply because I want to exist.
Today, not all women are feminists…
So feminism is a girl thing, then? And the fight against racism is a black thing? It's not a power struggle or lobbying, it's not Pepsi against Coke. No, it's a fundamental question about humanity.
#adèle haenel#adele haenel#madame figaro#2016#it's been a while since my last interview translation !#i've always loved that interview#don't think it was translated before but who knows aha#here you go anyway !#sometimes i translate things#les ogres
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writer's meme - TY to @r0b0tb0y for the tag!
How many works do you have on AO3?
168 - oh man that's more than I'd realized. I passed 150 and didn't even notice!
What’s your total AO3 word count?
1,133,901
So many.
How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?
Since r0b0tb0y and I were just talking about this, I conveniently have a list of all 20 ranked by number of works
134 - Star Wars
7 - Original Works
7 - Marvel
2 - Pirates of The Carribean
2 - The Old Guard
2 - Discworld
1 - Good Omens
1 - Leverage
1 - The Good Place
1 - Avatar: The Last Airbender
1 - Ocean’s 11
1 - Harry Potter
1 - The Goblin Emperor
1 - Gundam Wing
1 - Star Trek: TNG
1 - Hades (Videogame)
1 - Sailor Moon
1 - Russian Doll
1 - Mummy/Wonder Woman crossover
What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
Lol, looking at my top five - it falls into two categories
1. Fics I wrote right at the height of a fandom's popularity that got a massive reader boost because it was the Hot Thing Right Then
2. Star Wars Fix-Its
~
A Series of Better Decisions - A Padme/Obi-Wan/Anakin SW Prequel Trilogy fix-it where Anakin talks to Obi-Wan and spends Revenge of the Sith in a stressed-out bisexual panic instead of becoming a Space Fascist. He winds up fake-poly-dating Obi-Wan to try to bring down Palpatine, and eventually winds up in a better place due to the power of Quitting Your Job and becoming a househusband.
Galactic Response Time - Captain Marvel - an at the time MCU canon-compliant gen fic that ran the universe forward and explained how Carol really TRIED to show up for all those other crises that happened, but it turns out most of the major MCU disasters only lasted like three days and space is real big, y'all. Featuring Nick Fury cathartically bitching with his Space Bestie.
New Lands for the Living - Fix-it where the sequel trilogy ends Even Worse, Poe goes back in time to mercy-kill the timeline, and much to his dismay winds up married to just-before-Original-Trilogy Luke Skywalker. He has an existential crisis about his own existence, meets some competent women, and starts fixing things.
Life's Little Pleasures - The Good Omens fic where I put all my ace feelings, featuring metaphysical bonding and good scotch.
Flustered - Another Padme/Anakin/Obi-Wan SW Prequel Trilogy fix-it, where Order 66 never happens. Anakin gets some therapy and Padme gets a horrible crush on Obi-Wan.
Do you respond to comments, why or why not?
I do! I love getting to talk to people about fics, and I so appreciate people making the effort to comment I want to spend some time with them! It's so much easier not to comment, I know.
What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?
Hmmm this is not my normal wheelhouse. I usually go angst that gets resolved by the end. Let me look to see what the options are.
Okay, I think we've got two contendors:
In Waystation an exhausted Poe Dameron crash-lands in a station where a Bodhi Rook that lived and then hid now lives with Baze and Chirrut. There is a little epilgue that implies they're going to meet again, but the bulk of the fic does end with Poe making the decision to go back to the Resistance, and leaving Bodhi behind. Still, I think it's more wistful, rather than angsty.
Time Enough for Mourning takes it though, I think. Davits Draven/Antoc Merrick, that is entirely about Draven mourning the fact that Antoc has died. The end is still, I think, more cathartic than angsty, but it is overall probably the strongest "break out the waterworks" of my fics.
Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?
I do occasionally, usually when someone prompts me and I find something in there that makes my brain go!!! I think the strangest is probably The Face Underneath. It's a Cassian Andor/Elim Garak fic where I drag Garak into the Star Wars Universe for a triple drabble series where he is an old mentor of Cassian's.
Have you ever received hate on a fic?
Mmm, not proper hate. Realtalk, the most devastating one for me was when I posted a fic that the only comment was a spelling critique.
And yes, there was a spelling error, but still, very crushing to have that be the only feedback. (It has since found a few readers that said nice things, very healing :D)
Do you write smut? If so what kind?
Yes! Uh - consensual, between adults, often M/M adults, tho I have written explicit femslash, hetfic, and poly piles. It's usually affectionate, often plays with power dynamics even if it doesn't go into full dom/sub.
Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not that anyone has made me aware of, I've never looked.
Have you ever had a fic translated?
Had a request or two, but never been linked the result - so not sure if it didn't happen or if I just didn't get linked. I welcome it!
I have had several fics podficced, and I LOVE that. What a joy! Making a blanket permission statement that allowed podfic is one of the best decisions I've made as a fic author. Suddenly, Podfic!
Have you ever co-written a fic before?
Once or twice! I like the idea of doing it, but follow-through is hard. Hoping to do some co-writing soon though, so we will see!
What’s your all time favourite ship?
Sorry, unrepentant multi-shipper here. I like possibilities, and finding the story that will bring people together, more than one specific thing.
What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?
I don't have ANYTHING I've given up on, but there are a few fics in my unpublished drafts that were beautiful ideas, and really struggled to become contained stories. They all want to be sprawling things, and I have not felt sprawling-thing-writing passionate about those ideas. But, you never know! Inspiration may strike.
What are your writing strengths?
I'd say character voice, along with that, dialogue. Also humor moments that still have real weight and don't undercut the story, as well as straight comedy writing.
What are your writing weaknesses?
You see, I, uh, do this thing where I don't really end a sentence - I think about ending it, I even assume, at some point while I'm writing that I have ended it; I have not and it meanders, persistently, until I have constructed a whole paragraph made out of one chain of words and a hodgepodge of punctuation.
Also the thing where I accidentally use an unusual word five times in one paragraph because my brain has grabbed onto it like an excited puppy and keeps offering it up as the Perfect Word.
What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?
I love having multilingual characters. When writing, I tend to keep all the words in English and use dialogue tags to denote language shift - unless I am inventing the language, or have a speaker of that language willing to beta the bits to make sure I don't mess them up too badly.
What was the first fandom you wrote for?
Actually wrote and posted? Rogue One.
Fandom of my heart my younger self spun out stories in my imagination about? Where if I had my own computer and easy access to a fic archive they almost certainly would have become spectacularly earnest fics?
ReBoot and Sailor Moon. The Sailor Moon was an AU that took place on the sun and they all had kick-ass horses. Baby Sass knew what was up.
What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?
Nope, sorry, can't pick, love them all in different ways for different reasons.
Tagging: @semisweetshadow, @anamelesstraveler, @jules-of-the-crown - and generally if you follow me and want to do it, do so and tag me in it!
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Hello, Icarus! Please infodump to me about Danganronpa?
okay so! I had written out a whole thing but then tumblr deleted it! so that was fun! /s but now that I know what I'm going to write it's much easier, so that's good 😌
n e ways, I'm gonna do like a basic timeline w explanations and some other stuff that hopefully I'll remember once I start writing!! so let's go :D
a list of everything danganronpa in chronological order (not the order that you should play/watch the stuff in, I'll put that in the explanations)
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Despair Arc (DR3) - second anime, watch along with the Future and Hope arcs after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want to). backstory for the cast of the second game.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (THH) - first main game, play first. also has an anime that's basically the same as the game, but since there's not enough time to put everything from the game into the anime I definitely recommend playing the game. high school students from a prestigious school trapped in said school are forced to play a killing game, hijinks ensue.
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls (UDG) - third game, not main. play after playing the first two games. very different game mechanics from the main three, and widely considered not cannon by the fandom. I like it though, and it introduces a lot of really interesting characters along with giving a v underdeveloped character from the first game a lot more character development. it's not necessary to play it (though one of the characters plays a pretty big part in the third anime, so that would make more sense if you already knew her), but I think it's interesting and fun. there are also robot fights.
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (DR2 or SDR2) - second main game, play after playing the first game. same basic premise as the first game, except it's a different class (same school though) and this time they're on an island. even more hijinks and plot twists than the first game.
Super Danganronpa 2.5: Komaeda Nagito to Sekai no Hakaimono - (I could only find the Japanese title for this one, sorry 😔) kinda also part of the second anime? watch after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want) and watching DR3. character is woken up from a coma via overdramatic and overpowered other character.
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Future and Hope Arcs (DR3) - second anime, watch along with the Despair arc after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want to). aftermath of the first two games.
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (DRV3) - third main game, fourth game in total. I don't actually know when it happens bc they're v secretive about everything, so I'm just putting it last. play last. same premise as the first two, the class is trapped in a school with a courtyard and a huge sort of dome around everything. peak hijinks, too many plot twists to count.
woo!! that's the timeline as I know it, hopefully I didn't miss anything. and I have managed to remember what else I was going to say, so let's move on to section two:
the mechanics of the games
danganronpa is, at its core, a glorified visual novel. every character has a certain amount of sprites for when they talk, as well as voice lines that aren't usually the exact text on the screen but fit the vibe of whatever they're saying. and as I've said before, there's quite a lot of talking. these games have more plot than should really be possible and most or all of it is done through dialogue. cutscenes and class trials are the only parts that are reliably fully voice acted, but there are a lot of those.
as for the parts that are less visual novel-y: you can walk around, and the settings are pretty much as 3d as the 2d-ish style of the game allows. you can also click on things, and sometimes clicking on stuff will get you monocoins, the currency of the game, which means you'll be able to buy presents for the characters!!
"now why do I need presents for the characters?" you ask. well, that's because you're given a certain amount of free time each game to hang out with characters you want to get to know better! the game's ending is fixed, so you won't change the course of the game by who you do or don't hang out with, but you can learn more about characters and become closer to them! giving them presents they like makes them like you more :D
and the most exciting part of danganronpa, what a lot of people play the games for, the true lure of the game.... the class trials!!
so these characters are in a killing game, right? basically, they're faced with a sort of lose-lose predicament: stay trapped in the school forever, or kill one of your classmates to "graduate". but it's not as simple as that, because in order to graduate, you can't be caught. and how do you determine whether or not a criminal has been found out? well, a trial of course!
enter the class trials. every student (barring dead or severely wounded ones) is required to participate in a kind of mock trial- except someone's really dead, and they need to find the murderer or they'll all die too.
(right, did I forget to mention that? only one person can graduate. getting out alive insures that none of your classmates get the luxury of doing the same.)
so, yeah. the class trials are a true fight for life on both sides, because who ever loses will be executed.
and they're really, really fun.
entirely voice acted! enough minigames that the list of them is probably longer than this entire post! the joy of solving the mystery! the... execution, right in front of everyone.
hey, it's a dark game. not like they're trying to hide that. and the executions aren't actually all that gory most of the time, but they're still very much there and onscreen. also as close to fully animated as the games ever get, which is pretty cool.
so how the class trials work is this:
there's a murder. dun dun duuuun. you investigate everywhere related to the murder to get "truth bullets", which are the reason you don't immediately fail at the trials. you don't have to remember all of them, they're all written down in your e-handbook. plus, the protagonists all seem to have really good memories.
time for the actual class trial!! Monokuma (asshole bear running the killing game) introduces everything, explains the rules. and everyone starts talking.
there are a lot of different parts to the class trial, but most of it is "nonstop debates". everyone talks one after the other, and you have to find inconsistencies and shoot the right "weak spot" with the right truth bullet. you refute the lie or mistake and everyone goes back to arguing normally.
there's also hangman's gambit (weird hangman to find a key word), multiple choice things (self-explanatory), and plenty of others.
near the end of the trial (or sometimes only a little over halfway in, it varies), the killer will.... kind of become obvious. there's a specific kind of change in behavior that's the mark of the murderer in these games, but I'm not sure how to describe it exactly. a lot of times there's an accent change, and in general they start acting much more erratic. since it's a trial, though, even after this presents itself you still have to prove your case beyond reasonable doubt.
and once it's become clear to the killer that they're backed into a corner, you have to do the "bullet time battle". it goes by different names in different games, but the basic mechanics are the same: you battle against a student (usually the killer, but not always) in a rhythm-based battle where you have to click to the rhythm to refute your opponent's statements. once you've dealt enough damage, you shoot the final piece of evidence, and that's the end of it.
the murderers react differently different times. sometimes they break down and confess. sometimes they keep denying it. sometimes, they're just calm. however they act, though, the end is the same. they are caught and punished accordingly.
but before that, there's one more thing to do. the closing argument.
your final task is to explain how the murder was committed, from idea to execution (look, a pun! see I can be funny too 😌). and you have to do it... as a manga.
you don't have to draw the whole thing yourself ofc- you just have to fill in the missing panels and then watch as the protagonist narrates it to the rest of the class.
and that's all for the class trial, not counting the long talks after every execution while still in the courtroom.
wow, this is getting...... really, really long. there's only one more thing I'm gonna add, and I promise it will be much shorter than the other two bc it is late and I am officially Incredibly Fucking Tired.
with no further ado, a very short part three:
my general impression of the game. its vibes or smth, I dunno this is just what i think about it
when I first heard of danganronpa, I thought it was a horror game. I can now assure you that it is not. thriller? maybe. debatable. but definitely not horror.
and despite its extremely dark premise, this game is not all doom and gloom. there's so much stuff about hope, and overcoming despair even when it seems impossible... it's not exactly a happy game, but there's a lot more of that in there than you'd probably expect.
all in all, I love this game. so much. it means a lot to me, and I think it's a really good game. thanks for letting me talk about it so much asdhfd :D
#the turtle talks#icarus infodumps#danganronpa#i am so sorry#this is like an entire fucking essay lmao#it was so fun to write though#i will talk abt ocs next!!!#prolly not every day#bc as you can see#i tend to write A Lot#and that can be hard to keep up :(#but i will do it i promise!!!!!#never miss an opportunity to infodump abt them 😌#tysm for this ask!!#i never get to talk this much asdgfs#if you want to infodump abt anything to me pls do!!!!#/gen /pos#i love listening to people#talk abt stuff they love :D#long post
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how would your ideal LI season go?
oooh thank you anon this was really fun and definitely too long and entirely unrealistic because of all the variables but oh well i had fun lmao
Okay I’m just going to start by talking about LIs
I think one of Season 3’s biggest successes was making AJ available from the start, I think that definitely kept those who play for the girls interested
HOWEVER i also think we need one of each: an AJ, a Talia, and a Marisol
Someone you can couple up with right off the bat, someone that takes a bit of time to warm up, maybe around the halfway mark, and someone that isn’t available til the last or second to last recoupling, maybe because they’re only bicurious or its just in their character to take a while to warm up in general, they spent the season in friendship couples or blowing their shot because they didn’t want to move too quick
I know the amount of LIs in Season 2 is a huge attraction, but it obviously wasn’t maintainable, since so many LIs lost their personality after CA
Again, I think Season 3 did great on ideas, but bad execution on drama and actual plot
So I’d probably keep it about 9, maybe 10
And ideally one of them would be trans, probably a trans guy with top surgery scars. Someone makes a joke on the first day and he explains no problem, is open about it and his experiences, maybe he was kicked out as a teenager and is all about positivity and loving people for who they are because of it
I’m all on board for a enby or gnc character or MC, but I honestly think Love Island’s too binary for someone like that to thrive
OH! And an ace LI that’s probably sex neutral and really comfortable with it. They’re up front with their sexuality but have no problem with how sex-focused Love Island is, like they’re fine with the flirting and intimate stuff, they’re just not attracted at the end of the day
Or have this season’s slowburn female LI be demi? I’m not demi, only ace, so I can’t speak on that experience, but I think that might work pretty well, maybe she goes in knowing she’s demisexual and comes out of it knowing she’s demiromantic too? Id love that but idk
I want to touch on customization too, since there’s nowhere near enough
Definitely body types
I forget who said it, but have the typical thin type, a muscular type, and a plus sized
And don’t get me wrong, I know it’s extra work for the artists, but I personally think it’d be worth, but who knows
Make fantasy hair colours possible - blue, green, purple, pink, silver - with the type of variety S3 had, in a style closer to S2
Also tats! And piercings! Just like a septum or some ear piercing, maybe a lip, nothing too difficult
And allow for actually different personalities and careers
I get that most people who apply are going to be outgoing and influencers, but this is all fake anyway so who cares
Have your personality impact LIs, certain LIs are easier to get hearts with with a certain personality, while others have more negative reactions to that personality
Lot of coding but this is just my make believe, what’s the harm
Okay into each day
Id have 20 days, since I agree that that’s a pretty good sweet spot
And Im definitely on board with MC being a bombshell, but instead of introing her on the first day, Id do the second
First half of the episode is spent as a recap of the first day, 5 couples like usual, let’s call the Islanders Bobby, Harry, Camilo, Bill, Rohan, AJ, Talia, Elladine, Miki, and Erikah, I’ll explain later, it’s pretty much for one single reason each
So MC’s first day is the Islander’s second, she shows up like Lucas & Henrik, before all the Islanders are up, and she has an option to say hi to someone early, add a gem to be upfront about being interested or something, during the second half of the first episode
Second episode starts with all the Islanders finding MC and saying hi, whoever you chose to have a chat with’s partner is kinda salty, if you chose a guy
MC ends the day choosing between any of the guys and two of the girls, AJ and Talia
For the guys, like Season 3, three are endgame, ones a red herring like Rohan in Season 1, and one’s up front about it being a friendship couple from the start, since I definitely think we need actual friendship couples - this friendship couple guy is Bobby, but without the pushy crush
Rohan is initially interested, but like in Season 1, he gives it up after a while
AJ is super into it and happy if you pick her and has no problem with it, while Talia has a “no thanks” thing and makes you pick again
Basically, youre not supposed to pick Talia because she’s not open to that yet, and that tosses you off her route or makes it really difficult to fix, maybe only a few dialogue options over the next few days or a specific personality gets her to forgive you. If you don’t pick her, you can couple up later as normal
Day 2 is like it usually is, you’re LIs original partner starts grafting on your LI if you have a male LI, Bobby doesn’t care if you steal AJ, you just have to have a talk with him and he’s fine
You can attempt to reconcile with their original partner, and if you succeed they’ll stop, if not your LI will step in and tell her he’s not interested
Day 3 finds a whole Villa recouping with a dumping. If you have a female LI, then girls are choosing, and AJ will pick you, however there is no dumping for future numbers sake, I know it doesn’t make much sense for the guys to be safe but whatever
If you have a male LI, the boys are choosing. If youre with Bobby, you get stolen and have to help Bobby decide who to dump.
He’ll always choose to dump Miki, regardless of who your LIs ex was or what you say. His reasoning is that she hasn’t made a connection and she was accidentally mean to him once and this Bobby’s hella sensitive
Bobby kinda struggles with it and has a rough few days - You have the option to be sympathetic and keep him available as a friendship couple option, or be a jerk and lose the option to be in a friendship couple
Day 4 is a bit of a filler day, with a fun challenge and some actual conversations.
