#a significant impact on the mentality of the group as a whole | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

imagitory · 4 months

Note

Do you think Wish would have been better if they kept the concept of romance between Asha and the star boy, and the kind and queen being a villainous couple?

TL;DR...maybe.

I admit, I do really like human!Star and Magnifico/Amaya being a villainous couple as concepts -- but I don't think adding those ideas alone would've fixed Wish's shortcomings. Because I strongly believe the main reason so much of the Wish fandom has latched onto the idea of a romance for Asha in particular comes down to people feeling more for their mental AU concepts of Asha and Star than for Asha and the rest of her canon cast in the real finished product. There are no relationships in Wish -- ones featuring Asha or otherwise -- that I feel really prompt much investment or emotion in the audience.

Asha's mom and grandpa really don't have much time devoted to them, especially early on when we could establish some real history and pathos in their relationships with Asha. (Positive examples of this would be Ember and her dad in Elemental, Tiana and James and Eudora in The Princess and the Frog, or Mama Coco and Miguel in Coco.) We never even learn Asha's mom's dream even though it's picked up multiple times and the narrative makes such a big deal about Magnifico crushing it. The few lines discussing Asha's deceased father could've been cut from the story altogether and we would've lost nothing. Asha's friend group gets so little focus as individuals that it's hard to even remember most of their names. They were clearly envisioned as just "the Seven Dwarves but as teens," and honestly, them being vaguely like the Dwarfs is the only real impact they leave on a lot of people by the end. Or did a bunch of kids that went to go see the movie beg their parents for dolls of Simon and Bazeema after the movie was over? Asha and Star's dynamic can't be that interesting because Star doesn't spark any real character growth or change in Asha, nor does Asha really bond emotionally with Star. Star honestly just floats around looking cute for most of the movie, rather than doing that much of consequence. Valentino doesn't provide any significant emotional support for Asha, the way that even other cute Disney "pets" like Pascal or Pua do for isolated characters like Rapunzel and Moana. He also doesn't advance her journey in any meaningful way like Sebastian or Jacques and Gus do for Ariel and Cinderella, respectively. Asha and Magnifico's hero-villain relationship has no teeth because they have no real history prior to the events of the story (unlike Ursula using Ariel as a way to get back at her father Triton or Mother Gothel raising Rapunzel in isolation in an attempt to use her hair's magic to keep her young) and they don't serve as any kind of narrative foil to each other (unlike Jafar, who like Aladdin also uses magic and deception to try to advance his own goals, or Scar, who like Simba at the beginning of the movie "just can't wait to be king" and is focused way more on the perks of kingship rather than the responsibilities). Even Amaya and Asha can't have much of a relationship because there's no time set aside for it, and even if Amaya put in a good word for Asha with Magnifico, she didn't speak out on Asha's behalf after Magnifico vindictively cast her aside and really only decided to fight alongside Asha after Magnifico "went too far" by threatening Amaya herself (as opposed to, say, anyone else).

When my mum and I went to go see Wish, we came out of the theater feeling oddly blase about the whole story. My mum even -- upon me asking her about her thoughts on this topic before I sat down to write this -- admitted that although she "wanted to see evil defeated," and all that, she honestly just hadn't cared about any of the characters that much. She wanted Magnifico to lose because it was justice for Magnifico to lose -- not because she was actively rooting for Asha, her friends, or Rosas overall. She wanted good to triumph and evil to fail, but none of the characters and their relationships had made her that invested in seeing how that came about. And considering that every single character in every story ever written is largely shaped by the relationships they have with other characters, that means that Wish's primary failing is not a lack of romance, either for its main lead or its villains --

It's a lack of love.

Any kind of sincere, selfless, development-inducing, chemistry-fueled love. Not necessarily romantic love -- Disney's Revival work has actually shown just how diverse love can be through films like Zootopia, Encanto, and Frozen -- but real love between the characters, built on the back of history and camaraderie and meaningful screen time. Love that adds layers to their personality, fuels their choices and actions, and ultimately helps them bloom into better, more complete people. Instead I would argue that the only "love" in Wish is with ideas from past Disney projects -- that's why there are more Easter eggs and overt meta references to other projects in this movie than there are scenes that actively stir your emotions. You know -- the way Mulan does when she decides to steal her father's armor, or Marlin does when he gingerly picks up Nemo's cracked egg in his flippers and cradles it, or Cinderella's stepsisters do when they rip apart the dress the mice made for Cinderella, or Pinocchio does when he watches in horror as Lampwick turns into a donkey, or Tarzan does when he comforts Kala after he comes out dressed in his biological father's old clothes and she starts to cry.

