tobiasdrake
The Exposition Dragon
He/Him (sort of; It's complicated) American with ADHD.
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#wow i feel old#i was officially an adult when a lot of the stuff from the original poll came out#my first animes were dubbed-for-TV releases of Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon#though my cousin went to anime conventions and stuff#so i also got to see things like Ranma 1/2#And Akira#And Neon Genesis Evangelion#Through him
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The 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai is a master class in setup and payoff.
We all know how tournament arcs go. The final round is going to be the arc's hero versus the arc's villain. Everything before that point exists to provide character work and spectacle moments, but there's rarely any ambiguity about where the tournament is going.
Poorly done, the lead-in matches can end up feeling like filler. Like the story's just spinning its wheels. Decently done, they give characters a chance to stand in a spotlight they wouldn't normally receive by the rest of the story, and let them shine in individual moments even if they aren't going the distance.
But a well-written tournament uses those lead-in matches to lay groundwork, planting seeds that will eventually sprout into the finale.
The final match of the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai comes in hot. This tournament had previously been a sports movie arc about the rival schools of Kame-senryu or Turtle Style and Tsuru-senryu or Crane Style.
Ten thought he'd vanquished the star athlete of Kame-senryu, Yamcha, in the opening round. In fact, he rigged the ballots to ensure that he could face Yamcha right off the bat. But things took a turn when he found out that one of Yamcha's juniors, holy shit, killed his master's brother, a legendary assassin and a top-tier master of Tsuru-senryu.
It's at this point that the story stops being about the school rivalry. Instead, it becomes a mission of avenging Tsuru-senryu's lost honor by vanquishing Taopaipai's killer. Ten isn't playing by tournament rules anymore; He wants to kill Goku in the ring.
Only. He doesn't, really. Locked in the fight of his life with Goku, Ten falls in love with the competitive atmosphere itself. He loses interest in avenging Taopaipai and becomes more enthralled by the prospect of simply proving his worth in the tournament itself.
It's at this point that the fight stops being about either of those things it was before. It's no longer a contest between Kame-senryu and Tsuru-senryu. Neither is it about revenge.
It's just about these two martial artists standing on the world stage, ambitions blazing as they reach for the lofty title of Strongest Under the Heavens. The only thing that matters anymore is the pure sport of it.
And what a sport it is. This fight is an incredible summation of everything that led into it. Throughout the arc, we get to watch Goku and Ten take each others' measure. We see the special care and attention they're paying to each others' matches, and we watch them grow from their own.
In Goku's semifinal match with Krillin, we see him break out an incredible vanishing technique.
Special attention is drawn to Ten's ability to follow Goku's movements, as he explains to the reader exactly what Goku is doing.
Setup.
By introducing this move here, we're ready for its faster-paced return in the final round - and we're already primed for Ten to counter it.
Payoff.
But Ten wasn't the only one paying attention during the semifinals. When Ten fought the Muten-Roshi in his guise of Jackie Chun, Goku got to see Ten's signature move: The Taiyoken or Solar Flare.
Incidentally, he refers to this as a Shin Tsuru-senryu or "New Crane School" technique, implying this isn't part of the standard Tsuru-senryu playbook; He created it on his own.
As with Goku's semifinal, getting to see Ten's semifinal gives Goku a leg up on the competition, as this advance preview of Ten's signature move gives him a chance to glean both how it works and how to counter it. We get to see Goku and Krillin discuss the limitations of Ten's technique.
Setup.
This gives Goku the forewarning he needs to be ready for this technique when Ten breaks it out in their match.
Turning Ten's attempt to capitalize on Goku's blindness and vulnerability, into an opening for a counterattack - through a little bit of sneaky-handed filching.
Payoff.
Neither of these guys is winning this tournament with the same tricks that carried them through the semifinal, that's for damn sure. But it's not only their matches that play into this finale. Krillin's fight in the quarterfinals with Chiaotzu - the only real fight Chiaotzu's ever had in this entire series - serves to establish Chiaotzu's psychic abilities.
Setup.
Chiaotzu can telekinetically bind a person, leaving them helpless to attack. It doesn't win him the match, but it briefly allows Tsuru-sennin to rig the finals in Ten's favor.
Payoff.