You learn about your LI and someone else of your choosing, whether that’s a friend, like Ell or Erikah, or another LI youre romancing, like Talia or another of the guys
This is the first time Talia starts to be honest with MC about maybe fancying her and being open to seeing what happens
Day 5 has bombshells: a guy and a girl. The girl is our Marisol of this season, which can also explain away why she’s so slow to open up, she feels like an outcast since she came late and MC can empathise better than anyone which is how they initially bond
The guy is also a LI, but far more bold than Marisol, he has no trouble grafting in front of MC’s LI and trying to steal her or win her over - I’m just going to call him Lucas
Day 6 has another boys’ choice disaster recouping, but with the threat of a dumping on an AJ route
No matter how you reacted to Lucas’ flirting, he picks MC, whether you were going to couple up with him or not, he still steals you from your LI just like Season 2, for simplicity’s sake
The other couples get mixed up, a Nope-adjacent couple are split up, let’s say Erikah and Camilo, but they don’t make it all about them. One of the girls had been pining after a guy but he chooses someone else even though she’s available (Elladine, but Bobby’s oblivious), the girl Bobby was planning to couple up with gets stolen (Talia, but regardless of your route, she doesn’t fancy him), so he couples with Marisol
On a male LI route there is no dumping because the couples are already even
On an AJ route, Rohan is the deciding factor between AJ and Miki. Miki is always dumped because she was barely involved the past few days and Bill isn’t that interested in her even though they were coupled up
Day 7 is the start of Casa Amor, but much shorter this time. Two of the guys are endgame - let’s say Arjun and Carl, two are interested in other girls - let’s say Graham and Nicky, and there’s one you CAN get with, but cheats and gets dumped later on, essentially a Rocco, and one just isn’t interested, another friendship couple opportunity if you don’t want to share with one of the LIs - let’s say Seb
Day 8 is still Casa, you get to know the boys or can crack on with any of the female LIs, though this is still applicable to Day 7
You get a chance to either commit to AJ further or say you want a break to crack on with someone else
If you reassure her, she’ll pie off all the guys and you can stay on the daybed together, essentially ignoring the disaster recoupling and pretending youre still together. But if you dump her, she’ll crack on with Seb if you’re not paired with him, and Arjun if you are, just as a sort of revenge
During CA you can get closer with Talia, cheeky winks in public and getting kinda nasty during a challenge
You get sneaky scenes with Marisol where you learn where her head is at and how she has a hard time opening up and letting people in. You can reassure her and say you’ll be patient or pie her off and she’ll get with the season’s Graham, though they’ll have a different dynamic and ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE AS A COUPLE
Im sorry but boaty mcboat face and MARISOL?? i just dont get it, im sorry
You can graft on Arjun & Carl, tell them where your head is at, and they’re far less pushy
They try to impress but they’re not like poking you until you tell them you’ll take them back to the Villa like in S2
Day 9 is the final day of Casa, with a stick or switch
You can take back Arjun, Carl, Seb, or Rocco, although Seb is a platonic option but you can pair with him the rest of the season as aromantic representation
AJ never switches to save Rohan, and to be loyal if youre on her route
Talia doesn’t switch no matter the route, she spent Casa just hanging out which honestly isn’t the best idea outside of her route
Erikah switches, because like Season 1 Erikah, her head turns quickly, it’s just a matter of time. She switches to Rocco if you’re not on his route, and Arjun if you are. This is going to absolutely blow up in her face
Elladine switches because she gets worried Bobby will, picks Nicky and they actually get on really well
Marisol switches to Graham if youre not on her route to stay safe again, though they dont last anyway, and sticks if you are because she spent Casa with MC instead of the guys
Bobby sticks cuz Bobby
Harry always switches to someone, let’s call her Cherry cuz why not
Camilo sticks to get back with MC or Erikah - Erikah switched, effectively dumping him and really upsetting him
Rohan switches to someone, lets call her Shannon, no matter the route
Bill always sticks
Lucas switches to someone, lets call her Blake, no matter what, just for simplicity’s sake and because I’m already ripping from S2 so who cares
Day 10 is aftermath, much like Season 2
You can talk with your previous LI,
Day 11 has a massive dumping where you vote to save a few people
One of the original Villa boys stays, Camilo is the default but if youre on Harry or Bill’s route, they’ll fill his place
Rohan and Bobby survive
If you brought back a Casa boy, you pick between him and Lucas to be dumped
If you didn’t, Lucas is safe automatically
Rocco/Arjun survive, they’re coupled with Erikah
Either Nicky survives to stay with Elladine or Graham is saved for Marisol if she brought him back, Nicky automatically survives if not
For the girls, Erikah, Elladine, Marisol, and MC are safe
You vote between Cherry, Blake, Shannon on who to save, Shannon is the encouraged option because her and Rohan are actually really cute, but he’ll be nice to any of the girls for the rest of the season
You have to vote between AJ and Talia, sorry queers, i hate it too
Day 12 has a recouping where Talia is finally available if you saved her after everything from Casa Amor
You can reunite with your LI from pre-CA or simply stick to youre CA pick, it’s girls choice, MC is somewhere in the middle
Day 13 has two bombshells - both guys, let’s call them Levi and Tai
Levi grafts hard on MC whereas Tai takes a backseat and MC has to go to him instead if shes interested
Day 14 is a grafting day, you can graft and bond with your LI, Levi, Tai, or Marisol
Day 15 is the second to last recoupling, where you can get with every LI
If youre romancing Marisol, you have a fight in the morning because she still won’t commit and she hasn’t really had an drama on her route yet
Day 16 is an explosion of drama
It’s another Roccogate but on an even bigger scale
If you’re on Rocco’s route, you suffer the backlash, and if you’re not, Erikah does but it still blows back to MC in order to keep her involved
Rocco makes a move on Erikah when MC’s with him, and MC when Erikah is. If he makes a move on MC, she can reciprocate or blatantly shut him down and Erikah will always reciprocate it when he’s coupled with MC because whaddaya know her head can turn at the littlest thing
If he made a move on MC, she can tell her LI who will chew him out privately, or keep it to herself
They basically get caught in the act by Levi, who doesn’t say anything until the afternoon - a lie detector that reveals a bunch of stuff, ill discuss later
He’s asked if he has any drama and he lies, saying no but eventually spills that Rocco made a move on MC/Erikah, and regardless of whether MC reciprocated or not, he says she did
If MC’s with Rocco, she can attack Erikah until someone steps in, maybe Bobby? Or Arjun? and reasons with her. She can get most of the Villa on her side about Rocco being a prick - except for Levi, no matter what, he’ll always side with Rocco and say it’s part of the show
If MC’s not with Rocco and denied him, her LI will accuse her of lying and she’ll have to essentially win them back by the next day or try and get Rocco to clear her name, which she can if they have a high relationship
And if MC didn’t deny him, her LI will dump her on the spot if they have a low relationship, or still win them back if they have a high relationship - but it will still be remembered
Back to the lie detector
There’s the typical S1 questions, cheating is revealed, you can commit to your LI
BUT
If youre on a Marisol route, your LI asks you about her and MC has to confess, which drives a rift between her and Marisol because yeah
y i k e s
Day 17 is the final recoupling
Marisol basically storms into the kitchen when MCs making breakfast and says they’re coupling up and just leaves again. MC has the option to be like “yeah okay, chill” and go back to her breakfast or “what the fuck? no” and chase after her and pie her off
If you don’t pie her off, she chooses MC herself, because that scene in S2 is just really cute and I want another
There’s a double dumping of two boys - Levi and Rocco, and you have no say in it
Erikah, MC, or her LI will essentially turn the Villa against Rocco, while a few of the Islanders resent Levi for his take, mainly the girls
It’s a couple vote, and even if you vote for someone else, they still get dumped because they have the most votes
Day 18 is filler and fluff, meet the parents and final dates, with a surprise dumping where you can get a say and can help them pack, but its a strictly platonic goodbye
There’s so many possibilities and I don’t feel like listing them out right now, but it’s a single couple between three at-risk ones
Day 19 another surprise dumping, why not stick with prom? I just really dig the art, and but maybe make it closer to Season 2? And more personalized speeches!!!
And have a Lottie/Hannah moment!
Idk who all would be here, I don’t feel like listing it out, but I think I have all the dumpings listed below the cut
You can pick between both people dumped who you want to help pack, and can have a moment with either of them, opening a “runaway” option after the finale or reunion
Day 20 is the finale, with the Islanders gossiping and stressing in the morning as some filler content
The afternoon is the announcement, and your placement depends on your couple - If you were loyal the entire time you were with them and have a max relationship you get 1st, if you were loyal but dont have max hearts, you get 2nd, if you weren’t loyal but still have max hearts, you get 3rd, and if you have neither you get 4th
If you win, your LI gets the money no matter what and it’s not based on relationship, it’s based on where in the relationship you are - if MC agreed to be their girlfriend on Day 18, they split the money, and if MC didn’t, then they don’t see a future and keep it
The last episode is the finale party with options to dump your LI for good, make plans to move in, reconcile and explain why MC didn’t say yes on Day 18, or get with someone else entirely
Oh and I want two of the dumped guys to show up together and have started dating outside of the Villa
Cuz I can’t think of another opportunity for mlm in this chaos
This is really messy so I’m going to list out couplings under the cut to try and make sense of this, I think I got everything but probably not its a disaster
LIs
AJ
Day 1 - MC or Bobby or Single
Day 3 - MC or Bobby or Bill
Day 6 - Rohan
Day 9 - Rohan
Day 12 - MC or Bobby or Dumped
Day 14 - MC or Bobby or Dumped
Day 17 - MC or Bobby Dumped
Talia
Day 1 - Rohan or Single
Day 3 - Rohan or Bill
Day 6 - Camilo
Day 9 - Camilo
Day 12 - MC or Bobby or Dumped
Day 14 - MC or Bobby or Dumped
Day 17 - MC or Bobby Dumped
Marisol
Day 6 - Bobby
Day 9 - Single or Graham
Day 12 - Graham or Harry/Bill/Camilo
Day 14 - Graham or Harry/Bill/Camilo
Day 17 - MC or Graham or Harry/Bill/Camilo
Harry
Day 1 - MC or Elladine
Day 3 - MC or Elladine
Day 6 - Elladine
Day 9 - Cherry
Day 12 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Day 14 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Day 17 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Camilo
Day 1 - MC or Erikah
Day 3 - MC or Erikah
Day 6 - Talia
Day 9 - Talia
Day 12 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Day 14 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Day 17 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Bill
Day 1 - MC or Miki
Day 3 - MC or Miki or Elladine/Erikah
Day 6 - Erikah
Day 9 - Single
Day 12 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Day 14 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Day 17 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Lucas
Day 6 - MC or Erikah
Day 9 - MC or Blake
Day 12 - Blake
Day 14 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Day 17 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Erikah or Dumped
Arjun
Day 9 - MC or Erikah or Dumped
Day 12 - MC or Erikah or Dumped
Day 14 - MC or Erikah or Dumped
Day 17 - MC or Erikah or Dumped
Carl
Day 9 - MC or Dumped
Day 12 - MC or Dumped
Day 14 - MC or Dumped
Day 17 - MC or Erikah or Dumped
Tai
Day 14 - MC or Single or Elladine
Day 17 - MC or Erikah
Rocco
Day 9 - MC or Erikah
Day 12 - MC or Erikah
Day 14 - MC or Erikah
Day 17 - Dumped
Levi
Day 14 - MC or Single
Day 17 - Dumped
Other Islanders
Elladine
Day 1 - Harry or Single
Day 3 - Harry or Bill
Day 6 - Harry
Day 9 - Nicky or Harry/Camilo/Bill
Day 12 - Nicky or Harry/Camilo/Bill
Day 14 - Nicky or
Day 17 - Nicky or Tai
Erikah
Day 1 - Camilo* or Single
Day 3 - Camilo* or Bill
Day 6 - Camilo or
Day 9 - Rocco or Arjun
Day 12 - Rocco or Arjun
Day 14 - Rocco or Arjun
Day 17 - Tai or Lucas/Casa
Miki
Day 1 - Bill or Single
Day 3 - Bill or Dumped
Day 6 - Bill or Dumped
Day 9 - Dumped
Day 12 - Dumped
Day 14 - Dumped
Day 17 - Dumped
Shannon
Day 9 - Rohan
Day 12 - Rohan or Dumped
Day 14 - Rohan or Dumped
Day 17 - Rohan or Dumped
Blake
Day 9 - Lucas
Day 12 - Rohan or Dumped
Day 14 - Rohan or Dumped
Day 17 - Rohan or Dumped
Cherry
Day 9 - Harry
Day 12 - Rohan or Dumped
Day 14 - Rohan or Dumped
Day 17 - Rohan Dumped
Bobby
Day 1 - AJ or MC or Single
Day 3 - AJ or MC or
Day 6 - Marisol
Day 9 - Marisol or Single
Day 12 - AJ/Talia or Elladine/Marisol
Day 14 - AJ/Talia or Elladine/Marisol or Single
Day 17 - AJ/Talia or Elladine/Marisol
Rohan
Day 1 - Talia or MC
Day 3 - Talia or MC
Day 6 - AJ
Day 9 - Shannon/Cherry/Blake
Day 12 - Shannon/Cherry/Blake
Day 14 - Shannon/Cherry/Blake
Day 17 - Shannon/Cherry/Blake
Graham
Day 9 - Marisol or Dumped
Day 12 - Marisol or Dumped
Day 14 - Marisol or Dumped
Day 17 - Marisol or Dumped
Seb
Day 9 - MC or Dumped
Day 12 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Day 14 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Day 17 - MC or Elladine/Marisol or Dumped
Nicky
Day 9 - Elladine
Day 12 - Elladine or Dumped
Day 14 - Elladine or Dumped
Day 17 - Elladine or Dumped
#asks#can it kc#also definitely stole this format from bubblybabynailpolish cuz they're hcs are iconic but shush#thank you anon and sorry for whatever this is#litg
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following on from the previous beta reader ask, what were the biggest (non-spoilery) changes you made to indigo wars bc of beta readers? were there any major plot changes / character changes or was it more minor stuff? I hope you don’t mind the asks, I’m just curious!
hello! i love answering questions, even if they take me a while to get to. send as many as you’d like!
there were a LOT of minor changes, like shifting exposition to later in the book or getting rid of it entirely, shortening/lengthening scenes, and changing dialogue tags. also a lot of strengthening emotional beats, as i tend to get lost in the minutiae of the plot and forget to add enough emotional depth.
the major changes i’ve made are more varied:
it’s not revealed that Caius had Elias murdered (this is already on Tumblr somewhere, and also....p obvious, but still shocking for Maisy) until chapter 17 instead of its current place in chapter 3
because of this, Maisy is now absolutely repulsed by the idea of people dying for her/because of her, and we get more emotional depth on the other people who have died bc they supported her claim to the throne, which is going to make her development much more fun across the entire series
several of Vi’s plot points have been COMPLETELY changed. she committed two minor crimes (aka she spiked the drinks of three people across two incidents) but now will be doing it once and getting in shit for it, and thus finding a different plan for the second incident.
i had several people say that the cast is too big and needs to be cut down, but i’m not doing that during this draft. the problem is that a lot of characters are introduced in the first book that become important in the second and third books, so it’ll take more restructuring than i’m ready to do right now. there are also a lot of characters that have to be introduced bc (and this is a....minor spoiler? i guess?) there is a series of murders in Vi’s plot and if people don’t care about the characters who are dying/murdering, then the plot kind of falls flat. if i do another round of beta readers, i think i’m going to add a character list and see if that makes it easier to keep track of people. having a reference page to describe who everyone is will hopefully be all the fix it needs, as i am DREADING having to cut characters.
i’m also going to be including my map in the next draft, bc people had NO IDEA where they were in the world. i also have to find a way to explain the different timelines. no one picked up on the two plots happening at different times of the year, which caused much confusion. since i can’t include a whole calendar, i’m hoping to accomplish it using references to holidays and seasons.
hopefully this answered your questions somewhat....i got a bit carried away in the details, i think, but hopefully you don’t mind!
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So, I got on Netflix again and just spent a substantial portion of this weekend binge watching the first season of The Dragon Prince and I got to say - I was monumentally disappointed.
First, I want to address the elephant-koi in the room, this series is heavily derivative of ATLA. Now, I did know that going in since literally the only praise I see heaped on TDP is that it’s a lot like ATLA (and for some of its representation, which I’ll get to in a moment, don’t you worry) and Aaron Ehasz hasn’t exactly been doing this aspect any favors by consistently drawing comparisons to ATLA itself and using his working on ATLA as a promotional tool. But, honestly, I was massively unprepared for how deep and blatant TDP’s similarities to ATLA were going to get. The intro is a lengthened rehash of ATLA’s intro. The music is eerily similar. Its seasons are listed as “books” and its episodes “chapters” and its incorporation of the elements is damn near copy/paste. This series feels like the “can I copy your homework” meme manifested in a show. And, I can’t properly summarize this issue without bringing up my second issue -
CALLUM. I feel really bad for this character. No, not because his parents are dead and he has security issues. No. Not that at all. It’s because Callum really isn’t allowed to be anything beyond a tug-of-war of “Sokka” and “not-Sokka”. The writers are constantly trying to both make Callum Sokka (Jack Desena voices him the exact same way, his humor is similar, his personality is similar) but also assure the audience that, no, he’s not Sokka. After all, he’s good at art and bad at combat - so totally not Sokka! Except when he is. Which is literally all the time other than those when those two aspects of his character are shown.
Third, since we’re discussing characters, I’m going to mention that the voice acting ranges from okay to horrendous. Ezran is the worst offender here, but, honestly, these characters can be downright painful to listen to.
Fourth, the animation. Yeah, I know this is the one area that even fans admit could be improved on, but I’m mentioning it nonetheless. It looks terrible. Now, that said, the designs and the backgrounds are actually really good. But the bizarre blend of 2D with 3D makes the movements stiff and jarring to look at and limits the characters’ range of expression, which is a massive detriment to the series and the emotional subject matters that it’s trying to cover.
Fifth, fucking Amaya. No, I don’t mean her character, I just mean an aspect of it. Now, going into the series, I already knew she was a guard and that she was deaf, and, therefore, I was already prepared for a certain level of stupid. Yeah, I know what I typed. A deaf person in the guard is a stupid idea. If she can’t hear, it’s that much easier to sneak up on her. You may not want to accept that, but it’s fact. Disabilities means there are certain things you can’t do that others can - I know. I have a disability. And it’s an odd choice to make her a guard considering she could have been a deaf diplomat or just about anything else that doesn’t put her in a situation where being able to hear is detrimental. And, unlike Toph in ATLA who has seismic sense to compensate for her blindness, Amaya is straight up deaf - there’s no trick or power or anything to compensate for it. And I could probably have just rolled my eyes at the whole thing - if TDP itself didn’t go out of its way to make the whole thing stupider. Like having Amaya enter a building that isn’t secured before any of the soldiers with her? Classic. And my personal favorite - that her interpreter is almost always standing directly behind her when she signs. What. The. Hell? Can he see through her or something? When he is standing next to her, he’s almost always looking at her face. What. The. Hell? I’m assuming she can read lips even though no one said she could (I’ll get to that in a minute too), but half the time she isn’t even looking at the person talking to her, so? Huh?