The reason a lot of fans love these two ideas -- villain!Magnifico/Amaya and human!Star/Asha -- so much is because these two relationships, even just in concept art, prompted more emotion out of them than any relationship in the entire finished film.

Perhaps if that same level of emotion was brought out in these relationships in a real movie, that would've helped, but only if the rest of the film had also been trimmed down and edited so as to help tell a story with those two elements. Slim down the overstuffed cast. Have Asha's family actually have a point, or cut them. Give Asha and Magnifico some sort of real history and/or compare-contrast dynamic. Develop Star as a character. Give both Star and Asha character arcs. Make the music more essential to telling the story.

Without a lot of additional changes on top of those two concepts being used, I think the ideas of a hero and villain couple would've only just made the list of ideas that were only half-baked in the final product longer. After all, if Star was Asha's love interest, you'd still really have to have good writing and a lot of chemistry between the two characters in order to sell your audience on a love story between them. Not saying it can't be done -- Tangled and Elemental both did it quite well -- but just throwing the two characters together as is (namely, rather underdeveloped) and making them romantic partners by itself isn't enough. Honestly, I think a platonic or even familial-esque relationship between Star and Asha could've been just as powerful, if that love between them really came through. Just look at the bonds between characters like Judy and Nick from Zootopia or Miguel and Hector in Coco. Even keeping Star as less explicitly human could've been fine, if the relationship between them and Asha was strong enough. Stitch and Lilo's relationship is rock-solid in Lilo and Stitch, and Stitch isn't even remotely human. Even Soul did something kind of interesting with Joe Gardner and his relationship with 22 by giving them something of a mentor-student bond. Maybe a quasi-"young parent/child" relationship between Asha and Star could've even been interesting, if it was written well!

I do think both ideas had great potential in giving Wish more of an identity that could help set it apart from its predecessors -- I mean, we've never had a human character have a romance with a supernatural being or a villainous couple in a Disney animated film before -- but including them wouldn't have fixed Wish by itself.

#disney #wish #disney wish #wish (2023)#opinion #analysis #ask me #writing #oh boy here i go

40 notes · View notes

inquebrar · 2 months

Text

QSMP was one of the projects that had one of the biggest personal impacts on me. since i was younger, i have always been fascinated by getting to know different cultures and learning new languages has always been something that captivated me. although for years i have "been part" of many fandoms and followed different projects, series, groups and things like that for years sometimes, but i just had my interests without having no one to talk with and share it. so this was the first time that i really participated actively and was so engaged in the "fandoms" i'm part of, to talk about it, share my theories and analyzes and stuff like that. so at the beginning (and tbh i still feel a little) i was always very nervous to talk about it or talk with other people in general (especially in a language that is not my mother tongue) because it was something so out of my comfort zone, but through qsmp i learned more about cultures and languages that before i didn't even thought about learning, i felt the desire to continue learning languages that i had left aside, i felt more proud of my nationality, i met very kind people from different countries, it brought me a lot of joy seeing many people starting to learn my language too and see so many people who like the same things as me who share opinions and interests and even people who speak my language who are also very engaging it's so cool to see and the whole feeling of unity, comfort and cultural mix between different people made me extremely passionate about this project and the things it provided.

but unfortunately, recently it has been very difficult to deal with the excess of negativity and heavy topics and serious matters that came to the surface and started to accumulate with disappointments and overwhelming things that i had been feeling for a while. having hyperfixation on qsmp stopped being something that motivated me and brought me happiness, it started to affect my mental health in a bad and unhealthy way, which already hasn't been so good in the last few days. so i thought i'd just vent a little so that maybe someone who is in a similar situation and having similar feelings to mine will feel less alone or a little more understood.

i heard Quackity's recent statement and i was relieved to see that he handled the situation responsibly and addressed the matters without taking away the importance also genuinely apologizing, it was a difficult and sad situation to witness in general but with the server closed on a temporary break, i really hope that he now stays informed and aware of how his team is working and how things are happening behind the scenes. i hope that this brings more organization, communication, correct and respectful treatment to all those who work to maintain the project with care and commitment, and i hope things get an extremely significant change and that everything improves from now on. i still have a lot of love for this project and i want to believe things will be more positive again, but in the meantime i hope that everyone who was affected by everything that has been happening takes care of themselves and always remember that you are important, your feelings are valid and you're not alone. speak up when you feel the need, when you feel disrespected, when you need help. also don't forget to be kind (to yourself too) and i'm waiting for better days.