This ability, set up in the quarterfinals, is what gives Ten the opportunity to realize he doesn't feel right winning like this, and to choose fair competition and sportsmanship instead.
It's easy to keep focus on how Goku and Ten are feeling about this move, because we've already been introduced to the ability itself. What is happening here doesn't need to be freshly explained, allowing the pace of the fight to be maintained.
Speaking of strange abilities we don't need explained, the preliminary rounds of the tournament, typically an easy wash, have one character introduced with surprising gravitas.
In the preliminaries, Goku faces King Chapa. One P, Viz. It's Chapa-O, named for the Italian dish chapati 'cause Toriyama likes his name puns.
Despite not happening on the world stage, this match is nonetheless treated as a serious tournament fight. Goku still wins the fight handily, but not before Chapa has a chance to show off his signature technique: The Hasshuken or 8-Armed Fist.
Hasshuken is a speed technique, built around moving your arms so quickly that it blurs visibility and creates the illusion that you have eight. Chapa hits Goku with this technique, but we see that Goku's fast enough to see through his moves and counter them anyway.
Setup.
In the finals, once he gets serious about competition, Tenshinhan unveils another esoteric ability: Shiyoken, the Four-Armed Fist.
No optical illusion this time. Tenshinhan's devised an ability to physically sprout two extra arms to enhance his fighting.
But four arms are for suckers. Hasshuken can give you eight.
Payoff.
We've already seen Goku face down and defeat Hasshuken and we know he's a quick learner. So it's no surprise when he whips out the technique on his own, much later in the tournament, to counter Ten's Shiyoken.
Nearly every move of this final match stands on the shoulders of the material that came before it - Right down to the final blow. By this point, it's been long established that Ten and Chiaotzu can fly.
It may seem odd these days when everyone who is anyone has mastered it, but the levitation technique Bukujutsu was originally a signature technique for Tsuru-senryu. Everyone else cribbed it off of Ten.
They stole his Bukujutsu/Levitation. They stole his Taiyoken/Solar Flare. Fucking thieves, the lot of Kame-senryu. Turtles be stealin', yo.
In his desperation to win the finals, this becomes Ten's final ace in the hole. By destroying the tournament stage itself so there's nowhere to stand that isn't out-of-bounds, Ten can remain suspended in levitation and force Goku into a ringout.
The best Goku can do is take a huge jump, but that will only carry him so far. He needs to know Ten down to the ground before the ticking clock of gravity ends this match. He only has one option to reach with.
But it's useless.
During Ten's quarterfinal fight with Yamcha, it's established that Ten has the ability to cancel and reflect the Kamehameha.
Setup
This was the first official fight of the tournament. It's a piece of context that has sat on the characters' shoulders for everything up to this point, and we even see Goku attempt a Kamehameha earlier in the final round before thinking better of it.
Payoff (Kinda)
He remembers that Ten can cancel his Kamehameha. It would be a waste of his energy to try for it. Instead, he saves his strength for the longer fight ahead.
This, in turn, is what makes it so suspenseful when Goku is forced to resort to it in this very last exchange. Having no other option, Goku is forced to fall back on a move that cannot work. The outcome of the tournament now depends on an attack proven to fail at the very start.
And then it hits.
Payoff (For Real). Deflect that, asshole.
Though Ten still wins the tournament by sheer dumb luck of Goku hitting the ground a second before he did, this is nonetheless a thrilling solution to a problem created by the opening match of the arc.
This is what the entire final round of the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai is: A series of payoffs fired off in rapid succession to plot points and abilities and ideas that had been sprinkled throughout the entire arc to that point. A fast-paced frenzy of a fight that rarely needs to stop to explain itself because everything was already layered out in advance.
This is top-tier tournament writing, and anyone seeking to write a tournament arc would do well to study what it has to teach.
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Genuinely curious what the original plan for Android 16 was.
It's widely known that the plot of the Android arc changed multiple times over the course of the series. 19 and 20 were originally intended to be the arc's true villains. In fact, Trunks calls them out by serial number when he's first giving the infodump about his future.
This isn't a Viz-ism, either. He says "19 and 20" specifically in the original Japanese.
Those two Androids, not 17 and 18, are the ones ravaging his future. However, as is commonly known, Toriyama's editor former editor and currently a trusted friend Kazuhiko Torishima was unimpressed by the Androids' design.