Sixth, the world building is shit. There, I said it. Honestly, I could probably get past every other issue this show has if not for that. I watched the entire season - 9 episodes - and almost nothing is established or explained as far as how the magic system works or basically anything. Outside of the intro - which, despite being pretty easy to understand, is explained over and over in the dialogue. Yes, I get the info the intro discussed. You don’t need to keep reminding me. How about using that time instead to explain how magic works? What dark magic did humans use? Why was it so bad? Just saying something is “dark” doesn’t quite cut it. Why does Claudia need stuff for some spells, but can literally snap her fingers twice and turn her hand into a flashlight. How do things work?? I get Callum’s magic. The show shows us what is specifically required for the two spells he knows and what those two spells do. Everything else just happens. And it feels like it’s used to fit the needs of the writers as opposed to making sense. It feels like the writers just pull it out of their asses whenever they want. And it’s literally the most frustrating aspect of the show.
Kind of coupled with how shit the world building is is the lazy writing. It takes literally 8 episodes (there are 9 in each season) for the show to drop the bombshell that Ezran can understand animals - and it comes completely out of nowhere. There’s no hint of this in any earlier episodes. Ezran never seems to understand Bait, didn’t know the giant discount-Unagi was lurking in the water ready to eat Bait, nothing. And, as if that wasn’t lazy enough, this is revealed when, almost to the tree Ellis is leading them to to meet the miracle healer, Ezran says that the wolf just told him there is no miracle healer. Why wouldn’t the wolf have mentioned this before you even left to meet the miracle healer?? Why didn’t the wolf mention this immediately after Ellis’s story of how they met the miracle healer and how she fixed the wolf’s leg????? Is it because lazy writing? Because I’m willing to bet it’s because lazy writing. This is why second drafts are important - so you don’t create lazy last-minute reveals and plot holes.
That said, I used the word disappointed because I went into TDP genuinely wanting to like it. I didn’t want it to be the next ATLA. I just wanted it to be a good show I could enjoy. And, to be fair, there are a lot of elements that I do like about it. Rayla and Claudia are great characters and, if focus was placed on proper world building, this could be a unique world to explore. The character relationships are fairly well developed and, while the animation is terrible, the character designs are decent. There is good in this. But it’s buried under trying to hard to remind me of a show that did all this - and did it better - and buried deep under some of the worst world building I have ever seen.
I don’t feel like I wasted my time on it, but I still probably won’t be checking out seasons 2 or 3. If season 1 is anything to go by, this series isn’t for me. If I want something reminiscent of ATLA, I’ll just rewatch ATLA. At least that has decent world building.
#tdp#the dragon prince#atla#aaron ehasz#rayla and claudia are legit badasses though and i wish them well
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DATING SIMS ARE GOOD AND YOU SHOULD PLAY THEM: A MANIFESTO
hello everyone, I am here today to talk to you about the most important literary genre ever created. yes that's right. you know exactly which one I mean.
This write-up presumes that you know absolutely zero about dating sims (to be more specific: dating simulation videogames), except for the fact that they exist. If you didn’t know that, well, now you know that. If any of this is a retread, my apologies. Please feel extremely free to comment, make corrections, additions, pile on, discourse, etc.
Part 1. JAPANESE DATING SIMS: INCEPTION
Dating sims weren't invented by Konami, but they're the ones responsible for massively popularizing it and establishing all the now-classic genre standards (or genre cliches, depending on how you look at it). Tokimeki Memorial came out in 1994 for PC.
Per Wikipedia, lightly edited for clarity: "In a typical dating sim, the player controls a male avatar surrounded by a variety of female characters. The gameplay involves conversing with these girls, attempting to increase their internal 'love meter' through correct choices of dialogue and action. The game lasts for a fixed period of in-game time, such as one month, or three years. When the game ends, the player either loses the game if they failed to properly win over any of the girls, or they 'complete' one of the girls' routes, achieving eternal love (or getting sex, depending on what type of sub-genre the game falls under). This gives the games more replay value, since the player can focus on a different girl each time, trying to get a different ending."
Tokimeki Memorial (and all of its subsequent sequels and spin-offs) take place during the 3 years of the player character's Japanese high school career, including archetypal events such as the sports festival, the cultural festival, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's day, and (at the end of the game) graduation.
A poster on the Something Awful forums made an extremely comprehensive screenshot & text-based Let's Play of Tokimeki games 1 through 3, and also one of the spin-off games, where the genders are flipped. In that spin-off, the player avatar is a high school girl, pursuing various boys. (In general, gender-flipped genre variants where you play as a girl are referred to as "Otome Games," i.e. "Games for Young Ladies").
These Tokimeki Memorial Let's Plays are archived here.
In order to understand this foundational series, you definitely do not have to read this whole archive (it's approximately 1 billion words altogether. These games are long and text-heavy), but I would recommend reading reading the summary write-ups for each game in the overview page that I linked up above, and maybe the first couple update chapters for each game, so you can get a feel for the overall vibe & conventions of the genre. Or you can probably find a bunch of video LPs on YouTube, if that's more your style! Or you can play them yourself! (I played Girl's Side 2 on a Nintendo DS emulator, and enjoyed myself a whole bunch.)
I like this particular Let's Play a lot because
A. Reading is just personally easier and faster for me than watching
B. The author is really thorough and takes the time to explain all the idiosyncratic Japanese cultural tropes and references that come up, and I think that's neat.
Part 2. THE CONTAGION SPREADS
Any game with characters that you can "romance," or build up their "affection stats" by making various choices, owes this mechanic to dating sims.
Some examples of games from completely different genres, which nevertheless incorporate dating sim mechanics:
Every Dragon Age game, every Mass Effect game, every Knights of the Old Republic game (thanks for doing what you do, Bioware!), Fallout 4, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto 4, Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, Final Fantasy 7, the entire Persona series, The Witcher 3, indie darlings Oxenfree and Night in The Woods…
And also, there are a bunch of games that ARE straight-up dating sims, but stray from the genre-typical high school setting and genre-typical cast of beautiful hetero romanceable characters. They may also stray from the convention of having every character be "winnable."
You probably already know about Dream Daddy, where you play as a dad, and date other dads:
https://kotaku.com/dream-daddy-creators-explain-why-you-can-t-smooch-all-t-1797354455
Rose of Winter is about a female mercenary warrior hired to escort 4 handsome princes:
https://kotaku.com/rose-of-winter-is-a-visual-novel-about-first-love-1788036938
Katawa Shoujo is about a boy who transfers to a school for disabled children:
http://www.katawa-shoujo.com/about.php
Monster Prom is about getting hot monsters to agree to be your prom date:
http://monsterprom.pizza/
Part 3. HEY YOU. YEAH YOU, BEHIND THE LAPTOP. HEY. YOU. I'M TALKING TO YOU.
*puts on sunglasses* Let's get...... metafictional.
I’m not going to say much about any of the following games. Just play them. Play them blind, or as close to blind as possible.
Play this:
don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story
Here is a non-spoilery review if you're curious to learn more first: https://killscreen.com/articles/review-dont-take-it-personally-babe-it-just-aint-your-story/
And then play this:
Hatoful Boyfriend
steam store link
(DON'T READ ANY STEAM REVIEWS.)
Non-spoilery review here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/12/hatoful-boyfriend-review-love-pigeons-japanese-dating-sim
And then play this next one.
Be advised that it gets heavy. If you play it at night, maybe don't be alone in the house. Content warning: “This game is not suitable for children, or those who are easily disturbed.”
Doki Doki Literature Club
steam store link
(DO NOT READ ANY STEAM REVIEWS. DO NOT READ ANY OTHER REVIEWS. DO NOT READ ANYTHING. DO NOT GOOGLE THIS GAME. DON'T ASK YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT IT EITHER.*)
*If you want to know why it's good, or if you want to know more about the specific nature of the content warning before deciding if this game is okay for you to play, feel free to ask me. I'll let you know whatever you need to know to make an informed decision so you can feel comfortable.
~ The End ~
Thank you for coming to my thesis defense. Everyone, be sure to tell me which dateable dads, pigeons, monsters, and fictional Japanese high school students you think are the cutest and the best and most dateable.
#i came out of tumblr retirement to post this#manifesto#dating sims#japanese dating sims#tokimeki memorial#hatoful boyfriend#ddlc
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Olympic ice-dance champions Virtue and Moir: 'We’re so proud of our relationship'
June 18, 2019
The Canadian gold medallists talk to Eoin O’Callaghan about winning gold, maintaining a professional relationship and ignoring fan fiction
Virtue and Moir perform at the 2018 Winter Olympics: ‘I went into the penultimate lift in Pyeongchang and I got chills because I felt the energy and electricity in the building shift’. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters
There’s a guy at a bar nursing a drink. He looks up and catches the eye of a girl nearby. They share a knowing glance. And that’s the moment. It’s a scene from a litany of TV shows and films. But, it’s also the story of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s rebirth. And given the hopelessly romantic and cinematic dimension to their partnership, the story fits perfectly.
“We were on a charity trip to Scotland [in 2015] and they were showing an Olympic video,” Moir remembers. “I looked over at Tessa. We kind of have our own language. And I was like, ‘We’re going to do one more Olympics, aren’t we?’ And she was like, ‘Oh, yeah’. I turned around to the bartender, ordered three more beers and just thought, ‘Okay, here we go’”.
At the time, the celebrated Canadian ice-dance duo were on a break. Embittered and irritated with skating, they’d stepped away from competing and were mulling their next move. After a period of unprecedented success between 2010 and 2012, things shifted substantially prior to the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The entire experience, which culminated in a bitterly disappointing silver medal, was clouded by a simmering rift with coach Marina Zoueva and newspaper claims that the ice-dance result had been fixed by American and Russian judges.
It was supposed to be Virtue and Moir’s perfect swansong but instead they headed into presumed retirement full of anger, frustration and resentment. Moir, in particular, was disillusioned by all of it.
“I was just kind of sour with the sport,” he says. “I didn’t want anything to do with it. I went into a period of excessive partying and doing anything that wasn’t figure skating, really. I went and built a house with my brother. I shut the whole world out and shut everything down.”
But the break – regardless of the emotions that came with it – was badly needed. “Gaining the perspective to reflect and reassess was paramount,” Virtue says.
After discussing a comeback in more detail, they earmarked former Canadian ice-dancers Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon as coaches and were eager to move to Montreal and get things started. But during their first conversation, Lauzon wanted them to explain their motivation for returning. It was a pre-requisite, he told them.
“That floored us,” Moir says. “We couldn’t get out of it by just saying, ‘We want to win.’ He just said, ‘Well, that might not be enough. You need more than that if you want to come to our school.’ It came down to the fact that we just felt we had more to give.”
In a new place and with a new coaching team, they were determined to push boundaries and rediscover the sport.
“We weren’t conforming to any one thing,” Virtue says. “We lost this sense of trying to appease everyone else. We were more secure in who we were as people and athletes. We were more secure in what we stood for, what we valued and the art we wanted to create. I always loved skating but you can get hardened by it and it’s discouraging and disheartening. You can lose that spark. Montreal ignited it again.”
In September 2016, they stepped into a rink in the Montreal borough of Pierrefonds and competed for the first time in two-and-a-half years at the Skate Canada Autumn Classic. The short dance was an electric, sensual tribute to Prince. Paired with the tenderness and contemporary slant of their free dance, it was a magnetic and thrilling package.
Even so, it seemed a long shot that they would get the better of Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, the French duo who were back-to-back world champions and unbeaten in two years. So, it was astonishing when Virtue and Moir ended the year on top of the Grand Prix podium for the first time in their careers and followed that up with a World Championship gold in 2017.
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir celebrate after becoming Olympic champions. Photograph: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
“I don’t think people truly understand how difficult that is,” Moir says. “Three years is a long time. The game had evolved. And we’re back in the arena, with the bright lights and everyone’s faces looking back at us again. We did everything we could to prepare but there were a lot of tough steps. The goal was to not be our old selves. We knew we made a mistake in 2014. We didn’t pick music that was dear to our hearts and weren’t personally invested in a program. We vowed to never do that again.”
The new era was exciting but still left Virtue slightly underwhelmed. She was expecting something bigger, more explosive.
“I thought we’d have this Ziggy Stardust moment,” she says. “‘Representing Canada, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’ and the whole crowd would turn and gasp and say, ‘Who? Who’s that blonde girl? That’s not Tessa.’ I thought we would totally reinvent ourselves. But it was finding the balance. ‘Are we doing things differently just to be different or to be better?’ And that was a constant dialogue between us.”
For Moir, the entire process became a safe harbour as he navigated a particularly difficult period.
“2017 was probably one of the hardest years of my life,” he admits. “There were a lot of personal struggles. I lost some very important people. I had a best friend and then a grandfather pass away. Through it all, skating became an anchor. I used to think of it as a job. Now it was getting me through and giving me hope. Through all the heartache, it seemed worth it. Heading into the Olympic season, we were ready for almost anything.”
In the build-up to Pyeongchang, they were consistently behind Papadakis and Cizeron, particularly in the free dance. So, they dramatically altered their sombre Moulin Rouge routine to make it more Olympic-friendly.
“We changed about two minutes of our program entirely,” Virtue says. “We listened to people for eight years telling us we needed a big ending, people on their feet and the music to reach this massive crescendo. That’s the Olympic moment people want. Once we were able to find that, it soared and began to take shape.”
It worked.
The subsequent free dance performance sits alongside Torvill and Dean’s 1984 Bolero as the greatest ice-dance moment in history. Those four spellbinding minutes were not only enough to ensure astounding and unlikely Olympic golds for the pair but to also define Virtue and Moir’s legacy.
“I had never felt momentum during a performance before,” Virtue says. “We felt flow in Vancouver [when they won gold in 2010] and we chased that feeling for eight years. I went into the penultimate lift in Pyeongchang and I got chills because I felt the energy and electricity in the building shift.”
A different kind of momentum had been growing for a while too.
Unlike their French rivals, Virtue and Moir took part in the team figure skating event a week earlier and quickly became viral sensations. In front of a global audience, the intensity of their chemistry, their innate closeness and the suggestiveness of certain choreography whipped new-found fans into a frenzy, especially across social media. When they found out Virtue and Moir were not involved in a romantic relationship, they didn’t really accept it. Instead, they started to fantasize.
There are dark corners of the digital sphere devoted to them, including some intense fan fiction. The disciples – and there are a lot of them – obsess over every look and every caress. “It’s probably healthier to avoid it,” Virtue says.
But that’s easier said than done. Last year, Moir spoke eloquently about the impact his unique athletic setup had on his personal life and how some partners found it difficult to properly understand his dynamic with Virtue. Before the Olympics, he was already daydreaming about what was on the other side. It’s why he’s so ready to move on to a new post-skating chapter and focus on things he spent so long sacrificing.
“I was ready for that transition,” he says. “It was always skating first and I was finally at a point in my life where I could be a contributing member of my family and actually search for a life partner.”
Their relationship is a curious thing. When I ask Virtue to define it, she takes a deep breath. “We’re the worst at answering this question”, she begins. “I wish we could help ourselves and everyone else.”
She speaks uninterrupted for a few minutes. It’s essentially a meandering run-on sentence. Then she apologizes profusely for not supplying the right answer. But, of course, she had done. It’s why the moment of their eyes meeting in Scotland explains so much of their story. Words are limiting and what Virtue and Moir have goes far beyond that, almost existing in the abstract.
“We were made for each other, in a work relationship,” Moir says. “There’s real love there. We’re so proud of the business relationship we have. And that’s the story we want to tell more than anything. Judging by my girlfriend’s Twitter, I think fans are disappointed a little bit that we’re not a couple but we have a very amazing, unique relationship that hopefully young people can look at and think, ‘Wow, that should be inspirational in its own right’”.
When they stood on the podium immediately after their Olympic victory, Virtue – normally so poised – uncharacteristically welled up. “It was seeing 20 years flash in front of me,” she says. Her voice cracks so she nervously laughs to cover the lump in her throat.
“The little seven and nine-year-old kids who got together, who didn’t speak and who just skated around a rink holding hands. On the world’s biggest stage, with all of that pressure, in that very moment ... I was just very proud of Scott. It’s funny. We both have this thing where it’s hard for us to acknowledge our own success but we’re able to see it in each other.”
Currently, there’s an adjustment period. It’s not about the Olympics anymore. There are touring shows to produce and various other projects to plan for. They both admit that fully appreciating what they have and what they’ve gone through together is something that will only come much later.
For Moir, he’s still struggling to wrap his head around the last year and a half. “I don’t know how to explain it and I don’t think I even have a proper perspective on it yet,” he says. “It seems like it was a fairytale when I look back now.”
—The Guardian
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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Bonus 3.1 - Dangan Salmon Team (Kaito Edition)
This is postgame content, so people shouldn’t be reading this without having already finished the main game anyway. But just to be safe: while this is non-canon character stuff, I will sometimes be mentioning events that happened in the main story, so there will be spoilers for the main game.
First of all, can we talk about the ridiculous title of this game mode? “Love Across the Universe: Dangan Salmon Team”. Or, in Japanese, “Year-round Space Variety Love Show: Dangan Red Salmon Gang”. The salmon part is just your average Danganronpa weirdness, but on the other hand I do like the inexplicable space theme they’ve also got going. I like to think this is less because of the fake story about them being on a spaceship, since they don’t try and push that angle at all in this AU, and more just because Kaito, did you know Kaito is the most important character.
The title screen of this mode really leans into that space theme, too. It’s even got a rocket! And most importantly the rocket has a window, remember how Very Important it is for all rockets to have windows.
(In other Inexplicable Space Theming for this game, there’s a BGM piece used during trials that’s called “Class Trial Space Edition”. SPACE. Space is important in this game, you guys.)
For clarification, since the title does not remotely explain the point of this, this is the social interaction side mode in which you can get the FTEs of everyone you didn’t do during the main story (not that that’s what I’m here for) and then also some extra bonus interactions. Those bonus bits are what I’m here for, specifically with Kaito, because it’s me, and Kaito is the only character I like to such an extent that I even want to cover this bonus fluff for him. The title is about space, so clearly spending even more time with Kaito in particular is the entire point of this game mode, right?
This mode has the most half-assed introduction explaining its premise which I’m not going to go into in detail because it doesn’t deserve it. The gist is that things begin as they do in canon, except then Monokuma abruptly decides to cancel the killing game and have a reality dating show instead because apparently that’s what the outside world would prefer. The couples who end up together get to leave!! which is gross and manipulative and amatonormative and unfortunately very believable as something a shallow audience like this one might want to see. And, sure, it is an improvement on them being made to kill each other, but this is definitely still some level of fucked up. If any romances did form during this, how could the people involved be sure their partners’ feelings were really real and not just faked so that the two of them could escape? How could they even be completely sure about that for their own feelings? This would result in the most unhealthy of relationships.
Kaito: “Hey, what the hell are you talking about!? Telling us to fall in love or whatever? What do you want us to do!?”
Okay I said I wouldn’t do this in detail but I do like that it’s Kaito in particular who objects to this specific idea. If people are being forced to fall in love, then it’s not people acting on their own feelings at all! Kaito doesn’t have any specific opinions about romance that we’ve ever heard, but this is from his principles about being true to yourself.
