Hear Me Calling You Home.

[rionaleonhart]

Adventures in London today to mark my mum's birthday! We went in a speedboat along the Thames; we accidentally stumbled across a Kazakh Nauryz spring festival (there was a yurt full of colourful carpets and cushions! And an address from the Kazakh ambassador to the UK, of which my favourite part was 'The image we associate with Easter is the egg. But what is egg?' It seemed interesting and I was sorry we had places to be and couldn't investigate the festival for longer); we FOUND WALLY.




It was good fun! I love London. There's always something going on.


I've been thinking about Danganronpa V3. I enjoyed it, but the trouble with it is that I never really fell in love with any of the characters. Naegi, Hinata, Komaeda, Koizumi, Kuzuryuu: these are characters I adore. (Looking at that list, it's no wonder that the second game is my favourite. Hinata might be my all-time favourite Dangan Ronpa character, and he's up against extremely strong competition.) V3 has a handful of characters I like, but none that engaged me in an 'I love them and I want to write loads of fanfiction and talk about them at great length' way.



V3 does still have its moments. I love the bit where Miu goes 'let's make the masochist go and get the sign' and Shuichi asks 'wait, who's the masochist?' and everyone else goes 'Shuichi, you're the masochist.' And it definitely had a few deaths that made me go 'NO, NOT THAT CHARACTER, WHY,' which is a good sign on the engaging-with-characters front; it's just unfortunate that my two strongest 'NO, NOT THAT CHARACTER, WHY' reactions were both in chapter one.

I've been wondering whether I should replay V3, actually. It might be interesting to re-experience the entire story in the light of the ending. And I'd like to pay more attention to Shuichi in the first couple of chapters; in the first chapter I was going 'pfft, you're obviously going to die first, I don't need to invest myself in you, let me go off and get invested in RANTARO AND KAEDE INSTEAD, SURELY THAT'LL BE SAFE,' and in the second chapter I was still smarting too much from the protagonist switch to appreciate Shuichi as a character. I did come to like Shuichi a lot by the end; maybe I could love him if I gave this game another try?

(That said, there's a part of me going 'you should replay V3 because maybe this time Kaede will survive chapter one.' No, Riona. That's not how this works.)

As ridiculous as the ending revelations are, a lot does make more sense in the light of them. I really didn't like the motive for the first murder: kill someone, or everyone dies. Why would Monokuma force the players into killing like that, when in previous instalments he's been more interested in the despair of knowing how far you'll go in situations that don't have to be life or death? As it turns out, though, the motive makes perfect sense, because this Monokuma isn't driven by any sort of ideology. He's creating entertainment, and that means he doesn't care what he has to do to kick off the murders; if nobody gets murdered, it's not entertaining.

(Admittedly there's some precedent for 'kill or be killed' motives in the Funhouse case of the second game, where everyone was cut off from food. I didn't like that either.)

The ending of V3 also explains why everyone has such a weird, over-the-top backstory, even by Dangan Ronpa standards. And I'll grudgingly say that the presence of the Monokubs also makes perfect sense in the light of that revelation. Of course they'd introduce a stupid 'Monokuma has a load of kids now!' gimmick in the hope of shaking up series fifty-three. I still hate the Monokubs, but I can understand why they're there.

Of course, the chapter six revelations also explain a lot about Kaede's murder plan. It's sort of brilliant that the game anticipates all the 'wait a second...' thoughts players would have after chapter one and goes, 'Yep, you were right all along.' It's a terrible plan! It would never have worked! She couldn't have known that music would play to mask the sound of the shot put, and it would probably have missed anyway! Well, yes. It's a terrible plan. Kaede's not good at murdering. The producers played the music to give her the best chance possible, and it still failed.

I suppose my response to the ending of Danganronpa V3 is a lot like my response to the ending of Ghost Trick. 'WHAT, THAT'S RIDICULOUS, THEY JUST PULLED THAT OUT OF NOWHERE, THERE'S NO WAY THIS WAS PLANNED FROM... wait, but it would explain this, and that, and that...'



Danganronpa V3's great advantage over the other games in the series is that it has the Hotel Kumasutra, the finest innovation in videogame history. 'The protagonist bangs everyone' is secretly what I want from every piece of media I consume. (Not that secretly, perhaps.) I haven't been able to write for a couple of months, and it's making me restless. Maybe I should just write Hotel Kumasutra AUs for everything.

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

You know, a lot of people say “My adventures in this!” to describe a day out, but when it’s “A speedboat, a yurt full of colorful carpets where an ambassador was asking “What is egg?”, and then we found Wally!”, you’ve earned the right to call them adventures!

A Dangan Ronpa game where there were random, unpredictable changes in who was murdered in what order and who could survive to the end would be fascinating!

I support you making Hotel Kumaustra AUs a thing!

[rionaleonhart]

A Dangan Ronpa game where there were random, unpredictable changes in who was murdered in what order and who could survive to the end would be fascinating!

It really would be! It might be even more interesting if the changes weren't random: if you're trying to prevent murders from occurring, but your actions might cause other murders to occur, in which case you have to solve them to work out what went wrong, then go back and try again.

So I suppose what I'm saying is that I want to be able to play that Dangan Ronpa timeloop fic I once wrote.

[wolfy_writing]

Yeah, I think the timeloop option would be amazing! And like people have their favorite characters, but if you get attached to several, it becomes the horrible trade-off of “Do you save them this time around, knowing who will die?”