The funny thing is, this isn't the only glaring plot hole that the abrupt shift in plot created. It's easy to pin down 20's flight to his lab as the moment Toriyama switched gears, because he's forced to bring in Bulma to rerail it onto the new story - creating another massive plot hole in the process regarding what Bulma knows.
See. In addition to Trunks clearly identifying 19 and 20 as the Androids, this scene three years in the past had another moment that becomes an issue later on. It's when Bulma says this:
See, Trunks has explained that Dr. Gero is creating the Androids as we speak and will set them upon everyone in three years' time. Bulma suggests having Shenron reveal the location of Gero's lab, and then they can all run off and gank him.
She gets voted down because Goku, Vegeta, and Tenshinhan are all super interested in fighting these Androids.
Goku tries to spin some guff about a moral reservation but he adds that in as an afterthought. His kneejerk is that he wants to fight. It's Krillin who ultimately succeeds in talking Bulma down, via some 4-D chess maneuvers against Vegeta.
Krillin's planning on using the Androids as a common cause to trick Vegeta into becoming one of the gang.
Which. Y'know. Goes off without a hitch, honestly. Krillin is a tactical genius and all-a y'all owe him respect. He manipulated Vegeta straight into that redemption arc.
In any case, this is where Trunks's warning leaves us: In three years' time, Dr. Gero will unleash 19 and 20 who will kill us all. If we knew where he was, we could do something about it, but the will to actually do that isn't there.
So.
Three years later, during the fight with 20, he uses Bulma as a distraction to make his escape. Upon rescuing her, Bulma's able to positively ID 20 as the doctor himself.
More than that, she knows exactly where he lives because he's a famous celebrity whose personal information gets talked about in the scientific community.
She just never brought it up before because no one ever said Dr. Gero was involved in any of this.
This is an even bigger HOOOOOOLY SHIT than the clear identification of the Androids' serial numbers. What Bulma knows flipped between these chapters.
So we make our way to Gero's lab to meet the arc's Actual Villains For Realsies, 17 and 18.
As a sidenote, not to be outdone in jankiness by Goku dropping the Senzu into a pocket dimension earlier, Toei has Dr. Gero's broken-off right hand occasionally regenerate by magic in this scene.
This arc is rough for everyone.
In any case, this brings us to the awakening of 16.
At this point in time, the retcon has finished taking effect; 17 and 18 are now retroactively the Androids from Trunks's future, but 16 is something different. Another Android that Trunks has never heard of before.
Dr. Gero practically pisses himself with terror when the prospect of 16 being awakened comes up.
In the same breath that Toriyama rewrites 17 and 18 to be the True Actual Villains For Realsies of the arc, he also introduces the enigmatic 16. All we know of him is that Gero believed he was a malfunctioning, uncontrollable failure whose awakening would threaten the whole planet.
The Twins question 16 about the true threat he represents.
But all he has to offer in response is this... eerie smile, as if he knows something he isn't sharing.
Answering "Are you going to kill us all" with a smug grin is fucking ominous. Shortly after, we learn that whatever 16's malfunction is, it scared Gero so much that he never made another of the same kind of thing that 16 is again.
What went so horribly wrong that it spooked Gero into trying out human base models and? It's worth noting that while Gero did go back to the mechanical design for 19, he considered the subsequent failures of 17 and 18 following whatever happened with 16 to be sufficient reason to can the Infinite Energy design entirely.
Android 16 is the most formidable design Gero ever created to kill Goku with. And he refused to ever make another like him again.
Current Dragon Ball lore, per interviews with Toriyama, say that he didn't want 16 released because 16 has sentimental value to him. But that doesn't explain why he didn't make other Androids like 16, and these panels themselves are telling a very different story. They're hyping up the mystery of 16 to be the true ultimate threat of this arc - At least, once he finally gets a chance to meet his one true adversary.
However, this doesn't last. Torishima didn't like the Twins as villains either so Cell was created instead. It was later revealed that 16 was very strong and also has a bomb in his chest that would wipe out a small portion of the countryside.
But the nature of this terrifying and enigmatic threat to the planet sure to unfold if 16 awakens, something so terrible that Gero was afraid of ever making an Android like 16 again, would be lost to the cutting room floor.
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Genuinely curious what the original plan for Android 16 was.