So… that’s the thing about this mode. While it makes sense with the overarching V3 twist that this is just to entertain a shallow TV audience, it leaves things with this uncomfortable patina of being all about romance. Even though the free time events are exactly as they are in the main story, and most of what the game calls “dates” aren’t explicitly romantic either, that’s still apparently supposed to be the goal. And while I just talked about how messed-up this setup is for forming romances, which could at least be potentially interesting to explore if they acknowledged that, the narrative plays it completely straight because of course it fucking does. It’s not only the in-universe audience that’s being amatonormative here.
Kaede’s FTEs in particular, since they only exist in this Amatonormativity Mode, really lay on the romance more heavily than I think they would in any other context, which makes me not want to cover them even though I otherwise might like to because Kaede’s one of my favourite characters. (As far as I remember, they’re not bad or anything, it’s just Not My Jam.) And it seems that some of the characters’ ending scenes for this mode also embrace this annoying idea and shoehorn more romance in them than they really should have. For example Maki’s ending scene is mostly fine until it suddenly insists that she and Shuichi are romantically into each other, which is provably not in line with canon because Maki becomes equally close to Shuichi in the main story and there are no romantic feelings on either end there so why should this be any different. And it’s not just her ending scene: a small handful of Maki’s dates and other dialogue specific to this mode try and make her all stereotypically tsundere towards Shuichi in what I can only assume is a very tiresome attempt to hint at romance between them, and ugh no get it away leave Maki the fuck alone she does not deserve this.
However, this game is also reasonably heteronormative, and while heteronormativity is of course objectively terrible and needs to go away, it does mean that when things are also being amatonormative (another thing that is equally terrible and equally needs to go away), there’s only 50% as much amatonormativity as there could be. So, since Shuichi and Kaito both happen to be guys, all of Kaito’s scenes in this mode remain completely platonic. While Monokuma didn’t mention this and everything in the flavouring of this mode is trying to pretend this is totally all about romance, apparently any people who become epic inseparable platonic friends also get to leave? Which I am very happy about, because I would not want to cover this otherwise. I don’t like it when my adorable friendships are diminished with romance, dammit.
So now to complain about the other awkward thing about this mode, which is how horrendously artificial and inorganic it feels to actually play. For one thing, we’re playing as Shuichi, but he’s already removed his hat and is apparently also already Kaito’s sidekick as we’ll be seeing, even though literally none of the character development and interactions that were required for Shuichi to make that progress has happened. And that shouldn’t have had time to happen offscreen either, since Monokuma declared that there’ll be a 10-day time limit for people to partner up, and then you get dropped into the game on Day 1. It’s just really hard to buy this AU as a properly justified and backed-up story.
Then there’s the fact that all the other characters you can hang out with just stand in a fixed spot in the courtyard – always the same spot every day – apparently just waiting for Shuichi to come and talk to them. If you do an FTE and not a “date”, they will then stay in this exact spot (apart from rare exceptions in which the FTE itself involves going somewhere in particular) for the whole event, despite that this might be awkwardly in earshot of another student who’s busy standing unmoving in their own spot nearby. There’s no sense of this being a story and not just a game – no hints of any kind of other friendships or community forming or any of these characters acting like people beyond just existing for Shuichi to get close to.
Which, okay, is pretty understandable since this is just a hasty bonus mode mostly slapped in here to make getting everyone’s FTEs easier than replaying chapters of the main story. But even so, there’s Kaede’s and Rantaro’s FTEs and then all of the “date” scenes and graduation scenes which are all scenes that only exist in this AU – that’s precisely why I’m here covering Kaito’s ones in this commentary – and so it would be really nice if they’d actually put, like, any effort at all into making this AU feel like a real story to give these scenes a more robust context. As it is, these scenes mostly just feel like context-less snippets of character insight, and if anything really needs more context then you have to use your imagination and come up with it all yourself.
But anyway, I’m here to talk about practically everything Kaito ever says and does, and I’m damn well going to do it regardless of how little context I get for it.
First, actually, while wandering around the courtyard I learned that you can talk to the two Exisals that are at work there, one of which is the good old red Exisal, and Monotaro actually has something kind of interesting to say. (Shocking, I know.)
Monotaro: “I’m the red Monokub! That means I’m a main character, so I don’t tell lies! …Hm? But then, why do they call them ‘bright red lies’? Are lies red? Does that mean I’m a liar?”
Obviously I always figured that Kaito got the red Exisal because it’s the main character’s one and therefore the most fitting for a hero like Kaito (plus there wasn’t a purple option). But this is an interesting potential extra reason why they chose that colour! I can only assume this is a Japanese saying because I’ve never heard it before, but that’s neat if it’s really a thing.
Kaito’s designated Unmoving Courtyard Spot is sadly not the training spot. Instead, it is worryingly close to the gates to the casino. Kaito, no.
Dates Hangouts
So the main bulk of content unique to this mode is a series of mini-scenes you can get with each character after having maxed out their FTEs. The game refers to these as “dates”, but screw that, I’m going to refer to them as “hangouts” despite what the game calls them because the romantic connotations of the word “date” annoy me. Let’s hang out with Kaito! In a… slightly different sense of hanging out than what happens for his FTEs.
You get to choose one of five locations to hang out in, and then the game gives you a set of three options to pick for that place, which will vary in how much your hangout partner enjoys it. If you then later hang out with that person in the same place, it’ll give you a second set of three options, and then a third set the next time. Once you’ve had all three sets for a given location, it won’t give you any more options and you’ll just get a generic “we hung out for a while” textbox. So within one playthrough of this mode, for each character, you can only see three out of the nine mini-scenes for each place, or only fifteen out of the forty-five in total. Which is fine if you’re just trying to max someone out and get their ending, because that takes a minimum of five scenes if you get the best outcomes. But if you’re trying to see all the scenes, it’s a bit inconvenient.
What I’m saying is that I’m going to have to do three separate playthroughs of this mode to get all of these for Kaito. I do not envy whichever wiki writer went and compiled these for literally every character, but I am definitely thankful to them for removing the need for anyone else to do this, and for allowing me to see all these scenes beforehand without doing this myself. (I’m doing it myself here anyway because it feels more natural to me to transcribe the lines from my Vita after doing it for the whole game, but at least I wouldn’t have had to if I didn’t want to.)
Some of these are just going to be me fairly superficially going “hee look at Kaito being a dork”, and some will be me discussing how Good Kaito’s principles and outlook are some more. But the biggest reason I wanted to do this is that some of them go deeper than that and are relevant to his issues in some interesting way. They’re pretty delightfully subtle about it, as Kaito’s issues usually are because he refuses to talk about them, but they’re very present even in this context of just hanging out with Shuichi, since Kaito’s issues revolve heavily around his relationship with his sidekick.
For the sake of not having this be a completely disjointed read, I’ve grouped these hangouts not by the arbitrary categories of which location they take place in, but rather by some of the general ideas relating to Kaito’s character or outlook that I end up discussing with them.
First, though, just a couple of odd ones out that didn’t quite fit into any of the upcoming categories.
[A/V Room]
- Watch a horror movie
Kaito: “L-Like I’d watch something so uncool. What’s so fun about watching fake g-g-ghosts? Don’t get me wrong! I’m not s-scared or anything!”
Yep, this was of course a bad idea. The purpose of Kaito being written with his phobia is irrelevant in this non-killing-game AU, but since the writers changed their minds about doing the killing game after creating the characters, he still has it anyway.
While a player would choose this knowing full well it’s the wrong option, at least this isn’t Shuichi deliberately being a dick, because in this AU he wouldn’t know about Kaito’s phobia. He probably innocently thought Kaito might enjoy the thrill or something.
(Observe how “Kaito has a phobia of ghosts” is something that doesn’t fit into any of the categories I’ll be having here, which all have some kind of connection to meaningful parts of his character. Tsumugi, you’re a bad writer.)
[Library]
- “Let’s make a tower of books”
There’s only one thing of note about this one, which is this:
Kaito: “Let’s make a tower of books that’ll pierce the heavens!”
This is a delightfully blatant Gurren Lagann reference and I love it. They knew. They knew exactly what they were doing with Kaito’s character, and then some.
Astronauts and space
Obviously a necessary category for Kaito. Let’s talk about SPACE and his astronaut training!
[A/V Room]
- Watch a documentary on athletes
Kaito: “Seeing this makes me remember my astronaut training. Astronaut training involves just as much exercise as athletes do.”
It’s neat that he enjoys this because it reminds him of his own training. Kaito really would not normally slack off with exercise; the only reason it seemed like he was doing that in the main storyline is because he was sick!
Kaito: “I wonder how all those guys who trained with me are doing…”
Yeah, uh, about that…
Kaito: “Alright! Thinking about that made me super motivated! We’re definitely gonna get out of this place, you got it!?”
Oh dear, Kaito now especially wants to get out of here so he can see his friends from astronaut training again. They… don’t exist. Neither do his grandparents. When everyone escapes in this AU, they are all going to very abruptly learn that they’re “fictional” and none of their loved ones are waiting for them at all. That is not going to be fun for them. (And they’re going to learn that off-camera, in a way that is no longer part of this “story”, so the audience isn’t going to see how fucked-up this is and nothing is going to change.)
Since they’ll still have memories of their loved ones that feel real to them, and yet they can’t ever actually see them again, it’s basically going to be feel equivalent to if their loved ones had all died while they were in here. They’re going to be grieving for people they know in their heads never even existed. That did also apply to Shuichi, Maki and Himiko in the canon ending, but it’d have been a lot less significant next to all their grief for the real people whose deaths they actually experienced. In this AU, though, it’d be a much bigger thing.
(On the other hand, their pasts being fictional is still a good thing for Maki at least (whose best friend was already dead in her memories). And Kaito would still definitely take that opportunity to be happy for her even as he’s reeling from his own loss.)
[A/V Room]
- Watch a documentary on aliens
You’d think this’d be the one Kaito would enjoy the most of the three options it’s part of, but it really, really isn’t.
Kaito: “I totally get why you’d be interested in this documentary.”
Of course. Everyone should be interested in aliens, right?
But, alas, he goes on to say that he found out some time after having watched it himself that it was all fake.
Kaito: “The day I found that out… I’ve never felt despair like I did that day… How dare they mess with my adventurous heart…”
Turns out, the only way to make Kaito feel despair is to give him false hope that aliens exist, and then take it away. That’s adorable.
(Obviously he doesn’t mean real, proper despair, though. Kaito is literally incapable of feeling that; it’s like his superpower – remember when he convinced himself the destroyed outside world maybe wasn’t the truth with no evidence purely for the sake of not giving up? But still, it’s amusing that he uses that word.)
I wonder how convincing the documentary even was in the first place. Wouldn’t surprise me if it emphatically wasn’t and Kaito only believed it out of childlike optimism when he really should have been able to tell it was fake already, because he’s a dork like that.
[A/V Room]
- Watch a documentary on bugs
Kaito: “I remember a while back there was some theory that bugs came from space. All life came from the ocean and as far as I know, there aren’t any bugs there.”
Kaito, no, that is not how evolution works. Apparently whatever science credentials he has do not extend into biology. There being almost no bugs in the ocean any more doesn’t change the fact that they evolved from ocean-dwelling organisms just like all life did. There are no humans who live in the ocean either, but that doesn’t make humans aliens.
Kaito should sit down with Gonta sometime and learn about the evolutionary biology of bugs. He’d find it interesting (even if it does mean no bug-aliens), because he finds everything interesting! And it’d mean Gonta would have someone he could actually talk to about bugs who’s genuinely interested and not secretly squirming from revulsion.
Kaito: “That theory got shot down, but I always get so pumped up by stuff like that!”
I should hope it got shot down, because it didn’t make any goddamn sense. It can’t have even been a proper scientific theory in the first place. But of course Kaito just liked to be able to imagine there’s already aliens on Earth. Nothing’s stopping him from still pretending bugs could be secret aliens just to amuse himself! Fictions are exciting even though you know they’re not true!
[Dining Hall]
- Drinking green tea after a meal
Kaito: “Yeah! Green tea’s great! A piping hot cup of fresh brewed tea is seriously the best.”
While I’m emphatically not an expert on these things because I don’t drink either beverage, I would have pegged Kaito as more of a coffee person than a tea person. Maybe it’s just because tea is a lot more of a thing in Japan than coffee. Or he gets it from his grandparents.
Kaito: “But now that I think about it, you can’t drink fresh tea out in space, huh? It’s so obvious, I never even considered it… Well then! I’ll just enjoy it as much as I can on Earth!”
Oh no, what do you mean that going to space might be kind of harsh and empty of luxuries and not the best thing ever in every conceivable way!? He really has not wanted to consider any of the downsides of it at all. But at least he keeps a positive outlook about it now that he’s realised it, because he’s Kaito.
(Maybe Kaito likes tea so much that making himself a nice cuppa is one of the first things he does when he gets back to Earth… and then he promptly drops and breaks the cup because what is gravity.)
[Library]
- “Let’s study”
Kaito: “Yeah! In order to become an astronaut, you gotta study hard!”
Reminder: Kaito is not an idiot, and despite being kind of oblivious about certain things, is actually very book-smart!
Kaito: “Let’s start by studying language! And don’t let me hear you say you don’t need it.”
And it’s so him that this is the thing he wants to encourage Shuichi to study. Communication is vital in all walks of life, not just in being an astronaut!
Kaito: “There’s nothing unnecessary in this world!”
I still love this philosophy of his. Kaito is so good.
[Library]
- “Let’s look through photographs”
Kaito: “Photographs of the planets, huh?”
Yes, Kaito, Shuichi definitely meant this, he couldn’t possibly have been interested in any other kinds of photographs except those of SPACE.
Kaito: “When I think about actually being there and seeing them… I get the chills!”
THE ROCKET HAVING A WINDOW WAS VERY IMPORTANT
(not that he saw planets through it, but just being there and seeing it himself was so so worth it for any part of space)
Kaito: “Just you wait, planets! I, Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars, am gonna see you with my own two eyes!”
He’s such an optimistic dork. Just like with his bold claims to Kaede about how he’s going to meet aliens, this is probably not a thing that’ll happen within his lifetime. Maybe Mars, but not, like, multiple planets. But hey, let him dream!
[Courtyard]
- “Let’s relax in the sun”
Kaito: “It’s been a while since I was able to get some sun. Ever since I was a kid, I’d think about the universe while sunbathing.”
Oh, Kaito. He would turn sunbathing into an excuse to think about space, even though he can’t see the stars when the sun’s out.
Kaito: “But these days, I’ve been so busy with training, I haven’t had time to relax. Thanks to you, I remembered how important it is to relax sometimes!”
Yes, Kaito, it is important to rest sometimes and to not push yourself too hard. Of course that’s something he’d only think about when somebody else reminds him of it.
[Library]
- “I’m getting sleepy”
Kaito: “Yeah, it’s pretty quiet in here. But the silence of a library is nothing compared to the universe, y’know?”
Somehow, Kaito finds an excuse to make this about space, too. What a dork.
Kaito: “After all, the universe is just one big silent room. If you went up there, you’d probably be sleepy all the time.”
You’re… not doing a great job of making space sound inviting, Kaito. What happened to all the passion and adventure there’s supposed to be out there?
[A/V Room]
- Play dominoes with the movie boxes
Kaito: “I may not seem like it, but I’m pretty good at setting up dominoes! During astronaut training, we had to do dexterity exercises.”
More fun little tibits about the kind of skills astronauts have to learn!
Kaito: “I, Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars, will make a domino setup that will shock even you!”
But even so, it’s not the “Ultimate Astronaut” but rather the Luminary of the Stars who’s good at this, because he still much prefers the latter title for himself.
Also, the “even you” is interesting. Why would Shuichi in particular not usually be shocked by an epic domino setup? Does Kaito’s secret idolisation of Shuichi even extend to thinking he’d be inexplicably good at this? (Kaito’s secret idolisation of Shuichi shouldn’t even be nearly as much of a thing in this trial-less AU, though.)
[Dining Hall]
- “Let’s go in the freezer”
This is one of those very odd, why-would-Shuichi-ever-actually-suggest-this options. But it works on Kaito!
Kaito: “Did you know… In astronaut training, you have to be able to survive in subzero temperatures! If it’s a competition to see who can hold out the longest, I won’t lose!”
More astronaut training things! And of course Kaito would turn it into a competition. Though it is a bit much of him to think that Shuichi should do this even though he has no need to train in this particular dangerous way, but Shuichi did inexplicably suggest it, so, uh.
Kaito: “The loser has to say how many girls he’s had a crush on!”
…I don’t know about this line, though. While I don’t headcanon Kaito very strongly this way because there isn’t any actual evidence relevant to it like there is for Maki, I like to believe it could at least be possible for Kaito to be aromantic. This might just be me wanting to project onto him, admittedly, but the way he puts so much investment into his platonic relationships, including having an especially committed type of them in the hero-and-sidekick thing, is very enjoyably non-amatonormative of him. It just doesn’t feel right to me that Kaito would care that much about crushes – and, in particular, even less so that he would care about someone else’s crushes, which are really none of his business unless they choose to tell him about them. Peer pressuring Shuichi into admitting to anything of that nature when he might not be comfortable doing so really, really doesn’t seem to me like the kind of thing Kaito would do.
I don’t really have any actual evidence with which to argue that this is definitely out of character for Kaito, so this could just be me here – but it seems quite possible that this is an example of a line that kinda belongs in this next section.
The clueless intern
Remember that clueless intern last post who somehow ended up writing a handful of Kaito’s lines in the demo despite having only a very shallow grasp of his character that misses everything important about him? (That’s totally why those out-of-character parts in the demo happened, shush.) Well, apparently they were also given a few of his hangouts to write, as well. I feel it’s important to point out which few of these involve things that Kaito shouldn’t actually be saying.
[Gym]
- “Let’s play basketball”
Kaito: “You got guts to challenge me at basketball! Didn’t I tell you? My basketball skills are universe-tier.”
So why wasn’t Kaito in the basketball club in middle school? Because Ryoma needed to die, of course. (I suggested soccer as his alternate favourite sport in my Kaito-isn’t-into-tennis AU, but basketball, as another team sport, would make just as much sense.)
Kaito: “World-class athletes try to be my apprentice just to steal my skills.”
It’s potentially interesting to see him use the word “apprentice” here, when really that word would be a much more accurate and representative word for what he calls a “sidekick”. I guess in Kaito’s head, an apprentice is something totally different and only there to learn tangible skills such as this, without any kind of emotional support being involved? …Orrr the writer for this hangout just doesn’t know what they’re doing at all; that’s also possible.
Kaito: “But… my muscles are cramping, so I can’t really play basketball right now.”
See, I don’t like this. This whole thing was Kaito boasting about something he knows is not true with no intention of ever even trying to back it up, and making an excuse that is blatantly nothing but a lie. That is not remotely what Kaito is like, despite that he might seem that way at a glance. He may talk big, but the intent behind his words is always genuine, and for every instance in canon of him making what seems like an excuse to get out of backing up his words, it’s actually because he is literally sick and doesn’t want his sidekicks to know that. Meanwhile, this here seems like it was written by someone who knew almost nothing about Kaito’s character, briefly saw the part where he talks big, and interpreted it in the most superficial and typical way possible rather than actually understanding him at all.
[Dining Hall]
- “Let’s bake something”
Kaito: “Sorry, I’m not really in the mood for sweets. I need something… more manly. Something that’s gonna fill me up.”