#qsmp #after actually participating in a fandom for the first time i felt like i needed to vent about how i was feeling #i needed to get these things out of my chest and if anyone identifies with something or isn't feeling well right now you're not alone ok?🫂#i hope everything gets better soon let's take care of ourselves and if necessary step back a little and rest #mental health comes first! hoping for better days ❤️‍🩹#qsmp fandom

22 notes · View notes

princesuna · 2 years

Text

you and suna have been dating for a little over a year and have no plans to ever reveal your relationship to the public. you are both popular twitch streamers, so thousands of eyes are watching the two of you, literally. “are you dating anyone?” is a common question you both get on social media. this question is always deflected or ignored. it’s been like that even before you started dating suna. you saw how social media destroyed your other friends’ relationships. people would either assume things or pray on their downfall out of jealousy. one of the worst was to be completely invalidated as a content creator and be labeled as someone’s girlfriend/boyfriend. you decided that the public did not need to know about this part of your life in order to protect your mental health.

you told suna early on into your relationship that you would prefer if it was kept private. while he was a bit sad that he can’t properly show everyone what an amazing significant other he has, he respects your decision and understands your reasoning. if it meant protecting you, then it was worth it. however, it sucked having to sneak around and never go out to different places for fear of someone catching you. he wanted to hug and kiss you whenever and wherever he wanted. now, he is only limited to doing intimate gestures in secluded areas or in your shared apartment.

eventually, enough was enough. the paranoia got too much to bear. this arrangement was having a negative effect on your relationship with him, the one thing you wanted to avoid. there has to be another way you two can go out together without rumors spreading, right? you and suna sat down and crafted an elaborate plan in order to be able to be seen together in public. after thorough research and several conversations with your streaming mutuals, you can bring this scheme to life and eventually spend as much time as you want with your boyfriend.

phase one: the third-wheel. you go out to dinner with suna and bring in kozume kenma (AKA kodzuken) to make a group of three because who would third-wheel a couple for dinner? it has to just be friends out together! you would post this on your instagram story and everyone would lose their minds. three big twitch streamers interacting with each other?! when worlds collide!

phase two: collabs. suna asked kiyoko shimizu and miya osamu to help you with this scheme as well. you would all do collabs with each other and establish this image of a group of friends. sometimes you play genshin impact with kenma and suna plays valorant with shimizu. other times you would play fall guys with the whole group. then, you sneak in a collab with suna. the public doesn’t suspect a thing.

phase three: group outings. you, suna, kenma, shimizu, and osamu would plan to go out together to various places and take pictures to post on social media. you attend conventions with them and go sight seeing together. your audience goes wild at the thought of you being with so many of their favorite streamers and wish you the best. you decide to post some group photos and include some photos with only suna or only kenma. suna does the same with you, shimizu, and osamu. you keep the number of people in each photo random to keep suspicion at minimum.

final phase: solidifying friendships. you, suna, and the rest of the group opened up instagram questions. the question you all answered was “who are your best friends?”. your list, in order, was yachi (your irl bestie), kenma, and suna. suna’s list, in order, was osamu, shimizu, and you. you both kept each other at third place to mess with people. if you are that low on each other’s list, then you must only be friends. at this point people started shipping you and kenma, while others starting shipping suna and shimizu. some people liked the idea of you and suna together, but it wasn’t as common.

your plan is working, so you can start to get away with spending more time out with suna. you would go out for lunch, visit the beach, and attend big events together without too many people suspecting anything. you found some comments that were like “do you think they’re dating?” but then you would see some replies to them denying it saying “they already stated multiple times that they’re only friends. if you hang out with your friends often, does that mean you’re dating them?” and it puts a big grin on your face. mission accomplished.

you both haven’t been very sloppy. you made sure to always mix in some one-on-one time with other friends in the group to keep rumors at bay. after all, if most your photos consists of alone time with suna, that would raise some eyebrows. while this set up had an ulterior motive, you grew close to the group and gained more meaningful friendships and connections. it was a win-win situation for everyone involved.

you still can’t freely show public displays of affection, but at least you can finally go out to different places with your boyfriend.

_______

suna is close to ending stream when he happens to catch a message in chat,

chuupetlover10: are you dating y/n?

papermill7: ooo i’d like to know that too!

“y/n? they’re just a really close friend of mine. please don’t spread rumors. anything having to do with my relationships is private. thank you.” he firmly responds.

the people in chat apologize and the other people in his community are defending him saying to respect his privacy and friends. he feels relieved to have such a supportive community.