It's widely known that the plot of the Android arc changed multiple times over the course of the series. 19 and 20 were originally intended to be the arc's true villains. In fact, Trunks calls them out by serial number when he's first giving the infodump about his future.
This isn't a Viz-ism, either. He says "19 and 20" specifically in the original Japanese.
Those two Androids, not 17 and 18, are the ones ravaging his future. However, as is commonly known, Toriyama's editor former editor and currently a trusted friend Kazuhiko Torishima was unimpressed by the Androids' design.
The funny thing is, this isn't the only glaring plot hole that the abrupt shift in plot created. It's easy to pin down 20's flight to his lab as the moment Toriyama switched gears, because he's forced to bring in Bulma to rerail it onto the new story - creating another massive plot hole in the process regarding what Bulma knows.
See. In addition to Trunks clearly identifying 19 and 20 as the Androids, this scene three years in the past had another moment that becomes an issue later on. It's when Bulma says this:
See, Trunks has explained that Dr. Gero is creating the Androids as we speak and will set them upon everyone in three years' time. Bulma suggests having Shenron reveal the location of Gero's lab, and then they can all run off and gank him.
She gets voted down because Goku, Vegeta, and Tenshinhan are all super interested in fighting these Androids.
Goku tries to spin some guff about a moral reservation but he adds that in as an afterthought. His kneejerk is that he wants to fight. It's Krillin who ultimately succeeds in talking Bulma down, via some 4-D chess maneuvers against Vegeta.
Krillin's planning on using the Androids as a common cause to trick Vegeta into becoming one of the gang.
Which. Y'know. Goes off without a hitch, honestly. Krillin is a tactical genius and all-a y'all owe him respect. He manipulated Vegeta straight into that redemption arc.
In any case, this is where Trunks's warning leaves us: In three years' time, Dr. Gero will unleash 19 and 20 who will kill us all. If we knew where he was, we could do something about it, but the will to actually do that isn't there.
So.
Three years later, during the fight with 20, he uses Bulma as a distraction to make his escape. Upon rescuing her, Bulma's able to positively ID 20 as the doctor himself.
More than that, she knows exactly where he lives because he's a famous celebrity whose personal information gets talked about in the scientific community.
She just never brought it up before because no one ever said Dr. Gero was involved in any of this.
This is an even bigger HOOOOOOLY SHIT than the clear identification of the Androids' serial numbers. What Bulma knows flipped between these chapters.
So we make our way to Gero's lab to meet the arc's Actual Villains For Realsies, 17 and 18.
As a sidenote, not to be outdone in jankiness by Goku dropping the Senzu into a pocket dimension earlier, Toei has Dr. Gero's broken-off right hand occasionally regenerate by magic in this scene.
This arc is rough for everyone.
In any case, this brings us to the awakening of 16.
At this point in time, the retcon has finished taking effect; 17 and 18 are now retroactively the Androids from Trunks's future, but 16 is something different. Another Android that Trunks has never heard of before.
Dr. Gero practically pisses himself with terror when the prospect of 16 being awakened comes up.
In the same breath that Toriyama rewrites 17 and 18 to be the True Actual Villains For Realsies of the arc, he also introduces the enigmatic 16. All we know of him is that Gero believed he was a malfunctioning, uncontrollable failure whose awakening would threaten the whole planet.
The Twins question 16 about the true threat he represents.
But all he has to offer in response is this... eerie smile, as if he knows something he isn't sharing.
Answering "Are you going to kill us all" with a smug grin is fucking ominous. Shortly after, we learn that whatever 16's malfunction is, it scared Gero so much that he never made another of the same kind of thing that 16 is again.
What went so horribly wrong that it spooked Gero into trying out human base models and? It's worth noting that while Gero did go back to the mechanical design for 19, he considered the subsequent failures of 17 and 18 following whatever happened with 16 to be sufficient reason to can the Infinite Energy design entirely.
Android 16 is the most formidable design Gero ever created to kill Goku with. And he refused to ever make another like him again.
Current Dragon Ball lore, per interviews with Toriyama, say that he didn't want 16 released because 16 has sentimental value to him. But that doesn't explain why he didn't make other Androids like 16, and these panels themselves are telling a very different story. They're hyping up the mystery of 16 to be the true ultimate threat of this arc - At least, once he finally gets a chance to meet his one true adversary.