This is the only actual time in the whole game, aside from the very first Misogyny Bullet that was also provably out of character, where Kaito talks about manliness in a way that seemingly is about stereotypically masculine things, if sweets apparently aren’t. This really isn’t his usual definition of the concept, and as such it also reads as out of character that he’d use that word here.
Kaito: “If you eat too many sweets, you’ll become a spoiled person.”
Still, at least he also has a more meaningful reason for not liking sweets much. Plus, you’d think that as an astronaut, he’d want to eat healthier stuff that’d keep his strength up.
(All this said, though, based on his gift preferences, Kaito does at least like ice cream.)
[Gym]
- “Ah, maybe we should take off our clothes?”
Another one that, what the hell, writers, Shuichi would be way too shy and awkward to actually suggest this even if he did secretly want to, this is blatantly just in there for some eyerolly shipbait. I would ignore this one entirely, but… we kinda need to talk about this.
Kaito: “Huh!? What are you talking about!? Save that stuff for the girls! Or wait, did you come out or something and not tell me!?”
Okay, so originally my plan for talking about this line was to say that I have no idea where the hell some people get the idea that Kaito is homophobic. This is the only line of his in the entire game that actually addresses the topic of homosexuality at all, and it’s apparently him being upset at the idea that Shuichi would have come out and not told him. His sidekick’s supposed to be able to tell him anything! He’d want Shuichi to trust him enough to be the first person he tells about something like this! Of course he’d be supportive about who Shuichi is!
…But the expression Kaito’s actually making for these lines is a kind-of-horrified face which definitely does not allow for that reading of it, and no, fuck off, fuck you, game, Kaito is better than this, he would be supportive of his sidekick, and of everyone, no matter what. This is Danganronpa’s occasionally-shitty writing temporarily affecting Kaito in a way that is not in character for him and I will hear nothing else.
See, okay, maybe I can accept Kaito having passively picked up bigotry like this through cultural osmosis as he was growing up (perhaps through his grandparents’ old-fashioned views, although people use his grandparents to justify Kaito’s supposed bigotry way too much when they should just be pointing out that it’s not actually in character for him to think that way at all as I’m about to do here and have done previously on the topic of misogyny). But that’s only a view Kaito would ever have in the background without really thinking about it. Kaito’s principles (his concept of manliness, even!) put a lot of focus on thinking for yourself and not just mindlessly going along with what other people think without deciding on your own if you agree with it. So as soon as a situation came along in which he actually consciously noticed his passive bigotry, Kaito would question why he even thinks that way and realise it’s wrong.
Remember, Kaito believes more strongly than anything that everyone is important and amazing and deserves to be the hero of their own story. He puts so much value in communication and co-operation between all different walks of life (he speaks English and Russian fluently and learned the cultures along with the languages), and even hopes for communication between humans and aliens if they exist out there. The moment Kaito were to consciously catch himself feeling inclined to think that some people apparently don’t deserve respect just because of something arbitrary about them that isn’t hurting anyone else, he would immediately stop, go “what the hell is wrong with me, that’s bullshit”, and work on training his brain to stop thinking that way at all. Kaito’s not perfect, but he’s always trying to be the best he can be, and this would be no exception. Anyone who thinks Kaito wouldn’t do this doesn’t properly appreciate his character, and that includes the writers of this game when they’re being like this.
[Library]
- “Let’s read a dirty book”
Another one that Shuichi shouldn’t actually have any in-character reason to pick, because he is evidently not this kind of person, remember when that was literally a vital plot point?
Kaito: “Hehe! Of course! It’s weird for guys to not look for those kinds of books in a library!”
The way Kaito phrases this… kind of almost suggests that he’s not actually doing this because he wants to, but just because peer pressure and society has made him think he’s supposed to want to. I’d like to say this is something the writers are deliberately trying to hint at, but that makes very little sense for Kaito in particular, because that’s not thinking for himself.
And if Kaito is supposed to genuinely believe that obviously all guys should be like this… then that’s also kind of gross and another thing I refuse to accept is actually in-character for Kaito to think. Shitty Danganronpa writing, leave Kaito alone.
Mentions of manliness
But anyway, let’s move on from those brief instances of out-universe bad writing and see some more examples of what Kaito’s concept of manliness actually means. He brings it up in a few of these hangouts, and all but that earlier one have a perfectly good understanding of it.
[Courtyard]
- “Let’s get some fresh air”
Kaito: “Yeah, it’s a hundred times better than the stale air inside. A man’s gotta be in a wide-open space, y’know? Staying indoors for too long will turn you into a narrow-minded person.”
Oh, look, Kaito explicitly does not want to be a narrow-minded person. Cough cough like not a sexist or a homophobe, cough! He even connects being open-minded to his concept of manliness, because of course this is along similar lines to that! Be true to yourself – and to do that, think for yourself!
Kaito: “That’s why I’m gonna go to the universe and be a universe-minded guy!”
Also, SPACE. But this actually makes a lot more sense than you might think – some astronauts have described something called the Overview Effect. It’s an overwhelming feeling they get when first seeing the Earth from space: the sense that all of the fights and prejudices and differences between humans down there are so insignificant in the grand scheme of how beautiful our planet is and how small we are in the vastness of space, and that we need to work together to protect our precious tiny blue dot. Did you know that astronauts are good? It’s not just Kaito; all astronauts are good.
[A/V Room]
- “We should focus on reality, not movies”
Kaito: “Right on! That’s my sidekick! A man should chase real passions, not sit around watching fake stuff!”
Since Kaito’s idea of being a man is all about being true to yourself, it follows that he’d also think a man should focus more on things that are real! At least, I guess, in terms of “chasing passions”, aka the things he wants to do with his life. We already know plenty about how much Kaito enjoys believing in fictional things like magic and kids’ games just because they’re fun.
Kaito: “Hell yeah! I’m fired up like crazy now! I’ll teach you all about the universe as I imagine it!”
Kaito. Buddy. The universe as you imagine it is not reality either. You dork.
[Courtyard]
- “Let’s go back inside”
Kaito: “Huh? Why’d you pick this place if you were just gonna go back? It’s not manly to keep changing your mind like that!”
Be sure of yourself! Only decide on something if you know you’re going to stick to it, and if you do change your mind after that, it should be for a good reason!
[Dining Hall]
- Sleeping after a meal
Kaito: “Yeah, you get it! As expected from my sidekick! They say sleeping after eating makes you fat, but you can’t fight instinct!”
Oh, dear. According to Ryoma’s comments on this same option (and you’d think he’d know better than Kaito), sleeping after eating is indeed unhealthy. But Kaito tells himself it’s a good thing to do anyway because it’s what he feels like he wants to do. And he’s happy that Shuichi agrees with him on this, even though it’s not actually a good thing to agree with him on.
Kaito: “And now that I said that… I’m feeling sleepy myself… Alright! I’m gonna listen to my instincts and sleep like a man!”
Sounds ridiculous, but actually a correct use of Kaito’s concept of manliness! He’s listening to what his body wants him to do, which totally means he’s being true to himself, right? …Even though in this instance he apparently shouldn’t be.
Exercise and training
This being Kaito, the options suggesting some kind of exercise are some of his favourites. Well… usually.
[Dining Hall]
- Exercising after a meal
Kaito: “I know that’s best, but don’t you get sleepy after you eat?”
Apparently Kaito is perfectly aware that it’s a bad habit of his to sleep after meals. Come on, Kaito, if you know it’s bad, you should be trying to break that habit, instead of justifying it to yourself because it can technically be argued to be manliness!
This hangout is one of the bad-outcome ones, and maybe the reason why is just that Kaito apparently really wanted to be validated by not being the only one with this bad habit.
Kaito: “I guess even though you’re my sidekick, we’re pretty different sometimes…”
But… it seems like it might just be the more general thought that he’s different from Shuichi that’s bothering Kaito here, as if he’s worried Shuichi might be less inclined to be his friend if he felt Kaito was too different from him. (Hold this thought – there’ll be more along these lines in the next post.) Being different doesn’t stop you from being friends, though, Kaito! He and Shuichi are very different from each other in a lot of ways, but that’s what makes them such a good team, because they complement each others’ weaknesses so well.
[Gym]
- “Let’s warm up a bit”
Kaito: “Yeah, it’d suck if I got injured and had to give up on being an astronaut. Let’s work on our warm ups, then. Oh, hold on. Is it possible to get injured doing warm ups? If that’s the case, then we better do some pre-warm up warm ups.”
Kaito… does not seem to be all that knowledgeable about how physical training actually works. (See also: his totally very “systematic method” for his sidekicks’ training.) Maybe he really should watch that documentary about athletes. Or sit down with Ryoma and learn a thing or two from him… except, ha ha, that’s not going to happen very easily now is it.
(…Not that I know any better myself whether Kaito’s right to be worried here. I may do daily exercise now thanks to Kaito, but I also have a very systematic method for it, which is of course to say that I don’t and have no idea what I’m doing.)
You’d think Kaito should know this stuff, but, well, maybe his in-universe writers were slacking off while giving him memories of the physical part of astronaut training. Which should have been a difficult mistake to make when you consider that Team Danganronpa must have this character-creation thing down to a science by now and that sport-based talents are very common. They should have a standard “general athlete knowledge base” section of Flashback Light data that they put into every sporty character’s Flashback Light, which should have included Kaito; they’re clearly aware that astronauts train just as much as athletes since they gave him knowledge of that fact. But apparently someone was sleeping on the job.
[Courtyard]
- “Let’s dance!”
Kaito: “Huh? Dance with you? Why? It’s not like I don’t want to, but… Well, whatever! If you’re suggesting it, I’m sure you’ve got a good reason!”
Let’s pretend Shuichi was suggesting this as a different kind of exercise, even though Kaito should probably have realised that’s why and have said so and been on board with it for that specific reason. Kaito should enjoy dancing in particular, too, because it’s all about expressing yourself!
(Honestly, the lack of Shuichi having any of his own dialogue in these past the initial options, leaving the hangout partner essentially just talking to thin air, is kind of awkward sometimes.)
[Gym]
- “Let’s do some muscle training”
The obviously correct choice for when you are in a gym with Kaito!
Kaito: “Alright! Let’s do 500 push-ups! We’re gonna go non-stop, so get ready!”
That is a big number. I can maybe imagine reaching 500 with a lot of breaks to rest – like, a lot – but non-stop? Yikes. Especially for Shuichi, who’s still new to this.
Kaito: “Huh? That’s too many? 500 should be a piece of cake for my sidekick! Don’t complain, just do it!”
But of course Kaito pushes Shuichi into at least trying anyway.
Kaito: “The impossible is possible! All you gotta do is make it so!”
Ayyyy! He still wants this to be known even in the bonus mode. If Shuichi believes 500 non-stop push-ups are possible, he’s a lot more likely to be able to do it than if he’s already written it off as impossible, after all!
…I doubt Shuichi managed to get anywhere close to 500. But then, I also doubt that Kaito did either, so after they both inevitably collapsed in exhaustion, they probably agreed to get there more slowly with breaks after all.
(If Maki were here too, though, she could totally do 500 non-stop without breaking a sweat.)
[Courtyard]
- “Let’s go for a run”
Kaito: “Yeah, sounds good! I haven’t been able to do my daily training since we came here.”
Surely he has been doing his daily training since he started training Shuichi under whatever circumstances kicked that off in this AU? Ugggh this AU and its lack of a proper contextual story for any of this.
Kaito: “Let’s run like we’re chasing our pasts!”
Usually when Kaito has a line that appears kind of ridiculous and there-to-sound-cool, there is actually some kind of meaningful substance to it that makes sense in his head. But I’m not sure what he could mean with this one here. Kaito’s generally more about people putting their pasts behind them and looking to the future, after all.
Kaito: “Detectives need stamina too, right?”
Well, they do if they’re going to be having cases that involve things like capturing alligators, apparently. (Man, Shuichi should tell Kaito about that case. He’d enjoy a story like that, no doubt.)
Principles and advice
Some of these hangouts lead to Kaito showing his delightful principles about keeping a positive outlook on things. (This is partly because quite a few of the obvious-bad-hangout-partner options involve Shuichi grumpily complaining for no good reason, which Kaito would obviously take issue with.)
[A/V Room]
- Watch a comedy movie
Kaito: “Movies like this are great for turning your mood around. When you’re down, all you gotta do is let out a laugh and everything’s good!”
It’s interesting that Kaito apparently likes comedy movies not exactly for their own sake, but rather because they’re good for cheering you up. What Kaito has just implied here (definitely without having meant to) is that he can in fact feel down sometimes and has found that things like this work for pulling him out of it.
Kaito: “If you’re down all the time, then your dreams might get away from you!”
After all, you shouldn’t just wallow in your sadness when you could be doing whatever you can to stay positive!
[Gym]
- “Let’s train… our minds…”
Kaito: “Yeah! It’s got nothing to do with exercising, but your mind’s important!”
Of course Kaito thinks this! Although, what does he mean it’s got nothing to do with exercising? The whole point of him getting his sidekicks to exercise is to help with their mental health!
Kaito: “If you can’t visualize your goals, you’ll never be able to achieve them.”
If you can’t believe the impossible is possible, you’ll never be able to make it so!
Kaito: “That’s just what I’d expect from my sidekick! You get what’s important!”
Aww, he’s so happy that his sidekick already understands the type of mindset he likes to advocate.
(Fun irrelevant fact: I had Kaito use the sentence “You get what’s important!” in a piece of extremely silly Kaito content on my main blog just because it sounded like the kind of thing he might say, while not remembering at the time that he says that exact sentence in the actual game. I was quite amused when I saw this line again.)
[A/V Room]
- “I might fall asleep…”
Kaito: “Well, sure. If you grab some boring movie or something. But if you decide that’s gonna happen from the start, then it probably will. If you always expect the worst, then you’ll always get the worst!”
Kaito’s philosophy is just so good. He always encourages people to try and have a positive outlook, not just because it’ll help them feel better, but because it actually matters to what they’ll be able to achieve. You have to believe the impossible is possible before you’ll ever be able to make it so!
[Library]
- “This is boring…”
(This is another one that doesn’t make any sense for Shuichi to say. He likes novels; he would not be bored in a library.)
Kaito: “Really? There are so many books here, there’s gotta be some that interest you. Before you start complaining, try looking around a bit more.”
Don’t just pointlessly complain when there’s something you could be doing to make things better! Don’t give up before you’ve even tried!
[Library]
- “Sure is dusty in here”
Kaito: “Yeah, but instead of complaining, you should do something about it. If you’re gonna be my sidekick, then you gotta know that much.”
I like that this one isn’t just Kaito’s don’t-complain principle, but is also him asserting that any sidekick of his should already know about this principle of his and be trying to follow that advice. People only become Kaito’s sidekicks once they’ve made the choice to try and change themselves and make their situation better, after all. His principles about not complaining when you could be doing something are basically the same idea as that.
[Gym]
- “I’m tired…”
Kaito: “Huh? You haven’t even done anything yet. If you keep talking like that, I won’t hold back, even if you are my sidekick!”
This is presumably more of Kaito’s don’t-complain principle going on here, except this time he’s not even mentioning the principle itself and is just assuming his sidekick should know better and being annoyed that he’s still complaining anyway.
I should note, though, that if Shuichi complained about being tired in a different context, Kaito would definitely take it very differently and see it as a sign that something’s wrong with him and offer help like always. But in this context, in which Shuichi has just invited him to hang out in the gym and then immediately gone “oh but I’m tired” before they’ve even done anything, it does just come across like he’s being lazy and flaky and doesn’t actually want to exercise, in which case why even come here if you’re only going to complain?
Somewhat relevant to this is Kaito’s stock dialogue when a hangout has the worst possible outcome, which the above hangout is one example of.
[Worst outcome]
Kaito: “C’mon, man… Don’t go forgetting a sidekick’s responsibilities. I’m heading back…”
He expected his sidekick to know better than to change his mind and complain for no reason like this! A sidekick doesn’t have nearly as many responsibilities as the hero does, but Kaito does expect them to understand some of the most frequent advice he gives and be making at least an effort to follow it. To be his sidekick, they’ve got to be trying to change.
There are literally only four hangouts that have a “worst” outcome for Kaito, so it’s really not often at all that Kaito gives this response that implies that he’s disappointed in Shuichi like this. One of the others is the one from the manliness section where Shuichi wanted to go back inside as soon as they’d gone to the courtyard, which is a similar thing of changing his mind and complaining about the decision he literally just made – the kind of thing that Kaito already expected his sidekick to know better than to do.
(Another of the worst outcomes was Shuichi suggesting a horror movie – that one’s not at all Shuichi’s fault and has nothing to do with Kaito’s principles, but I can understand Kaito getting upset enough about it that he somewhat forgets himself in his reaction to it. The fourth one is one that’s coming up later.)
Heroes and sidekicks
My favourite category! Time for some hangouts that hint at Kaito’s issues about heroes and sidekicks, either in a general sense or specifically in regards to his relationship with Shuichi.
First, though, Kaito’s response when a hangout has only a bad-but-not-worst outcome is relevant to this topic as well. As I mentioned, the worst outcome is very rare – most of the time, if he doesn’t have a good time, he’ll just say this:
[Bad outcome]
Kaito: “Are you tired or something? If you’re not feeling well, just rest. My sidekick’s fatigue is my fatigue. I’m… gonna head back first.”
Obviously, it’s not that the hangout made Kaito feel bad or anything. It’s just that apparently Shuichi looks tired, and Kaito’s looking out for his sidekick by suggesting he should go back and rest! And then it’s totally just a coincidence that Kaito heads back first.
(“I’ve projected my own fatigue onto you in order to hide the fact that I’m the one feeling tired” sure is one way for the phrase “my sidekick’s fatigue is my fatigue” to technically be true.)
On some level this could be Kaito trying to hide the fact that Shuichi showed him a bad time so as to not make Shuichi feel guilty for being a bad host – after all, it’s only very rarely that he gives the worst-outcome dialogue that makes it seem like Shuichi did anything wrong. I feel like if that was the only issue, though, Kaito would be more open about it and just say something like “I didn’t have a great time, but hey, it’s not your fault, don’t worry about it, I’m still up for hanging out with you again”. But that would still be Kaito all but admitting that something actually made him feel down at all. Which is obviously not a thing that ever happens to Kaito, right?
[A/V Room]
- Watch an action movie
Kaito: “Action movies are fun cuz you don’t have to think too hard to enjoy them.”
…Because they tend to just have the heroes winning by saving the day in cool ways and being uncomplicatedly awesome?
It is such a delightfully relevant detail that Kaito prefers his fiction simple. If he appreciated more nuanced fiction, if his favourite kinds of stories were instead the ones where the hero’s character is more of a focus and you watch him go through hardships and struggle and grow and still manage to be a hero in the end anyway, then things in canon would have been very, very different.
Kaito: “And there’s a bunch of ‘em that use the universe as their stage!”
Of course, this is an even better reason to like action movies: because SPACE.
(The writers could so easily have had this hangout be nothing but Kaito taking the excuse to talk about space movies, and nothing would have seemed amiss. But they put that first comment he made in there too. I love Kaito’s writers so much.)
Kaito: “Alright! I’m gonna tell you all about my favorites! You ready to take notes!?”