“thank you all so much for your support. i have to head off now, but i will be streaming again next friday! see you all then.” he waves to the camera and ends the stream. he double checks to make sure the stream is actually off and shuts down his PC.

suna walks out into the kitchen to see you cooking instant ramen. he sneaks up behind you to wrap his arms around your waist, making you jump. you relax once you realize it’s him and he nuzzles his face into your neck.

“hey rin, is stream over? how was it” you ask while petting his soft hair.

he hums and turns you around to stare at your beautiful face. he can’t believe how lucky he got. if only he could show the world...actually, maybe it’s a good thing your relationship is private. he gets to have your beauty all to himself.

“it was good, but some annoying people asked if we were dating again,” he pouted.

“eh, that’s chat being chat, i guess,” you sighed, “do you think they suspect anything?” you asked.

“no one suspects a thing,” he replies leaning his head down to give you a kiss.

833 notes · View notes

religion-is-a-mental-illness · 20 days

Text

Dr. Phil: States across the country have passed laws banning "gender affirming care" on minors. Our next guest is a queer woman who is married to a trans man. When Jamie Reed worked as a caseworker at the transgender centre at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, she thought she was saving trans kids' lives. But she claims what she witnessed there was so morally and medically appalling that she had no choice but to expose what was really going on.

Jamie Reed: I was working in a paediatric gender for 4 1/2 years, primarily responsible for patient intakes. The center followed this message that transition would solve everything. That it would solve a child’s mental health problems. There were very few written protocols or guidelines. One of the providers even said we were "flying the plane as we built it." Doctors are acting like they're God when it comes to medically transitioning children.

Children could identify themselves as transgender, see a therapist for one visit, see our endocrinologist for one visit, and end up with hormones that would impact and change their bodies for their lifetime. These were identities that were still shifting and changing, but the treatments were irreversible and permanent. I saw a young person who was begging to have their breasts put back on after having surgery.

We were encouraged not to make a big deal out of it and definitely not to tell other families. I couldn't continue to be silent on it. The medical harms and trauma that I saw with these teens just took over my life. I was told I could no longer raise concerns or even use the phrase, "I have concerns about a patient." I have no trust in this industry medically transitioning minors anymore.

Dr. Phil: Jamie, thank you for being here.

Jamie: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Phil: You describe yourself a queer woman married to a transgender man and you're a member of the LGBTQ community and you went there to do something good, something positive at this clinic in St Louis. What changed your mind?

Jamie: A number of things. We started to see patients who were experiencing very significant medical harms. Being rushed to the emergency room with lacerations requiring stitches. We had patients contact us who were begging to have body parts put back on within months of having surgeries. And the thing that kept happening is every time I would raise concerns and ask about the protocols and ask about the guidelines, this is just how the industry works. If a child says they're trans, there’s no questioning it, we just say, "yep, you're trans, what would you like?"

Dr. Phil: You’re telling me that a 12- or 13-year-old who can’t decide which pyjamas to wear can come in and say, "I’ve decided that I want to transition," and with no more than a couple of hours - or two visits, not even a couple of hours, two visits - they say, okay, start taking this, start doing this. Which alters their biochemistry in a way that you can’t come back from.

Jamie: Correct.

Dr. Phil: And you say you saw dramatic increases in teenage girls that had no previous history of gender distress and they suddenly declared themselves transgender and demanded immediate testosterone [and] blockers.

Jamie: When I started - so I was there for 4 1/2 years, and when I started, I maybe would have 5 to 10 new incoming patients a month. By the time I left it was close to 50 every single month. My background is in clinical research and so I started looking at the data, I wanted to know what the numbers told me. And towards the end of my tenure, 73% of the new patients coming to us were girls who were in their teen years, so in that really vulnerable age of like 13 to 16 where they are just exposed to so many social pressures and they’re so empathetic to what’s going on around them too, that they really pick up on what’s going on in their peer group. We had clusters where it would be a handful of one whole high school classroom would come in all trans identified.

Dr. Phil: Historically, this typically would be males and you would have a female how often?

Jamie: Oh, very rare. And also, the ages were different. So, it would usually be younger boys who seemed very feminine or had feminine traits to their family and their families would seek care trying to understand what’s going on for their young male child. This was never something that would start in adolescence.