However, this doesn't last. Torishima didn't like the Twins as villains either so Cell was created instead. It was later revealed that 16 was very strong and also has a bomb in his chest that would wipe out a small portion of the countryside.
But the nature of this terrifying and enigmatic threat to the planet sure to unfold if 16 awakens, something so terrible that Gero was afraid of ever making an Android like 16 again, would be lost to the cutting room floor.
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Obsessed with what it means to be a follower of Junko's ideology of despair. Like. We all know and understand what despair is as a feeling. But. What is despair as an ideological driving force? What does it mean to create a world of despair - like, on the macro scale?
What is the culture of Ultimate Despair as a global movement?
"What is despair as an ideology?" is an incredibly complicated question to answer. So much so that Junko 2.0 herself, Monaca Towa, got twisted up in confused knots trying to answer it and wound up ragequitting the whole thing.
Because at the end of the day, trying to pin a legitimate philosophy to Ultimate Despair may well be an effort in futility. It's an attempt to interpret a consistent and credible belief system out of the impulsive ramblings of a self-destructive neurodivergent teenager chasing the most extreme possible stims. Ultimate Despair as an ideology defies rationality by design.
What does Despair with a capital D mean? I dunno. What does it mean to you?
Culturally, I think Ultimate Despair would be an onion. It would have a lot in common with other kinds of cults; There'd be layers to it. Various depths to descend into when you're ready for the next step of radicalization.
On the surface, the outermost layer of the onion, you have the recruitment and enabling layer. This is where everyone begins their journey into despair. The layer that takes you in and tells you it's okay. It's okay to be yourself. You don't have to pretend. We're not going to judge you. You can find a home here.
This is where recruitment begins, as vulnerable people are given a support network and social structure with one hand, while being fed rhetoric with the other.
On the next layer down, you'd have nihilistic vice indulgence. Nothing matters, there are no rules, so go ahead and do whatever you want. You want to eat the entire pizza? Gamble your savings away? Stab your asshole neighbor in the throat with a fork? You go do that thing. I believe in you.
The second layer is freedom from social consequence. It's where you're taught to stop trying. Stop trying to be better. Stop hoping for a better world. Just give up and indulge your base desires. Despair can be a force for empowerment. Just live in your feelings and do. It doesn't matter what.
At the third layer, you begin to understand what the others are talking about when they say hope is not the enemy of despair, but the fuel for it. It sounded like gibberish before. But you've been listening to podcasts and talking to other members and it's starting to settle in.
You're starting to look forward to things. Foolish, pointless, unnecessary things just to set yourself up for failure. You're playing tricks on other members, inventing lies to get them excited so they can feel the sting of disappointment right alongside you.
Rather than a means to the end of enjoying things, enjoying things is becoming a means to the end of experiencing despair. You're starting to play a trick on your own mind, reframing the hurt and disappointment as enjoyable. You're falling in love with being as miserable as the rest of your community, so you can all commiserate together.
You're learning to wear your misery as a badge of honor.
The fourth layer would then be self-harm. Once people become convinced that despair is empowering then the next step down is the active pursuit of despair. Emotions you depend on can become very addictive. This stage is where trauma becomes a drug.
This stage uses trauma as a ritual of group investment, the way other cults use toxic machismo or financial investment or acts of devotion to their cause. Break your childhood mementos. Shoot your dog. Stab yourself in the gut. Kill your parents. Post pictures of it online and tell your tale so all your bros know how epic of a true despair sufferer you are.
On the upper layers of the onion, they'll assure you that these guys aren't a real thing. Critics of the movement are blowing things out of proportion. But you hit this point and there's nothing better than the rush you get when you find a new form of despair to put on yourself, and everyone else gets to watch you do it and go, "Whoa, I want to get traumatized THAT hard!"
But. Once you've burned all your stuff and killed everyone you love, where do you go from there?
The fifth and final layer is where you receive your mission. You've chased group participation to its farthest possible extreme and nothing means anything anymore. You've desensitized yourself to the world so much that you've become numb to the idea of anything truly mattering. All you have left in front of you is to die for the cause. That's the only purpose your life even has anymore.