And then… they don’t even watch any space action movies, it just turns into Kaito excitedly telling Shuichi all about his favourite ones. What a dork.
(At least, if Shuichi really did take notes, he can use that list when they’re living a normal life on the outside and he suggests a space movie marathon with Kaito on the 31st of October for no particular reason.)
[Library]
- “Let’s read manga
Kaito: “Adventure manga are the best! They’ve got so much passion in them!”
Heh, of course Kaito’s favourite genre of manga would be that.
Kaito: “You should read all the famous adventure manga, Shuichi! Since we’re pals, it’d be great to read through some together.”
And then it’s cute that he wants to bring Shuichi into this thing he’s interested in, too! Shuichi does like novels, so while maybe he doesn’t usually read much manga, he should still be able to enjoy them! It makes me happy to think of them doing regular kinda-nerdy friend things together like this. Kaito even referred to them as “pals” and not “hero and sidekick”, which is very rare for him!
(I’m imagining, as they read through one of Kaito’s favourite manga, that Shuichi with his more nuanced appreciation of fiction comments that the hero isn’t very interesting because he keeps winning too easily without much effort. And Kaito is internally all “???????? He seems like a perfectly good hero to me??? Why does Shuichi think he’s supposed to be struggling?”)
[Dining Hall]
- “Let’s cook something”
Kaito: “Oh? You can cook, Shuichi? That means I can cook too! My sidekick’s skills are my skills, and my skills are my sidekick’s skills!”
Uhhhh Kaito that’s not how this works. “Your X is my X, my X is your X” definitely does not apply to this. Does that also mean that Shuichi can speak fluent English and Russian and pilot a spaceship?
Being happy that your friend can cook because then you can enjoy his food whenever he feels up to making something is one thing, but this is not quite how you express that, you dork.
(Ask him to teach you, Kaito! It’d be a fun thing to learn, just like how to build a crossbow!)
[Dining Hall]
- “Let’s drink something”
Kaito: “H-How did you know I was thirsty? Insight like that is just what I’d expect from the Ultimate Detective.”
Really? Because insight about the way someone’s feeling is really more the kind of thing that one would expect from you, Kaito.
Kaito: “Or maybe… it was your sidekick powers that tipped you off! If that’s the case, then I’m proud to have such a great sidekick!”
What does “sidekick powers” even mean? …Perhaps it’s Kaito-speak for Shuichi being such a great friend that he can pick up on his friend’s needs. But even if that’s what he means, Kaito has to word it in a way that’s about Shuichi being his sidekick, because he very rarely actually refers to Shuichi as his “friend”.
…The third and by far most likely option, of course, is that it’s pure dumb luck and Shuichi just happened to want a drink himself without realising Kaito did too. But Kaito has to go and make this about the sidekick thing and use it as an excuse to shower praise onto Shuichi like the encouraging hero he is. He’s such a dork.
[Gym]
- “I’ll be the referee”
Kaito: “Huh? If you’re the referee, does that mean I’ll just be exercising by myself?”
Saying you’ll be the referee is probably supposed to be interpreted as the lazy way out of having to do any exercise yourself. But somehow Kaito doesn’t take it that way and admonish Shuichi for not wanting to train.
Kaito: “Haha! So the sidekick wants to see the hero’s full potential? Then why didn’t you say so!? I’ll show you everything I got!”
Because he takes it this way instead. Obviously Shuichi wants to see how awesome the hero is! Being the most awesome so that he can set an example and inspire his sidekicks to try and reach his heights is exactly what a hero is supposed to do!
I love the “why didn’t you say so?”, implying that this really is not at all why Shuichi suggested this, yet Kaito is automatically assuming it is because that’s definitely how heroes and sidekicks work.
[Dining Hall]
- “Let’s have some tea”
Kaito: “Yeah, let’s grab some tea and have a heart-to-heart.”
Yes, this is totally going to be a two-directional outpouring of emotions and issues here.
Kaito: “Don’t you keep any secrets from me! Sidekicks and heroes shouldn’t have secrets between them, y’know?”
Oh, Kaito, you wonderful hypocrite.
It is a little surprising that he’s so adamant that Shuichi shouldn’t be keeping anything at all from him, since he advocated during trial 3 that people are always going to have some secrets and that doesn’t mean they’re keeping them out of malice. But I suppose since Shuichi is his sidekick, the whole point is that Shuichi is supposed to trust him with anything and everything, and if there was something Shuichi wasn’t willing to talk to him about, it’d mean Kaito’s not being a good enough hero.
And obviously, as the hero, Kaito definitely also trusts Shuichi with everything that’s going on in his head, right? Definitely.
[Library]
- “I want to scream really loud!”
Kaito: “Huh? That’s not like you, Shuichi. You’re not the type to be rude like that. You don’t gotta force yourself, y’know?”
Pfft, look at Kaito pointing out for us that this is one of the out-of-character options for Shuichi. It’s kind of a shame that he doesn’t take this further like he does for some others that we’re about to see.
[Dining Hall]
- “Let’s try fasting”
Kaito: “What!? If you do that, you’ll die for sure!”
…I feel like this might be an odd translation thing, because fasting is obviously not something that kills people. Kaito is open to other cultures enough that he should perfectly well know this.
Kaito: “Do you have a fever? Don’t push yourself, alright?”
Yeah, if you’re sick, you shouldn’t push yourself, Kaito.
(…It’s not clear whether or not Kaito actually has the virus in this AU, because that would depend on whether Team Danganronpa changed their minds about doing the killing game before or after infecting him with it. But even if he does, his symptoms wouldn’t quite get far enough along for him to realise he’s dying within the ten days this takes place. And since he’s going to get out of here in ten days, that’s plenty of time to get himself to a hospital once he’s outside, so he’d be fine.)
Kaito: “If you’re not feeling well, it’s because of my poor management.”
It is very Kaito that he turns this into assuming something must be wrong if Shuichi is inexplicably suggesting something like this, and so he starts worrying about him. It’s also very painfully Kaito that he’s blaming himself for it – he considers himself thoroughly responsible for his sidekicks’ wellbeing, and so if something’s wrong, it must be his fault somehow for not being a good enough hero, right?
[Gym]
- “Let’s burn this place to the ground”
Another “what the hell, Shuichi?” option. But this one Kaito takes quite seriously.
Kaito: “What? Hey, c’mon, that’s not you, man. What’s wrong?”
Which is to say, he immediately takes it as a sign that something wrong with Shuichi, because Kaito is good and always concerned about his sidekick’s wellbeing. If Shuichi actually did ever suggest this, it probably would be because he’s very upset about something.
Kaito: “If something’s wrong, all you gotta do is talk to me about it. If it’s something you won’t talk to me about, then there’s nothing I can do…”
And I love that this then turns into Kaito being really worried that there might be a problem that Shuichi won’t talk to him about, which would mean he’d be powerless to fix it. He can’t bear the idea of not being able to help, especially not when it’s his sidekick, whom he’s always supposed to be able to help.
(It’s almost like someone not talking about their issues and therefore being impossible to help is precisely the problem with you, Kaito! But of course that’s not an analogous problem, Kaito’s the hero so he’s not supposed to need help, what are you talking about.)
Unfortunately, since this is a “what the hell, Shuichi” option, and since Shuichi gets no further lines in these, there’s not really anything that’s actually wrong with him and so we can’t further explore this idea of Kaito feeling like he’s unable to help his sidekick. It’s just a fun look at how the possibility of being powerless like that is something he’s really scared of.
(The wiki says this option is a worst outcome, which would be an extra sign of just how awful Kaito feels about this… but the wiki is wrong and this is actually only a bad outcome. The worst outcome dialogue, about Shuichi forgetting “a sidekick’s responsibilities”, could sort of work here – one of his sidekick’s responsibilities is to tell him whenever something’s wrong, isn’t it? But on the other hand, this hangout lingers on the note of Kaito feeling helpless to support Shuichi, which is not a state of mind in which he would want to blame Shuichi for anything. Meanwhile, the “you’re totally the one feeling tired, right, and there’s nothing at all wrong with me” bad-outcome dialogue is perfect for this situation. So maybe this is why this is nominally only a “bad” outcome even though it would definitely be making Kaito feel more awful than any of the “worst” ones do. I am totally not overthinking this.)
[Courtyard]
- “I want to get outside as soon as I can”
Kaito: “Well, that’s obvious. What’s really on your mind, man? If there’s something you’re worried about, just talk to me.”
Here’s some more Kaito delightfully deciding that Shuichi must clearly have a different problem to this that’s what he really wants to talk about. Perhaps the reason he decides that is because the problem of getting out of here isn’t something Kaito can actually help with other than being positive about it, so he wants to turn the conversation onto something he can help with.
Kaito: “Your worry is my worry! My worry is your worry!”
Hee. He only says this once in canon, but I love that it’s here again. It is still so delightfully hypocritical.
Kaito: “If I can ease your worries, mine will be eased too!”
This is extremely true and accurate, though. A lot more literally so than it would be for most friends who support each other, because almost all of Kaito’s own worries revolve around whether he’s able to help Shuichi with his. The best way for Kaito to feel better really is for him to know that Shuichi is okay and that he helped Shuichi be okay. The counterpoint to this, of course, is that if Kaito feels like he can’t ease Shuichi’s worries, then his own will only get worse.
In fact, this basically proves that when Kaito says “My worry is your worry,” he really is just thinking of it as another way of wording “Your worry is my worry”. He’s saying that what he worries about the most is how to help with whatever’s bothering Shuichi. That line is not and never was Kaito trying to actually claim that he’d be happy to share if he had problems of his own.
And even when Kaito does have worries entirely of his own, like when he’s dying in canon, the feeling of being able to support Shuichi means so much to him that it at least manages to distract him from his own worries and therefore sort of ease them in a sense. Though what that really ends up doing is making Kaito increasingly convinced that his own worries are insignificant next to Shuichi’s, which is incredibly not healthy and part of the reason he died.
Being stuck here
And finally, to finish off this post, a few of the hangouts actually reference the vague semblance of a “story” we’ve got going on by mentioning the fact that they’re trapped in here.
[Gym]
- “Let’s renovate the place”
Kaito: “What, you wanna make this place more comfortable or something? What if you start liking it here? Weren’t we gonna work together and escape this academy?”
It’s neat how Kaito makes this about escaping and warns Shuichi not to get too attached to this place.
I guess by “work together” to escape, given the context, Kaito’s specifically talking about how they’re working towards escaping by hanging out and becoming close enough friends with each other? (let’s keep pretending Monokuma mentioned platonic relationships at all, shush)
[Courtyard]
- “I’ve gotten used to being here”
Kaito: “Yeah, me too. But that doesn’t change the fact that I wanna escape!”
Despite the previous one that had Kaito asserting it’d be bad for Shuichi to get used to being here, in this one he’s willing to acknowledge that he’s done that too, even though he doesn’t like it.
Kaito: “Life is short! I don’t have time to waste loafing around here.”
did you know Kaito’s parents died
Kaito: “Don’t get complacent! If you start to enjoy a place like this, then you’ll never find new horizons!”
Here’s more of Kaito just having a generally Good outlook on life. People shouldn’t be telling themselves they’re okay with a situation that isn’t what they really want (just like Maki was doing before she met him), because then they’ll get stuck in that rut and never be able to get themselves out of it! And so, even though he is finding himself getting used to this place, Kaito’s determined not to let that stop him from wanting to move on and not look back once they get out of here.
[Courtyard]
- “What a great view…”
Kaito: “Really? I don’t think so. I mean, I’m the guy who’s gonna fly off into the universe. I can’t be content with a view like this. I gotta see bigger and better things!”
I’m going to assume this is meant as basically an extension of the idea that Kaito doesn’t want them to get used to being stuck here and not try to escape; the view from the Academy isn’t anything particularly special, after all. Because it’d be sad if Kaito wasn’t able to let himself enjoy some of the prettier views on Earth just because they’re not space. You can still enjoy a thing even if you know there’s an even better thing out there! Kaito is definitely the kind of person who should be able to understand that. There’s nothing unnecessary in this world!
(but also have I mentioned how very important it is that the rocket had a window)
[Courtyard]
- “Staying here forever wouldn’t be so bad”
Kaito: “Huh!? What the hell are you talking about!? No way we’re staying here forever! Even if you are my sidekick, I won’t let you off the hook for saying that!”
This one reads to me less like Kaito’s trying to encourage Shuichi to be less defeatist and more like Kaito is angry on his own behalf. It’s almost as if Shuichi is trying to tell him to give up on getting out of here. Hey, Kaito, what’s so great about space anyway? Maybe you should just never go there after all.
(This is the last of the rare absolute worst outcomes. Kaito does not approve of having this idea suggested to him, and his sidekick should obviously have known better than to try and make him be okay with giving up like this.)
And while you might think Kaito is so optimistic that the thought of staying here forever would never have even occurred to him, it is a thought that’s been plaguing him, even though he’d never admit it out loud. More on that next time when we reach the main event here.
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Buried In Words - Roadwarden Devlog
(Roadwarden is an illustrated text-based RPG in which you explore and change a hostile, grim realm. It combines mechanics of RPGs, adventure games and Visual Novels, and you can now wishlist it on Steam!)
Since the middle of December, working on Roadwarden is mostly about writing new events, dialogues and quests. There were almost no updates on social media - I don’t have time to draw (aside of some inventory icons), and by popular demand, I try to avoid deeper spoilers. I’ve written quite a bunch of stuff, but the results won’t do for exciting screenshots.
I’m currently focused on designing and filling up Howler’s Dell, the largest settlement in the game, so there’s a LOT of important character interactions to introduce, including quests, merchants, and lore. But in the meantime, some major changes have also been introduced:
1. The game over screens
In the original Roadwarden’s Design Document, there were no game-overs. You could get significantly hurt during your journeys, but never to the point where you’d hit a brick wall that would make the further progress impossible. You’d need to rest and heal your wounds to participate in some events, but you could always move forward.
I’ve finally decided to change it. In most situations, reaching 0 HP won’t result in an instant death. But in some scripted encounters - usually when facing an overwhelming opponent while being completely unprepared - your character will be broken.
Still, I hope to make it as player-friendly as possible. Did you forget to save your game? Was autosave ran in an inconvenient spot? You can jump back in time a bit, no strings attached.
In various European cultures, the winged hourglass is an image related to the ephemerality of life, and it has became an important part of the Viaticum fantasy setting over ten years ago. Since there’s no single “canonic” design, I’ve had an opportunity to experiment with various approaches.
2. New “regular” font
The text has now more space to breathe, the letters have more personality, and thanks to the serifs, it’s going to be easier to keep track of the lines you read. Everybody wins:
While the majority of feedback that I’ve gathered shares my enthusiasm, I’ve also seen some words of criticism. It’s still possible that the font is going to be replaced with a different one, but I’m convinced it’s still a step in the right direction.
Even if the font is going to be replaced again, this little feature will be kept in the game. The good old “select a font” setting now showcases a small frame that explains the most significant traits of the regular font and the pixel one. Even though the pixel font looks cool on screenshots, it won’t be gentle on your eyes.
3. Updated inventory menu
From now on, pointing at an icon in your inventory will showcase not just the item’s brief description, but also its name.
This update was essential due to the constantly growing number of items added to the game. Usually, the player will keep using or loosing some of them as they complete more quests or take a part in more unique interactions, but you may reach a point when you’ll see a couple of dozen of icons at once, and they may start to get a bit blurry. When there was maybe 20 items in the entire game, clicking an icon to see the broader description wasn’t a large problem, but it became clear that it was a short-sighted, flawed design.
4. Redesigned armor system
I’m not gonna lie. The gambesons that were present in the demo? They were a placeholder, waiting for a better idea to show up. And here it is.
The original two “types” of armor were related to the character’s class selected at the beginning of the game - the Warrior gets the good stuff, while both the Scholar and the Mage have a piece of trash, since they couldn’t afford anything better.
I was expecting to introduce some encounters “better” armors later in the game, and also script interactions where the better armors help you survive major injuries or even death, but I felt it was not good enough. This approach doesn’t introduce much decision making, and it introduces sort of a boring stagnancy.
The new system offers three “levels” of armor. The level 1 - “A Worn Gambeson” - offers you little to no protection. If you want to be saved during some difficult encounters, or maybe get less hurt when you screw up, you want to get to at least the level 2 - “A Decent Gambeson” - which is given to the Warrior class at the beginning of the game.
Upgrading armor requires getting in touch with a tailor, and paying them to do some fixes for you. However, when the armor “saves” you, it often also gets damaged. Its level decreases.
The 3rd level of your armor - “A Fine Gambeson” - follows the same rules. Wearing it will save you from most wounds, but during this process, it may also get torn, downgraded to level 2. As the player, you have to decide how many dragon coins you are willing to invest to keep yourself in one piece.
So simple, yet so much better. And I can still decide to introduce levels 0, 4, 5... Depending on what will turn out to fit the larger picture.
5. Updated journal menu
The journal has received the very needed scrollbars, which appear only when there’s too much text to fit in a single window. From now on, I don’t expect that the player will just “figure out” that they can use a mouse wheel, or drag the text box. Nice and easy:
Also, when you select a chapter (like “Quests”) or a specific entry (like the “Necromancers?” quest), the button is now highlighted, what will help you keep track of what you’ve been clicking through:
Also, unlike in the game’s demo, the “People” chapter is now cohesive with the “Quests” formatting. Originally, these sections had different sizes, what didn’t look as good as I intended.
6. Dolmen updates
Just to make it clear - the game receives a whole bunch of updates and bug fixes every week, and I don’t plan to list dozens of small adjustments just because. But this one is pretty fun for me, since it shows the progressing level of attention to detail, and the evolution of the game’s design. : )
Since the day I’ve introduced this area to the game’s prototype, I was unhappy about the low amount of visual changes it had to offer. No matter what you’d type down to solve the puzzle, the only clues you’d receive were presented in text.
The updated dolmen required some rewrites and a fair bit of drawing, but from now on, once you find something that provides a significant clue, you’ll also see a visual feedback that’s going to reflect your discovery. It will help you backtrack the older information, and focus your attention on more successful guesses. Oh, something new has showed up? I guess it’s important!
7. The world map reworks
Some of those updates are difficult to spot without a looking glass. Some percentage of the “bushes” have different colors now and a couple of new shapes; the forests and trees now cast shadows; the lake nearby the Southern Crossroads has more details; the river in the east is broader; there are new hills nearby Tulia’s Camp...
But it’s the eastern part of the map that has seen some major updates. It’s filled with hills and mountains, and because of it, it provides more limited vision than lands in the west, covered with plains and swamps. Previously, this disproportion was quite a bit larger, and I’ve decided to town it down a bit. I hope that the effect I’ve had in mind is still clear to spot.
8. More “stable” text boxes
When the player points at an icon, it usually creates a text box with a related description. From now on, more of these text boxes will be anchored to specific parts of the screen, instead of showing up in an area related to the player’s cursor. It should make the information less chaotic, and won’t cover other icons anymore. Also, there will be no more situations when the text box is partially outside of the game’s window.
---------------------------------
Thank you for taking a look at this devlog, for your support and kindness. Remember, you can also find me on Twitter and Facebook, and the game has a Steam page on which you can add it to your wishlist. Have a great day!