[squeemu]

write it for FFXV, it would be horrible, Noct is so bewildered and isn't sure he wants to know these things

[rionaleonhart]

Ignis's deepest fantasy turns out to be... advising and guiding and gently chiding Noctis, exactly as usual. It freaks Noct right out.

[wolfy_writing]

Advising and guiding and gently chiding Noctis...in bed?

[rionaleonhart]

Nope! Regular 'you did sew that button on, didn't you, Highness?' stuff. Noctis finds this much more unsettling.

[wolfy_writing]

That is both heartwarming and incredibly unsettling! I mean it's nice that apparently the thing he longs for and fantasizes is basically the same as his actual life, but...yeah, I can see why that would be weird for Noctis.

[squeemu]

Gladio keeps finding things in the hotel room, including tucked into and under the mattress. Curatives. Remedies. Softs. He gets really excited about it and wants Noct to put them in the armiger, immediately. Worse, he's not wearing a shirt. Not even his jacket.

Why is this happening to him? Noct is disturbed.

[apiphile]

... why do I never run into the Kazakh festival, that sounded fun!

[rionaleonhart]

I'm sorry you missed it! May you run into many surprise Kazakh festivals in the future.

[batman]

I had much the same problem with V3 - it was fun and entertaining, and I played the last case until 3am the day I was meant to do a court case, but the characters themselves never really captured my attention the same way as the SDR2 kids did. The narrative itself had an internal logic, but it just wasn't as fun to me. I'm hoping that the next game goes back to form, as this was an interesting experiment but ... I just didn't like it.

[rionaleonhart]

Yeah, I can understand why the characters don't feel entirely real in V3, but that does make it difficult to connect with them.

Ooh, is there going to be a next game? The ending of V3 made me think the series was probably over, but I wouldn't say no to more!

[batman]

Exactly! I could connect with the SDR2 kids because while they are larger than life they have very human characteristics as well, and Hinata especially so. While it was nice to see a friendship spring into place around Maki, Shuichi and Kaito that I didn't engineer, the rest just seemed ... artificial. Which, of course, it was! But the fakeness makes it hard for me to relate to them as characters.

I haven't heard that there is going to be more, it's more that I'd be very surprised if Spike Chunsoft didn't release a new game, given how big the franchise has been for them.

[silverhare]

But what is egg?

[rionaleonhart]

Egg is renewal, it turns out!

Idea for an SDR2 fanfic

[(Anonymous)]

Set in AU where the Fuyuhiko and Hiyoko's roles in the plot are switched (Hiyoko survives, Fuyuhiko dies at Mikan's hands);chapter 3 post-trial. Mikan tells off Hiyoko in the worst way possible. With everything else,these two lines are spoken:""You never knew true love-Mahiru was only nice to you out of pity...and I am pitying you,too." and "It just occurred to me...Kuzuruyu would have beat me if not for his seppuku wound, which he got only because of you... so you are killer, Saionji, too."

Re: Idea for an SDR2 fanfic

[rionaleonhart]

Interesting concept! I don't know if I'd be able to write it myself, unfortunately, because I'm not really confident with writing Saionji, but I hope you're able to find someone to write it (or you could try writing it yourself; I don't know whether you're a writer, but it might be worth a shot!). Thank you for the suggestion, though. It's nice to meet you, whoever you are!

[lucifertm]

"You should replay V3 because maybe this time Kaede will survive chapter one." I know with absolute certainty that this will be me as well, even though I haven't replayed v3 yet

I love that you love Hinata so much.

To be honest I feel like v3 character writing is different from sdr2 character writing. Few v3 characters have as solid a foundation/were as well treated as the sdr2 characters you've mentioned, so it's no wonder (besides how personal taste influences preference of course). (... Okay, I think Koizumi really deserved better though... so maybe with the exception of her.)

[rionaleonhart]

I am unhappy to report that the victim of chapter one is the same on my current V3 replay, and it's looking increasingly likely that the murderer is as well.

Hinata is so good! He feels so real to me: his insecurities, his sarcasm, the way he relates to the other characters. I love Naegi, but his optimism meant that, in a way, he never seemed to grasp how terrible the situation was; the potential of murder wasn't a real thing to him, because he was always going 'nobody's going to kill anyone, right?' right up until a body showed up. So it caught my attention very early on that Hinata's plagued by dread in a way Naegi isn't; he really grasps the weight of the situation, and as soon as he learns the rules of the game he's asking himself whether he can trust the others not to kill, and whether he can trust himself.

A lot of V3's characters felt a bit two-note to me. It makes perfect sense when you realise they're not actually supposed to be real people, but it does make them harder to love.

[lucifertm]

Haha, I'm so sorry to hear that...

I think it depends on how you interpret Naegi's character? I would say that sometimes he is plagued by paranoia too (the famous scene where you can have him examine every single of the chickens in the coop... shaking, "oh, yeah, it's definitely... a chicken too... a real chicken..." iconic) and I think I saw someone say that they had this brand of self-destructive mania covered up by optimism that was harder to pick up on than with characters who are outright reckless because of their fear/negativity etc, which I find interesting. I can't say I've given his character a lot of thoughts myself though, because same, I wasn't marked by him nearly as much as I was by Hinata.

Mmmh, in a way that's a valid explanation, but also you can basically excuse having two-dimensional characters with that reasoning and I don't feel like the dr writers were actually going for that... Or at least, they shouldn't have been? I don't think a single person out there would argue that Kiyo's character didn't feel lacking compared to his initial potential for example, whether you like or dislike him.