You're ready to put on a Monokuma mask and go deface the Statue of Liberty or blow up New York or something. Whatever the leadership structure of Ultimate Despair, which has been largely silent up until this point and allowed the community itself to mold you, now needs from you. You came into this to escape from the burdens of society and now you're ready to become a soldier.
And if they don't give you a mission then you'll devise one on your own. Your final hope is that you'll be remembered as a hero of the cause. Like all other hopes, it is a lie.
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...I literally just reinvented the plot of Ultra Despair Girls, didn't I?
Further, less dark musing on Ultimate Despair's culture: I'd imagine them to be divided into warring cells.
It's a philosophy of supreme self-indulgence in the worst way possible so they aren't exactly going to build a large-scale society. But at the same time, humans are social creatures so it's unlikely that Ultimate Despair would turn entirely into a free-for-all.
Rather, you'd have small groups of Despair cultists rallied around a particular smaller-scale sub-ideology or group activity or, for those in the heart of the onion, mission. These cells would be just as likely to open up violence on the enemy as on each other.
And their differences would be magnified by schisms in the Teachings of Enoshima, as Junko was often more of a Personality Cult Leader than an Ideological one. As I mentioned before, trying to form a belief system out of Ultimate Despair is an effort in reading intent and meaning into a neurodivergent teenager's bored ramblings. She didn't exactly write a Book of Unethics that we can all study.
So you would have wild disagreements on what Junko really believed about this, that, or the other thing. Disagreements that, in a culture of self-indulgence, would easily be cause to start decapitating people.
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Further, less dark musing on Ultimate Despair's culture: I'd imagine them to be divided into warring cells.
It's a philosophy of supreme self-indulgence in the worst way possible so they aren't exactly going to build a large-scale society. But at the same time, humans are social creatures so it's unlikely that Ultimate Despair would turn entirely into a free-for-all.
Rather, you'd have small groups of Despair cultists rallied around a particular smaller-scale sub-ideology or group activity or, for those in the heart of the onion, mission. These cells would be just as likely to open up violence on the enemy as on each other.
And their differences would be magnified by schisms in the Teachings of Enoshima, as Junko was often more of a Personality Cult Leader than an Ideological one. As I mentioned before, trying to form a belief system out of Ultimate Despair is an effort in reading intent and meaning into a neurodivergent teenager's bored ramblings. She didn't exactly write a Book of Unethics that we can all study.
So you would have wild disagreements on what Junko really believed about this, that, or the other thing. Disagreements that, in a culture of self-indulgence, would easily be cause to start decapitating people.
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Obsessed with what it means to be a follower of Junko's ideology of despair. Like. We all know and understand what despair is as a feeling. But. What is despair as an ideological driving force? What does it mean to create a world of despair - like, on the macro scale?
What is the culture of Ultimate Despair as a global movement?
"What is despair as an ideology?" is an incredibly complicated question to answer. So much so that Junko 2.0 herself, Monaca Towa, got twisted up in confused knots trying to answer it and wound up ragequitting the whole thing.
Because at the end of the day, trying to pin a legitimate philosophy to Ultimate Despair may well be an effort in futility. It's an attempt to interpret a consistent and credible belief system out of the impulsive ramblings of a self-destructive neurodivergent teenager chasing the most extreme possible stims. Ultimate Despair as an ideology defies rationality by design.
What does Despair with a capital D mean? I dunno. What does it mean to you?
Culturally, I think Ultimate Despair would be an onion. It would have a lot in common with other kinds of cults; There'd be layers to it. Various depths to descend into when you're ready for the next step of radicalization.
On the surface, the outermost layer of the onion, you have the recruitment and enabling layer. This is where everyone begins their journey into despair. The layer that takes you in and tells you it's okay. It's okay to be yourself. You don't have to pretend. We're not going to judge you. You can find a home here.
This is where recruitment begins, as vulnerable people are given a support network and social structure with one hand, while being fed rhetoric with the other.
On the next layer down, you'd have nihilistic vice indulgence. Nothing matters, there are no rules, so go ahead and do whatever you want. You want to eat the entire pizza? Gamble your savings away? Stab your asshole neighbor in the throat with a fork? You go do that thing. I believe in you.
The second layer is freedom from social consequence. It's where you're taught to stop trying. Stop trying to be better. Stop hoping for a better world. Just give up and indulge your base desires. Despair can be a force for empowerment. Just live in your feelings and do. It doesn't matter what.