#pixelart#rpg#fantasy rpg#pixel art#indie#Indiegame#indie dev#video game#gaming#pcgaming#visualnovel#visual novel#Adventure Game
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Artbook Data - Development Team Interview
For context, here’s the tutorial for Salmon Fishing.
Interviewees:
Shun Sasaki: V3′s director. His main roles included mediating all the development teams and managing the schedules. Additionally, he will also talk in this interview about his own personal project: the bonus modes.
Taichi Kouno: One of the developers. A DanganRonpa fan who joined the team for Ultra Despair Girls. In V3, he was in charge of the Class Trial scenes and its minigames.
Takahiro Suzuki: Joined the V3 production as a developer and handled the non-Trial parts and the e-Handbook. Like Kouno, he was a DanganRonpa fan who joined the team for Ultra Despair Girls.
Fans become members: the style of the DanganRonpa team
Interviewer: Please tell us what parts you did as a developer.
Taichi Kouno: I built the entire game system for the Class Trial and also did the minigames for the daily life part. Other than that, I got to do some work on the Academy map, blueprinted the base and produced the data the graphics guys need to draw.
I: I see how about Suzuki?
Takahiro Suzuki: I was almost completely focused on setting up the dialy life/investigation parts. And the system for the e-Handbook.
Shun Sasaki: I supervised Kouno and Suzuki’s work (although the final decisions were by Kodaka) and managed the schedules. Then I focused myself on the bonus modes. Thanks to Kouno and Suzuki’s good work, I was able to make the bonus modes as I wanted.
I: You couldn’t have implemented the bonus modes without their support, all right. You said that one handled the Trial parts and the other handled the non-Trial parts, but can you be more specific about what you did?
TK: The Class Trial has not only the usual dialogue, but also various minigames, like the Nonstop Debate, the Panic Debate, etc. My job was to think how would this be presented on the screen, where it would be implemented and how the player would interact with it. To actually make the interfaces I had to go over with the designer team, but I can draw, so it was easier because I could send a drawing of the screenshot I wanted. It’s much easier to explain myself when I can just go there, show a drawing and say “This interface represents this, it’s going to move like this and I want it to have this functionality”. I even started making extra drawings for whenever I wasn’t being illustrative enough.
I: Oh wow, I didn’t think you would also give ideas for the visuals, not just the system. And how about the non-Trial parts?
TS: The basics are the same. I look at the general conversation and the ideas Kodaka sent me and build the visuals from it. In most cases, I received the bases necessary from the programmer and designers. Since DanganRonpa is a series, I try not to wreck these bases, so the fans of the previous games won’t get confused. That said, keeping everything exactly the same is boring, so I’m very conscious about what I have to emphasize or improve. Being more specific, “Keep this set identical to the previous game but improve this aspect here” or “Change this interface to this”.
I: I see. So you’re the one who made multiple characters appear on the screen at the same time.
TK: That was decided from the start, but it was hard to leave it the way it is now.
TS: VERY hard (pained laughter). We used to display the character as 2D sprites, artificially placed in a 3D map. This time we placed 3D character on the 3D map but displayed in 2D.
TK: We started displaying multiple characters in dialogue scenes because we made this system of using multiple cameras to show many characters at the same time for the Panic Debate. If we could do it for the Panic Debate, we could do it for normal dialogue.
I: So basically, there are all the character in a 3D map and each of them has a personal camera to display them?
TS: Yes. Each character is their own camera in pre-established positions and we keep switching cameras to match the flow of the conversation.
I: This sounds like a lot to adjust.
TS: It was difficult to choose where to place each character in the 3D map, since we were giving each of them pre-established positions. Depending on where they were, the could be covered by the scenery or cause a slow loading.
SS: We switched hardwares, so it feel like we gained as many new hardships as we gained new possibilities. Increasing the number of characters on the screen was hard, but this time we could place characters side by side or in front or behind each other, making the group shots look a lot better than before.
TS: That said, we almost couldn’t make it for the Vita...
I: Yeah, that’s a lot less potent than the PS4.
SS: Yes, but we want to perfect V3 as a game that could be enjoyed equally in both the PS4 and the Vita with dropping any functionality idea, since the DanganRonpa series started as portable series, on the PSP.
TK: We could stop hearing that “It’s not impossible, you can find a way” (pained laughter)
I: Like a sports coach (laughs). When did you start working as developers?
SS: As I answered in the Direction Team interview, we started working on V3 while we were making DanganRonpa: Another Episode. Kouno and Suzuki started working in a different project immediately after they finished their roles in DRAE. I added the two to the V3 team as soon as Kodaka finished structuring the plot for V3 and we started making the game’s system and other elements.
I: Is this the first time you two work on a DanganRonpa numbered title?
TS: Yes. I was just a player before.
TK: I was just a fan too. My first time on a numbered title.
I: Which means you already thought about what you want to change or fix from a fan perspective, right?
TK: Of course I did. The one thing I really wanted to implement for this one was the Voting Time. I never got over the fact that it ended without me voting when I played 1 and 2... In V3 the story’s ending was about synchronizing the player with the character’s feelings, so I thought could make this happen by finally implementing the voting system.
I: I agree, by participating in the voting yourself and sending a student to die, V3 made me feel more responsible for it than the previous games.
TK: That’s exactly what I aimed for. I want the players to feel responsible for what was happening. I thought making the Voting Time playable was necessary to make reinforce the experience of “This character died because you chose it”.
I: I see. And how about you, Suzuki?
TS: Since our specs were increasing, I took care of ironing out the visual style as far as I could. Also, those are just minor QoL updates, but I added more shortcuts to the maps and adjusted the icons to be more easy to identify. That said, I didn’t go too far to maintain the game’s DanganRonpa identity.
I: And you had Sasaki making these decisions?
SS: No, Kodaka was making all the final decisions. If we made things too functional, Kodaka would come over and say “no”. Not because it would be too convenient, but cause it would generate too much loading and the menus would look weird. Many people in our team don’t like this. I personally the loading screens and like the menus, so in many occasions I thoughts “Are we really not having a function this convenient?”
TK: Some took issue with it being too convenient too. For example, if the map has too many shortcuts taking you absolutely anywhere, what would be the point of walking?
TS: That’s why I instead increase the movement speed to make it more comfortable to go around in that huge school.
I: That’s something you wouldn’t consider back when you were just a player. How did you decide who would handle each part when the development started?
SS: Oh, this? The role where just split with nothing special to say about it. As I said in the beginning, I just asked Kouno to do the Trial parts and Suzuki to do the non-Trial. And that I would do the bonus modes, counting on their help later (laughs).
I: What’s the first thing to do after deciding the roles?
TS: Pitching ideas for the game, of course.
TK: We get a lot of time to pitch ideas. We all read Kodaka’s entire script before discussing anything, and it has some vague annotations, like “I want this game to have more minigames than before” or “it would be nice to have a minigame where you can answer with images”. First we have to do what Kodaka is asking there before we can start thinking about what we want. Then in the business meeting, we polish and adjust our ideas.
SS: And then discuss it with Kodaka and Sugawara, and they tell if we can or can’t insert each of our ideas.
I: And what is more important for their decision? If it’s fun or it fits the lore/worldbuilding?
SS: Good question. There are sometimes when ideas are fun but we don’t find any good place to fit them in the story, so we have to cut them, with tears in our faces...
I: Did you have to give more ideas for this game, since it’s much larger than the previous ones?
SS: Until now, Sugawara and I were the only developers, but this time this became too much work for just the two of us, meaning we had to hire Kouno and Suzuki to help.
TS: I was so happy when I got called. I was goint to be on a numbered title.
TK: So was I. Unbelievably happy. Another Episode was also an amazing experience, but I only joined the production halfway through. This time I was there right from the start and most of my ideas where implemented. Being a developer is no fun if I’m not getting things my way.
I: The DanganRonpa team all looks very motivated, from the sounds of this interviews I’m making.
SS: Making a game is still hard, though (pained laughter). But when we were implementing any component, I don’t remember anyone saying it would be impossible. Every member did what they could to include everything they wanted.
TK: Saying it’s impossible is easy, but then what next? Saying it’s impossible makes me feel defeated, so this get more motivated to find a way.
TS: The programmers all feel the same way when working, so it’s very easy to be a developer like this. Thanks, guys. Every time I say the idea I gave them is too difficult, they mock me and show me that they can do it (laughs).
The secret origins of the Death Road of Despair, the minigame that brought many players to despair
I: Kouno, did get involved in the Death Road of Despair? It’s not in the Class Trial part, but you said you were in charge of the minigames.
TK: I did. It was my part.
I: I heard from Kodaka he asked you to “make a crappy game”.
TK: Kodaka told me to make a game like Dragon’s Lair. When he actually played it, he couldn’t make any progress. “What the heck is this game!?” (laughs)
Everyone: (laughs)
TK: So, I tried to analyse Dragon’s Lair and come up with my own game where you die in places it doesn’t look like you’re supposed to die. And the Death Road of Despair what the result of me throwing in every idea and trick I could, as far as the time and budget allowed.
I: The characters are all slippery and hard to control. And the students behind you just keep dying.
TK: Yeah, in the request they told me to think about how Luigi slips more than Mario. I absolutely loved that unrealistic inertia. (laughs)
I: You probably have a lot of experience in being told to make things easier, but not as many opportunities to make a game utterly unplayable.
TK: That’s Kodaka’s style for you. I was really motivated to reach his style when I was building this, so I want to see the platformer experts out there doing their best to reach the goal. It is possible.
I: Did you beat it, Kouno?
TK: I can’t. I just used the debug mode to assure all obstacles are clearable. One guy on the debug did manage, though. He said took him 1 or 2 days and he only beat it by a miracle.
I: I saw some videos of people doing it.
SS: Everyone in the office was talking about them.
TK: I cried tears of joy (laughs). There’s even one guy who posted a No Damage Run.
I: A No Damage Run!? In that long of a stage? I’m impressed that they didn’t make any mistakes.
TK: So long that the background changes 3 times. By the way, at the end of the sewers area there is a set of bombs spelling “CLEAR”. I always wanted to do that. Sidescrollers always have those parts saying “CLEAR” not even close to the end. I absolutely wanted to recreate it (laughs).
I: (laughs) Speaking of minigames, there are a lot of them in the Class Trial. Were there any beta ideas for them?
SS: Not many, as far as I remember.
TK: As we said before, there’s the Mind Mine deal. “We should have a game where the player answers with images”. From that basis, someone suggested the minigame they wanted to make.
I: What minigame did you want to make, Kouno?
TK: I want to make a minigame like DR2′s Logical Dive. First I suggested a minigame where you controled a jet, but Kodaka said “A car is better” and so was born the Psyche Taxi minigame.
I: The Psyche Taxi’s world is quite unique.
TK: Kodaka said the world should look like Hotline Miami, so we settled with that.
I: Last but not least, the Hangman’s Gambit 3.0. As usual, it’s completely different from its predecessors.
TK: DR2′s Improved Hangman’s Gambit was harder as a puzzle game, in my opinion. But for this one we already added Mind Mine as a puzzle game, so we decided to tone down all the puzzle elements on from the Hangman’s Gambit and focus more on the action part.
I: I see. Kouno, did you come up with this game’s newest addition, the Debate Scrum, too?
TK: The Debate Scrum was already an idea before the project officially approved.
SS: We had already decided we wanted to do a group vs group debate, but we didn’t have anything concrete besides that, so we exchanged ideas as usual.
TK: The Debate Scrum was a challenge. The pre-approval images looked awesome and Kodaka loved the idea, but I couldn’t for the life of me decide what to do with that... New tasks kept piling up in the meanwhile and things were starting to look bad, so I had to pass the bucket to Sugawara, since the Debate Scrum was his idea to begin with (pained laughter).
SS: Hold people responsible for their own ideas, people (laughs).
TK: But leaving it to Sugawara was the right idea. The “negotiating” between the character are one of the the Debate Scrum’s charms. This setup is difficult to make if you’re not a writer as good as Sugawara.
I: Sounds pretty tough to have to come up with all these minigames styles in parallel. Sasaki, you said you made the bonus modes all by yourself. What was the hardest part?
SS: Nothing really, the bonus mode were just me doing whatever I wanted. I could choose the genres by preference.
I: The bonus modes are all linked together, adding a lot of replayability. Was this all planed from the start?
SS: It was. I planned it to be played in a cycle. I said the dungeon would have 50 floors, but I ended up making 100 floors for it.
TS: I also liked how the bonus modes used the characters from the previous games. I knew people would love to see the V3 characters interacting with the ones from 1 and 2.
SS: I absolutely had to but the past game cast in this, since I made it a story where we could have characters from anywhere.
I: The bonus modes are really well polished.
SS: But there are some pieces I regret not being able to implement. For example, the Dangan Salmon version where Akamatsu is the protagonist... Chapter 1 has Free Time, so we prepare 2 events per character to use with Akamatsu. For the Akamatsu Salmon Mode, we want to fill up her pieces all the way to end. But as you would expect, the project was too big, so we left it aside.
TK: There was also the idea of choosing to play with Saihara or Akamatsu.
I: I see, if you make events for Akamatsu, the workload would double... So, after the work in the bonus modes was done, Sasaki moved back to the main game. Was that it?
SS: Yes. I finished the bonus modes pretty fast, so I could focus all my attention to the main game afterwards. For the main game, we were expecting a delay down to the last minute (pained laughter), so I did what I could to finish the bonus side fast.
I: In the director team interview, you said many new elements were added for chapter 6.
TK: That was 3 months before the remastering, wasn’t it? We decided to add a lot of new stuff to chapter 6 and everyone started going “We’re doing it like this now?!”.
TS: I recall something to that effect.
I: You said you had to come up with how the chapter 6 scenes would work from the scratch, based only on Kodaka’s script.
TS: Yup, from scratch (pained laughter). The script wasn’t too detailed about it and I had no indications as to how to makes everything flow together. But that part of the story was filled with scenes and twist everywhere, so we 3 were at our wit’s ends, weren’t we?
TK: Kodaka came up in the middle of our work and said some very unfortunate words. “I’m writing chapter 6 right now, but the sequences are turning out too similar to DR2, so I’m considering making Ki-bo destroy the school”. At the time I thought “Destroy how exactly? Do we really have the time to make new models? I don’t think so.”, then when I read the finished script, so much of it was different...
TS: Yeah, the Ki-bo video cutscenes were added.
I: I remember Kodaka saying he was amazed at his own creation (laughs).
SS: Sometimes things work (laughs).
TK: Kodaka often suggests the first random thing that comes to mind. That’s actually where he’s at his best. He makes people motivated to pull it off.
A game system that only managed to be this unbiased because the love Danganronpa
I: Now I’ll ask each of you about your favorite parts of the system.
TK: Mine is the Perjury system for telling lies. Lies are one of the themes of this game, so it’s not bad to be able to lie in-game. And since we’re making the players lie, I want them to feel corrupt about it. I also made the Perjury visual very much my style. The thing with all the eyes appearing was my idea.
I: Because you like everyone eyeing you when you’re lying?
TK: Yes. You never know what can happen if you’re caught in your lie, so you get anxious and alert. You feel like everyone is looking at you, and that’s what I want to represent with those visuals. Also, I didn’t want people being easily able to lie, so I made the lying command into a long and tedious button hold, that slowly drains your HP. You recover HP when the lie is succesful, so that’s both the bad feeling you have when you lie and the good feeling you have when you get away with it, both well put down into gameplay.
TS: You’re praising yourself a lot (laughs).
I: What elements do you like, Suzuki?
TS: The e-Handbook. Since we wouldn’t have the pet-raising minigame from DR2, we added the dress-up element so you can change improve its appearance.
TK: People loved the e-Handbook backgrounds.
SS: Really? I actually found the dress-up function unnecessary and was against it. But Suzuki and the designers were very intent in doing it, so I gave the ok just because.
TK: I was also against it at first, but once I started to actually play with the backgrounds and see their individual animations, I really enjoyed them. It also increased the prize count for the casino, so it’s good that we did it.
TS: Though I think we made the designer team suffer with each new background we had them make. It was only going to be the e-Handbook changing colors when the protagonist spot switches from Akamatsu to Saihara. But we thought that if we’re changing once, why not change a few more times? It would be fun. Another thing, the reactions on the novel parts.
I: By reactions you mean the interjection cursor that appears in the novel when you move the right analog stick?
TS: Yeah. Nothing happens when you do it though (pained laughter). I just thought it would be a good support system to make V3 more immersive.
TK: But it really does nothing. It would really be better if the character lines changed if you did an specific reaction at an specific moment.
SS: Oh, we really should have done that.
TS: We can do that next time... Aside from the reactions, another really minor element I like is slapping away the chair and tables and whatnot.
I: The game really makes you want to slap the things. Whenever I got to a new place the first thing I did was always checking for what I could slap.
TS: It changes how the scenery looks like and it gives you Monocoins, so yeah, do it.
TK: It’s a plain way to earn Monocoins, but it’s still money. The Monocoins can be exchanged into Casino Coins so there’s no downside for getting many.
I: Finally, Sasaki, what elements do you like?
SS: Number one are the bonus modes, but after that, I liked Panic Debates. It easy to experience how much the Class Trial evolved and there’s a pretty well done job in to making it look chaotic.
TK: Really? That was my idea.
SS: Good job.
I: Kouno is getting a raise today (laughs). What idea gave birth to the Panic Debate?
TK: I always wanted to add a new debate to the Class Trial. In the project meeting, we had to think of situations we never did before, but I couldn’t say with anything. After the meeting was ending, our small community started talking, everyone at the same time. That’s where I the idea came to me.
I: And this epiphany became the Panic Debate.
TK: We never had this situation where multiple students spoke in the Class Trial at the same time, so I thought this could work. 3 characters filling the same screen, multiple Weak Points appearing, none of this was never done before, so I’m glad we managed to implement it.
Even the Game Over lines!? The playfullness the devs incorporated
I: Can you tell me what did you do to make the game more accessible to people not good with action games?
TK: By setting Skills according the action parts you’re bad at, it gets significantly easier. You can get Skill by exchanging Bond Fragments or in the Casino shop. Many of the Skills available with Bond Fragments make minigames easier, so I recommend using those. The casino Skills, on the other hand, are better for increasing your score. Try using those when you’re already used to the game and wants to get the best score you can.
I: That makes it important to talk with other students.
TK: Not to mention all Skills obtained from maxing a character’s affection are very strong. The more you talk to get Skills, the easier the game gets.
I: Tell us some useful gameplay secrets that only you know.
TK: Ok, me first. You can get a rocket start on Psyche Taxi. It works if you hit the gas the exact moment the GO appears. Give it a try.
TS: A lot of minigames have little secrets. Like how the tutorial for Salmon Fishing is a poem....
TK: Not a poem, but a reference to a famous song from a popular band. That’s why Saihara says “That was quite the poetic explanation...” after reading through the whole thing (laughs).
I: I completely missed it (laughs).
TK: One more thing about the Casino. For the slot machines, their reel patterns change depending on the machine you use. The one with the green nameplate is the more balanced one and the one with the red nameplate is the high risk high return one. The one with the blue nameplate is a more tricky machine. If you hit Scatter, you’re more likely the get WILDs and land a huge profit in one go.