And these girls were also learning on TikTok, Instagram, they would come in and they would almost have the exact same storyline too. Like they learned what to say from a video to explain, "oh no really, I’ve felt this way from early childhood." But a lot of their parents couldn’t remember anything like that.

And part of what’s going on right now is that if you question this at all, you are immediately called transphobic, you’re immediately called homophobic, you’re immediately considered a bigot. And it’s just not scientific reality.

Dr. Phil: Jamie Reed says that her goal was to support trans youth. Jamie says patients had no idea what they were going to be as adults, yet all it took for them to permanently transform themselves was one or two short conversations with a therapist. When you say short, what would you call short?

Jamie: One visit. I saw letters being written approving children for puberty blockers or cross sex hormones after a single visit with a therapist.

Dr. Phil: And how long would that visit be?

Jamie: 30, 40 minutes.

Dr. Phil: And you said that the clinic would actually provide them a letter that checked all the boxes for them to qualify for the treatment.

Jamie: It wasn’t the clinic, it was me. It was my job. I sent out the fill-in-the-blank letter. I sent it. It’s what we did. We sent it directly to the community therapist and said just fill this out, plug-in where you need to, and we’re good to go.

Dr. Phil: What kind of things would it say?

Jamie: At the end of all of the letters would say, "I am approving this patient for puberty blockers or cross sex hormones." "They meet criteria."

Dr. Phil: There were some emails that you saw that were very troubling to you and I’d like to look at these.

Email to Jamie from Parent Revoking Consent June 9, 2022

"Please be advised that I’m revoking my consent for this course of medical treatment. Grades have dropped, there’s been an in-patient behavioural health visit and now he’s on 5 different medications. Lexapro, Trazadone, Buspar, etc. Blank is a shell of his former self riddled with anxiety. Who knows if it’s because of the hormone blockers or the other medications. I revoke my consent. I want the hormone blocker removed."

Jamie: The mom, who is a legal guardian, sent us that email and we acted like we knew better than a parent. And we refused to remove the blocker.

#Dr. Phil #Jamie Reed #medical malpractice #medical scandal #medical corruption #social contagion #rapid onset gender dysphoria #ROGD #cross sex hormones #wrong sex hormones #puberty blockers #gender affirming care #gender affirming healthcare #gender affirmation #puberty #adolescence

16 notes · View notes

woodchipp · 2 months

Text

Ngl, a big reason I'm obsessed with OMORI so much (and why it's as infuriating as it is to me) is because it had a lot of potential to be, at the very least, a decently compelling story and seeing said potential be so spectacularly wasted is just. horrible

I know that Mari and Hero are the group's "mom" and the "dad" only because the main cast needed to be pigeonholed into Tumblr found family roles, but the implication that Sunny views them as more of a mom and dad than his real parents - his biological mother and father only appear in portraits scattered throughout remote corners of his dream world - is pretty interesting! The game could've made a point that the financial well-being of Sunny and Mari's family came at the price of the parents failing to properly connect with their children; sure, their jobs are well-paying, but they're married to them, so to speak.

Mari could've felt compelled to care for Sunny as if she was his mom (with Hero trying his best to help her out whenever he can because he notices how exhausted she is) since their parents weren't around much in general. Alternatively, when their parents did have the time to get involved in their children's lives, they only pushed Sunny and Mari to perform well academically without paying attention to how it impacted their children mentally.

Maybe that could've been the whole reason Mari is a perfectionist, the emotional distance of her parents convincing her that she'll never measure up to what they expect of her and making her push herself to achieve an impossible ideal. Maybe that would've allowed Sunny to be characterized as a people-pleaser, always putting others' needs above himself because seeing Mari's hard work receiving praise from their parents gradually convinced him that being useful to others is the same thing as being genuinely loved.

What if Mari's knee injury forcing her to quit softball was indirectly caused by her own overworking? What if it was a significant blow to her already shaky self-esteem and she took up piano practice to compensate? What if her drowning herself in work made her more and more distant from Sunny? What if that made Sunny obsessively try his best to make his friends happy to the point of suppressing his own needs because he didn't consider himself important ("my parents clearly like Mari more and she's the reason why my friends are my friends in the first place, so why would I matter?") and because he was secretly afraid that Mari distanced himself from him since he wasn't good enough for her?

That way, their big argument would have probably been the result of their issues boiling over; Mari's perfectionism becomes unreasonable due to being exacerbated by her fear of the upcoming recital (with Sunny feeling that she wants the precision of a machine from him) and Sunny's long-suppressed needs finally make themselves known via him impulsively destroying the violin and starting the argument himself. Maybe Sunny could've put his hands on Mari in his rage (without shoving her down the stairs lmao) or viceversa.