At the third layer, you begin to understand what the others are talking about when they say hope is not the enemy of despair, but the fuel for it. It sounded like gibberish before. But you've been listening to podcasts and talking to other members and it's starting to settle in.
You're starting to look forward to things. Foolish, pointless, unnecessary things just to set yourself up for failure. You're playing tricks on other members, inventing lies to get them excited so they can feel the sting of disappointment right alongside you.
Rather than a means to the end of enjoying things, enjoying things is becoming a means to the end of experiencing despair. You're starting to play a trick on your own mind, reframing the hurt and disappointment as enjoyable. You're falling in love with being as miserable as the rest of your community, so you can all commiserate together.
You're learning to wear your misery as a badge of honor.
The fourth layer would then be self-harm. Once people become convinced that despair is empowering then the next step down is the active pursuit of despair. Emotions you depend on can become very addictive. This stage is where trauma becomes a drug.
This stage uses trauma as a ritual of group investment, the way other cults use toxic machismo or financial investment or acts of devotion to their cause. Break your childhood mementos. Shoot your dog. Stab yourself in the gut. Kill your parents. Post pictures of it online and tell your tale so all your bros know how epic of a true despair sufferer you are.
On the upper layers of the onion, they'll assure you that these guys aren't a real thing. Critics of the movement are blowing things out of proportion. But you hit this point and there's nothing better than the rush you get when you find a new form of despair to put on yourself, and everyone else gets to watch you do it and go, "Whoa, I want to get traumatized THAT hard!"
But. Once you've burned all your stuff and killed everyone you love, where do you go from there?
The fifth and final layer is where you receive your mission. You've chased group participation to its farthest possible extreme and nothing means anything anymore. You've desensitized yourself to the world so much that you've become numb to the idea of anything truly mattering. All you have left in front of you is to die for the cause. That's the only purpose your life even has anymore.
You're ready to put on a Monokuma mask and go deface the Statue of Liberty or blow up New York or something. Whatever the leadership structure of Ultimate Despair, which has been largely silent up until this point and allowed the community itself to mold you, now needs from you. You came into this to escape from the burdens of society and now you're ready to become a soldier.
And if they don't give you a mission then you'll devise one on your own. Your final hope is that you'll be remembered as a hero of the cause. Like all other hopes, it is a lie.
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Inquisitor walks into a tavern like, "Jedi cannot help themselves. Their compassion leaves a trail," and then throws a lightsaber into a person. And it just. Goes in. Killing this one rando at the bar. No one stops it.
Inquisitor: ...this one is clev--
Rando: *stands up* THEY'RE GONNA KILL US ALL! GET THEM BEFORE THEY GET US!!!
And then the whole tavern starts throwing shit and lunging for the Inquisitor. Full-scale mob violence bar brawl. While our protagonist crawls under tables and skedaddles out the back door.
Gonna make a Star Wars TV show about the most wanted Jedi survivor during the Imperial era. A legend among the Imperials, this Jedi has evaded capture countless times. They're so powerful, they even seem to be able to mask their presence in the Force! Heavy rewards are being offered for any news leading to their capture, with Darth Vader himself taking personal interest in capturing them.
The twist is that the character in question is just some yahoo who got falsely identified as a Jedi due to a complete misunderstanding. And the entire epic cat-and-mouse game that the Imperials are playing with them has effectively been a series of Tom and Jerry-esque antics, as they keep getting away by the skin of their teeth due to dumb luck and random happenstance.
They eventually wind up brushing elbows with all the key Rebel cameos, with multiple people wanting to recruit them. Their humility is an inspiration to the Alliance. But no. For real. They're just some dipshit.
The fandom will argue for years about whether or not they really are Force-sensitive and the Will of the Force has been providing for them, or if this entire thing really is as much of a wacky and pointless goose chase as it seems.
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Intrigued by the challenge of facing such a formidable Master, Vader throws a lightsaber to the protag. It his the ground, and our hero scrambles to try and pick it up and turn it on. They flinch with the beam ignites.
Vader: What a pitiful display. It's as if they're mocking me.
A very short fight in which our protag swings wildly and frantically with no skill whatsoever ends when Vader parries a swing and Force Pushes them. The Push sends them smashing through multiple walls of the Imperial base. Vader roars "NO!" and begins peeling away walls to pursue, but they're gone by the time he gets there.