I: The blue machine sounds the best to roll. Suzuki, do you have something for the non-investigation part?
TS: Let me see. You can talk to the Monokubs in the Salmon Mode and each of them has multiple different lines. Even for the silent Monodam, we gave him a line with 3% appearance rate. You can get Casino coins from talking to them, and getting the special Monodam line gives a lot of them. I don’t think people will get to see this a lot, since you can only talk to him once per day. But I’ll be glad the interested people would try it out.
I: 3%? Yeah, that’s very special alright.
TS: Also, character birthdays. All of them have special meanings, so speculate to your heart’s contents.
TK: Lastly, I have a few secrets about the Class Trial. First, we have multiple different Game Over dialogues. For example, if you time without picking anyone on Voting Time, you get a unique game over.
I: You mean Saihara’s thoughts change?
TK: It’s not that Saihara’s thoughts changes, you get a new conversation with Monokuma. Every chapter has 2 different Game Over dialogues, except for chapter 1, which has one more for Akamatsu, and chapter 6, which has 7 different unique game overs. You change characters in chapters, so we had to add new Game Over dialogue for all of them and then one shocking final Game Over for when you vote. Game Overs asides, you also have unique dialogue for the mistakes you make, so you can enjoy all different scenes.
I: That’s a lot of hidden details.
TK: I remembered one more thing about the Class Trial! In chapter 1, the first Nonstop Debate with Saihara as the protagonist has the exact same cameraworks and word movement patterns as the first Nonstop Debate from DR1. Since that debate is when Saihara finally becomes the real protagonist, we thought it would be interesting to make it identical to the first one. If there’s a video comparing the two, you can really tell it’s the same.
I: I want to watch this video now. By the way, was this parallel planned from the start?
TK: Originally, chapter 1 wasn’t going to have any debates as Saihara, until Kodaka suddenly said he wanted to add it...
SS: He wanted to use Saihara’s BREAK cut in there already to make everyone sure that Saihara was the new protagonist. So we added debates.
TK: And this new debates were asked to be made at the very last minutes, so we had no idea what to do. Once we were out of good ideas, we thought repeating the first Nonstop Debate ever would be a valid idea. The fans who notice would find it clever and we could just copy-paste the program scripts, so two birds with one stone. Except the program was written completely different, so we couldn’t just copy the script.
SS: You had to copy it by manually typing it?
TK: I copied it by eye.
TS: It wasn’t much more time consuming.
TK: But that was because having ideas is hard. I’m glad we could get away with this.
I: Now that I think about it, having to come up with a new camera work and text movements for each Nonstop Debate sounds hard.
TK: Don’t even start. Especially now that our platform has been greatly improved. Everyone was thinking “Let’s make this animation”, “Let’s add this text placement”. We went through all the possibilities. And from this game on, we became able to move the text in 3D and gained some new fonts. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. I thought the person typing the program would suffer a lot with it, so I did most of it myself... I’ll only say it took forever.
I: That’s a tremendous workload...
TK: Naturally, we must come up different animations for every debate. We created multiple patterns of font and lettering, and even needed to match the text’s colors to its contents. When someone was being accused, we pay attention to how our color work makes this character stand out.
I: The chapter 6 animations were the biggest highlight. Did you come with those, Kouno?
SS: Sugawara was in charge of the 6th Class Trial.
TS: And so was the first.
TK: Sugawara was in charge of the parts where we change characters. At first I was the one coming up with them, but partway through I was forced to admit it was too much for me... I asked around who could help and the answer was “There’s Sugawara!”.
I: The same twist as the Debate Scrum story (laughs). Sugawara is always reliable, like your last line of defense.
SS: He is. We’re glad we have him.
TK: It comes as no surprise. He is one of the creators of the Danganronpa franchise. Since we had him handling the animations for chapters 1 and 6, those turned out a level above the rest.
The developers’ thoughts to make a better game
I: Last question, tell me how you feel about the game now, and what would you want to update in the next game.
SS: How do you two feel about the game now ?
TK: I’m extremely happy with all the reactions we got, both positive and negative. I feels like a lot of people were strongly impacted from playing V3.
SS: It’s great to see opinions about it. There have been a lot of different takes on it, even some people who felt challenged by the ending. As developer, seeing this many different opinions make me feel more blessed than I deserve. Thank you all very much for it.
TS: Seeing reactions from people enjoying the new elements we created as much as we wanted them to makes me glad I could implement everything right.
TK: One more, a little bit more personal opinion. As its developer, I’m very glad for the surprising amount of people who tried hard on the Death Road of Despair.
I: You thought there would be less of them, Kawano?
TK: I thought the challengers would assume it’s 100% impossible and give up halfway through. I readjusted a lot of things to make it clearable, but I still would be satisfied with 2, 3 people in the entire world beating it. But a lot of people showed up clearing it. As the person of handled every balancement detail of this minigame, along with my thanks to everyone who took so much of their time to beat it, I also want to say “wow, you’re awesome”.
SS: You just can’t stop praising yourself (laughs).
TS: The Death Road was made under the premise that at least one person out there was going to beat it. So we prepared not only a Saihara version to the ending, but also an Akamatsu version, and even made a bonus e-Handbook wallpaper for it. It’s made in a way you can do it if you try hard enough. But we were not crazy enough to tie an Achievement to the Death Road of Despair.
I: Yeah, you wouldn’t be able to get a Platinum without beating the Death Road. Ok, now tell me what do you want to improve or be careful about for the next game.
TS: For the VN part, I want to improve the visuals, adding animations and lightings to the characters. I’m quite used to the gameplay as it currently is, so I don’t fell much need to change it. I feel that what we must do now is to strenghen the visual part, making smoothly moving sprites to make the game even more immersive. Also, the current VN part has a lighting setup that shadows the characters you’re not talking to and I want to improve on that function.
I: On that note, if the game were a PS4 exclusive, could you have more than 3 characters on the screen?
SS: The hardware allows it.
TS: Adding more than 3 characters to the same screen is not the priority. I’m just thinking about how I can improve the presentation to make the Danganronpa story more enjoyable.
I: I have high hopes for it! And you, Kouno?
TK: A thing we need to more careful about, yes. We need to pay more attention to what we show in PVs and official material.
I: Did anything go wrong with a PV?
TK: I swear I was paying attention when I was making the PVs, but I had to do some rushjobs when I had no time or resources. I couldn’t check out all the finer details in time. Rantarou Amami was not there in the first revealed Class Trial picture, his “And why would he be in the library” line from the first PV was unvoiced, so people started suspecting that he would be the first victim.
I: Oh no, their suspicions were precisely on point...
TK: I made an inexcusable blunder, both to the dev team and for the fans. We should have recorded some dummy lines.
SS: If I had just a little more time available, I could have noticed it beforehand. It’s my job as the dev leader to check every detail... Another struggle was because we didn’t Debate Scrum resources for Amami.
TK: Oh yeah. Amami doesn’t participate in Debate Scrums, so we didn’t make any material in advance. That’s another thing we should have done...
SS: The only Amami material we had for the Scrum Debate was his dead portrait. For obvious reasons, we couldn’t just put that out there for promotional material. A problem so easily solved if we had just made an image of Amami facing sideways beforehand...
I: And how did you deal with Amami’s face?
SS: Coincidentally, Amami’s expression sheet just happened to contain a lot of sprites where he faces sideways. We were at a point where using that was the only option, but once we looked more closely, all other students had proper centralized looks while only Amami was looking directly to our faces (pained laughter). When we made it, we were worried that the fans would figure it out.
TS: And surprise, surprise, they did.
TK: If people noticed the unvoiced line, of course they would notice only one person looking directly at them.
SS: Good thing we can laugh at it now.
I: Oh yeah, now that I see the picture, Amami looks very off.
SS: By the way, an Amami’s Debate Scrum Illustration was made exclusively for this artbook. It’s very rare Amami content, so I hope you enjoy it.
I: Thank you for this precious conversation. Give one final message to our readers.
TK: Being a game developer is hard, but fun and rewarding. If reading this interview made you interested in becoming a developer, go ahead! Also, my Twitter @ is taichikono. I’d appreciate your follows, if you’re interested.
TS: You sound like an ad (laughs).
I: Your turn, Suzuki. If you please.
TS: I’m happy and grateful to everyone played our game. We still don’t have anything planned, but I truly want to give you the next title, in whatever shape or form it may be. Keep looking forward to the Danganronpa series.
SS: Are you sure you tell your Twitter @?
TS: I like to live away from the limelight... I couldn’t handle a big follower count (laughs).
I: I get it (laughs). Last but not least, the final comment, from our director.
SS: I’m always doing Danganronpa interviews with Kodaka and Terasawa, but Kouno and Suzuki form quite unique trio here, since those two are from the side of the staff that usually doesn’t talk to the public. Every Danganronpa is very colorful on its own different way, so we from the development team would appreciate if you would play them all again, thinking about what kind of people made it.
#artbook translations#shun sasaki#taichi kouno#takahiro suzuki#i liked when sasaki almost implied kodaka doesn't let him make the games too comfortable to play#i can't believe i've just seen sugawara being held in high regard as a writer#sugawara is at least a great boss though#i'm surprised at how much they are owning up to their mistake with amami#rare amami content(?)
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How I Write an Editorial Letter or Critique Letter (w/sample)
Hey friends!
As a lot of you know, I work as an editor and part of the job is writing editorial letters or critique letters. This may not be included in all types of editing (such as copyediting), but it plays an important role with content or developmental or substantive edits or manuscript evaluations (depending on the definition of each of those, because you will find variations within the writing industry). If you don't know what any of those edits are, relax. The letter is essentially what it sounds like, a document full of feedback from the editor.
There are a lot of editors in the world and each one likely has his or her own approach to editing. Today I want to share mine.
I always do an editorial letter for a content edit (which is about what the story is) and I often do one for a line edit (which is how the story is told). So let's get started.
First, when reading through the manuscript, I keep another document open to take notes on anything that I suspect might need to be in the editorial letter. Depending on how deep of an edit and what kind of edit the author wants, I may also be putting in comments on the actual manuscript for specific parts of the story. I watch for repeating problems (and repeating strengths).
My advice: If you're an editor, make sure you are paying attention to the writer's strengths in addition to weaknesses.
Some people have the school of thought that the only helpful feedback is negative feedback. But I strongly, strongly believe in also giving positive feedback. Only giving negative feedback gives the writer a skewed perspective of their work.
With that said, there are a few occasions where I might give only negative feedback--such as a piece that has already been edited multiple times and is already at a professional level and just needs some tightening up.
For more on my take on positive feedback, you can see my post, "The Real Reason You Need to Give Positive Feedback."
Once I've finished reading through the manuscript and taken notes, I usually go back and look at the (email) conversation I had with the writer about what they wanted. For example, if one writer told me they were worried they had problems with info-dumps, I would double check to make sure I took notes on that. At this point, I may email the writer and ask any follow-up questions I have.
Now it's time for the letter.
Some editors believe in being brutal in their honesty.
I don't.
It's not that I'm sugar-coating, it's that I don't believe being "brutally honest" is the most accurate or helpful form of communication. True, refined communication comes from being honest and clear without becoming antagonistic. After all, as the editor, I'm on the writer's side. I'm helping them.
So I like to address the positives and negatives as clearly as possible.
Depending on how long and comprehensive the letter is, it can be rather overwhelming to the writer initially. This is because I'm speaking to an entire manuscript in one document. Some writers may want to read through it bits at a time.
The shortest critique letter I've done for a novel was 4.2k words. Most I've done are between 9k and 11k.
Every letter I write is written to that specific writer. I don't use generic paragraphs that I copy and paste into the document. I might have similar sentences or similar greeting passages that I've tweaked, but overall, I'm writing fresh.
Now, it's important to know that this doesn't mean that editors who copy and paste certain paragraphs in are bad. They might be explaining the exact same thing to multiple writers. The reason I don't need to do this, is because if I need to explain something generally, I usually have an article on my site I can send them to. This means I can use those for reference and then in the letter talk about how that article applies specifically to their story.
In the letter, I almost always make sure I address these elements: setting, character, plot, and theme. I usually add "treatment" as well (how the story is told on the page); even if it's a straight up content edit, I still like to address things generally, like chosen viewpoint, under that category.
I also usually include these other things: arcs, pacing, conflict, audience appeal, and emotional appeals.
For more of what I may include in each edit, you can simply look at my editing site.
In the letter, I typically like to separate the "strengths" from the "concerns"--mainly because this was how I was taught, and I think it's easier on the writer, because they know what to expect.
Worth noting is that the "concerns" almost always take up more space than the "strengths" because they naturally require more explaining.
Now, here is a short sample letter (remember how I said these can go up to 11k words or more? Yeah, I'm not going to post a full sample in here because of that). It's a conglomerate of actual paragraphs I've written that I tweaked or repurposed into a sample letter.
Sample Editorial Letter or Critique Letter
Betty,
Thanks for choosing me to do a content and line edit on your manuscript! Through all of my notes and comments, please remember that this is your story, not mine, so ultimately your choices should be yours, and the story should reflect your vision. I also try to watch for ways the author can take their writing to the next level in general. These are things that you may want to work on in this particular story, or they may be things you decide to work on in future projects. The feedback is rather comprehensive, which can sometimes be overwhelming to people. Remember, it’s impossible to fix everything at once. That's why we call them “drafts.”
Strengths:
Setting and Worldbuilding
This was great overall. One of the things I noticed in particular is that you did a really good job of balancing the feelings of wonder and wish-fulfillment (which are important in most fantasy stories), with the feelings of horror and darkness, which makes each one feel more powerful because of the contrast. Like probably most people, I’ve heard of amulets before, but this was hands down the best I’ve ever seen anyone do with the concept. During the trip to the enchanted forest, you really captured the wonder and awe of that landscape.
You brought a sense of history and culture to both our world and the fantasy world, and you did all this while keeping the pacing perfect.
I also really appreciated that you found ways in the plot to allow the protagonist to experience different “set pieces” and worldbuilding elements, like having him go to the satyrs' temple, so that as a reader, I could know and experience what that was like. . . .
Characters
Throughout the novel, I got a good sense of the characters, even the side characters. The details and the information you told about them were choice and specific. You took time to individualize them and really consider how they would view the world.
You also did a good job of considering the sorts of relationships these characters would have, and then conveyed that well.
[Usually I'll go through and talk specifically abut which characters I thought were strongest]
Plot
I really feel like the strongest part of the plot of this book, is the beginning. Everything in the beginning felt so on point, which I was impressed with because for most writers the beginning is usually the most difficult part to write. I liked how I was introduced to all the characters and I cared about them. I got a good sense of Joseph’s typical day-to-day life, the difficulties he was dealing with, which prepared me for the big change that came with the first plot point.
How the romance between Joseph and Olivia developed was just about perfect. Once I got further into the story, I had some problems, mainly with the middle, which I'll talk about more below, but I loved how Joseph was slowly turning into a werewolf but was forbidden from telling her. . . .
Dialogue
You have a gift (whether natural or obtained) for writing conversations. I felt like almost every conversation I read had what I call “dialogue circuitry”—where the characters’ lines are building off each other’s, instead of simply responding and reacting to each other. I marked some of these, but there were so many great instances that I stopped. There was some really clever dialogue.
Concerns:
Characters
Even though I enjoyed aspects of the characters and appreciated how you took time to individualize them, I had a problem with a few.
Joseph – While I thought some of the aspects of Joseph were cool and interesting, other parts were lacking. Even though he was technically the main character, he didn’t really seem to function as a main character, more of just a viewpoint character. It felt like Marcus was really the main character to me. So Joseph is going to need some work to take this book to the next level.
I also felt like he acted younger than his age throughout the novel. I know it would require some reworking, but I’m actually wondering if he should be aged down. . . .
Melanie – Melanie felt like a caricature to me rather than a character. Caricatures are actually okay if you are writing a sort of “unreality” story, where the story has its own boundaries and realms of what is acceptable reality (think Series of Unfortunate Events or Matilda). But the thing is, Melanie was too exaggerated in comparison to the rest of the cast, and it didn't fit the tone of the story. Maybe look at making her feel a bit more human—in fact, playing with that contrast might actually make her more interesting to work with.
Plot
Denouement - The denouement felt too quick. The battle felt like it suddenly ended, and then we were suddenly repairing things. As a reader, I felt like I needed a smoother transition. Even though I talked a lot about cutting elsewhere, the denouement is where I think you could add more words.
Usually the denouement takes time to validate changes that happened over the course of the story. The love interests get married. We see proof the world is better now that the villain has been vanquished. The hero gets to live in peace. That sort of thing.
I also felt like the epilogue didn’t contribute much to the story. . . .
Context and Subtext
Once Joseph was beginning his transformation, I was feeling more and more of a need for more context and that need continued out through the rest of the book. This is a fairly common problem and can stem from a few different things, such as trying to follow the “show, don’t tell” rule too religiously, trying to create tension, or trying to turn context into subtext.
Context is different than subtext. Context is the information the audience needs in order to follow and understand the story. For example, I didn’t know enough about Clans Werewolves to understand why it was a bad thing if Joseph turned into that kind. I marked spots that I didn’t have enough info or understanding. A lack of context leads to the story and its elements feeling vague. Vagueness is a problem because when the story is vague, the audience doesn’t feel tension. It might sound like it should be the opposite—by withholding information, we make the audience want to keep reading it to get it (which relates more to subtext)—but if the audience doesn’t have enough context, they can’t follow and understand the dynamics of the story well enough to feel any tension, because they don’t have a firm enough grasp on it to anticipate what’s going to happen.
Rather than rewriting and re-explaining everything I mean, I have some articles that will explain this all in more depth that would probably be worth studying to get what I’m saying:
Context vs. Subtext: http://www.septembercfawkes.com/2017/04/context-vs-subtext-context-should-not.html
Vague vs. Ambiguous: http://www.septembercfawkes.com/2016/01/vague-vs-ambigious-which-are-you-writing.html
How to Write What’s Not Written (Subtext): http://www.septembercfawkes.com/2015/03/how-to-write-whats-not-written-subtext.html
Info-dumps
This is a common problem. Info-dumps are paragraphs of information dumped into the story to help the audience understand what is going on. They can be about anything—characters, items, but most commonly in speculative fiction, they are about something magical or otherworldly. It’s better to only tell the audience what they absolutely need to know about the subject and to hand out the information a bit at a time so they aren’t getting a huge chunk of exposition. The information should be weaved into the story. The story shouldn’t come to a halt to deliver the information to the audience.
Here is an article that might be helpful: https://www.septembercfawkes.com/2018/04/how-to-dump-info-without-info-dumping.html
I hope you now have a lot of ideas of how to take this story and your writing to the next level. If I missed anything you would like me to address or if you have questions, please feel free to email me.
September
***
I have not always categorized my feedback with headings, but it's something I've started doing more often because it's easier for the writer to navigate. It's not unusual for me to use bullet points in feedback, especially when I have multiple "little" things.
But I love editing writers' novels!
Hope this post has been helpful to you in some way.
You can also learn more about my editing approaches at FawkesEditing.com
#writing tips#writing tip#writing tips and tricks#writeblr#writing community#writers on tumblr#writers of tumblr#writing advice#writing help#writing helps#editing#editor#critique letter#editorial letter
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