Vader: Most Jedi would have pushed back and defended themselves. But this one allowed themselves to take the full force, to give them an opening to escape. This Jedi is a tactical genius.
Cut to our protagonist running down the halls screaming and crying while being shot at by hapless troopers.
Gonna make a Star Wars TV show about the most wanted Jedi survivor during the Imperial era. A legend among the Imperials, this Jedi has evaded capture countless times. They're so powerful, they even seem to be able to mask their presence in the Force! Heavy rewards are being offered for any news leading to their capture, with Darth Vader himself taking personal interest in capturing them.
The twist is that the character in question is just some yahoo who got falsely identified as a Jedi due to a complete misunderstanding. And the entire epic cat-and-mouse game that the Imperials are playing with them has effectively been a series of Tom and Jerry-esque antics, as they keep getting away by the skin of their teeth due to dumb luck and random happenstance.
They eventually wind up brushing elbows with all the key Rebel cameos, with multiple people wanting to recruit them. Their humility is an inspiration to the Alliance. But no. For real. They're just some dipshit.
The fandom will argue for years about whether or not they really are Force-sensitive and the Will of the Force has been providing for them, or if this entire thing really is as much of a wacky and pointless goose chase as it seems.
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Gonna make a Star Wars TV show about the most wanted Jedi survivor during the Imperial era. A legend among the Imperials, this Jedi has evaded capture countless times. They're so powerful, they even seem to be able to mask their presence in the Force! Heavy rewards are being offered for any news leading to their capture, with Darth Vader himself taking personal interest in capturing them.
The twist is that the character in question is just some yahoo who got falsely identified as a Jedi due to a complete misunderstanding. And the entire epic cat-and-mouse game that the Imperials are playing with them has effectively been a series of Tom and Jerry-esque antics, as they keep getting away by the skin of their teeth due to dumb luck and random happenstance.
They eventually wind up brushing elbows with all the key Rebel cameos, with multiple people wanting to recruit them. Their humility is an inspiration to the Alliance. But no. For real. They're just some dipshit.
The fandom will argue for years about whether or not they really are Force-sensitive and the Will of the Force has been providing for them, or if this entire thing really is as much of a wacky and pointless goose chase as it seems.
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#memes#this made me really sad all of a sudden#getting in my time machine to go back to high school#and tell myself that it's okay#it's okay to want a bright pink gel pen#it's okay to take your time and do the pretty handwriting instead of the sloppy rushed handwriting#they're your notes and you can make them look however you want#it's okay
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Requesting financial support for a local artist.
T-Rex Talents is an incredible FX artist I have had the honor of witnessing the work of, who is currently in a rough spot. In his words:
My name is Logan. I'm a 29 year old disabled makeup fx artist. I've broken bones over 300 times and had 19 surgeries. Leaving me wheelchair bound. And needing many medical necessities. And Art as my only outlet from said struggles. Unfortunately I had to relocate to a new state due to family tragedy.
Relocating has caused unforeseen issues. Therefore I do not have insurance that covers all I need for my chronic illness.
Also it's caused me to leave behind all my art/makeup fx supplies. However the main concern is medical supplies. As we've exhausted every outlet for help. Including charities, case workers, and more. My mom is unable to work due to no insurance for home health aids to care for me while she does. My disease causes severe pain every day. Worrying about finances for medical supplies such as incontinence supplies, and other stuff is just another stress. And not having any outlet with none of my art supplies is making it worse.
My dream is to make people see that someone disabled can be successful in the film industry. But I feel like my current situation makes it nearly impossible. I can't afford art materials when I'm trying to afford medical supplies. And not even affording that. There's no help here.
$trextalents on CashApp
Linktree here. (Includes Instagram, Facebook, YouTube channel, and Amazon wishlist.)
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Nah, her right hand got burned, her left hand got shot through and then STABBED through, and then BOTH OF HER HANDS WERE BURNED TO SHREDS WITH A MONTH OF RECOVERY, Kyoko has nerve damage in her hands.
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thanks for the submission!
#danganronpa#danganronpa 2#hajime hinata#okay but that one was so hard tho#i understood the concept i was trying to express#but there were so many different possible combinations for what the sentence could be#and they're all equally valid contextually
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