And, well. Maybe that argument could've been the straw that broke the camel's back for Mari, the final push she needed to hang herself.

If Sunny was the one to put his hands on Mari, he could've blamed himself for making her feel unloved and erroneously assumed that she hanged herself because of him. If Mari was the one to put her hands on Sunny, he could've blamed himself for not recognizing that as a sign that she wasn't doing well. Either way, his situation would've probably become more genuinely tragic since he's beating himself up for circumstances he never had much control over. I think that'd have very neatly explained his status as a silent protagonist too - from his point of view, his beloved sister died the last time he dared to open his mouth, so he chose to deliberately flatten himself out because he's afraid of hurting anyone ever again.

Maybe the game could've subtly conveyed Sunny's efforts to move on from his grief via Mari's grave in the church's cemetery. Since I believe that the game would've had more time to properly pace its content if the events took at least five days, the idea could've been executed like this:

on the first day, Sunny wouldn't even see the door to the cemetery just like he doesn't see the closet room's door and like he makes the door to Basil's room disappear when he sees the latter's corpse

on the second and third days, the door to the cemetery would be visible if you visit the church, but trying to interact with it will just have Sunny shaking his head

on the fourth day, the cemetery would finally become accessible… except for Mari's grave. it would have collision, like there's a sprite supposed to be there, but it'd be invisible the exact same way Mari's piano is on the Hikikomori route, and when interacted with, Sunny would just say that "There is nothing here."

finally, on the fifth day, you'll get to see the grave and even lay flowers on it if you want

Maybe Black Space could've been an anti-Memory Lane of sorts instead of being a YN rip-off - if Memory Lane was supposed to represent Sunny's most cherished memories, Black Space should've represented the worst ones he had. What if Black Space actually provided set-up for the argument by chronicling the gradual deterioration of his relationship with Mari over the course of their practicing? It'd make sense that he'd try to bury these as deep inside of his mind as possible. There was a nice story here. It's gone now.

#frankly I consider this incoherent horseshit but whatever #i finally found the courage to write these ideas out at least lol #omori #omori game #omori sunny #omori mari #I hate the original story but I am Rotating the characters in my brain. I'd like my brain to stop but I Do Not control what my brain does #i have a brain and i must scream

13 notes · View notes

spontaneousglitterbees · 1 year

Note

It's been mentioned that Kokichi has some phantom pains and he has clear mobility issues (love that btw as someone who uses a cane), so I was curious how the rest of the class is doing in that regard. Does Kaito ever struggle to breathe or have coughing fits? Do Rantaro and Angie get migraines?

[Talent Acquisition Pilot Program AU Masterpost]

This one. This one got away from me.

tl;dr: Absolutely, Anon, we are on very similar pages! This ask really got me thinking about how the whole TAPP!cast is doing fresh out of the Killing Game. Every student in Class 79 is going through something, about now, be it physical or mental; in fact, it’s usually both.

Also: for sure, I want to try and be relatively true-to-life with their struggles, especially Kokichi’s. I write from personal experience living with chronic pain, but haven’t used a cane before. Apologies if I miss the mark at any point.

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a healthcare professional of any kind and the AU’s premise is largely sci-fi, so there may be inaccuracies. That said, I am fascinated with biomechanics and always looking to learn, so I’m trying to keep things at least semi-plausible.

Full spoilers for Danganronpa V3 (and some for the end of SDR2) ahead!

Very Long Loredump (~6.2k words) under the cut:

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?

Everyone is traumatized. That much is obvious, sure, but the Talent Acquisition Pilot Program (TAPP) is a virtual reality simulator based on the bones of the Neo World Program (NWP). In much the way SDR2’s NWP is purported to replicate death in the simulation in the players’ real bodies, the TAPP simulation is built to alter the brain chemistry of its participants. TAPP builds muscle memory and ‘burns’ new neural pathways to a participant’s Default Mode Network (DMN), a collective term for parts of the brain responsible for letting us “autopilot�� common tasks like riding a bike or typing on a keyboard. The V3 cast’s experiences in the simulation impact their real bodies in a very literal sense to ‘speedrun’ them through orientation at Hope’s Peak and mainstream them in the curriculum as quickly as possible so its researchers can start collecting useful data on the merits of HPA for investors.

The problem is, nobody programming TAPP anticipated they would start killing each other.

Class 79 were the first human test subjects for the program with zero peer review or board approval, of course, because HPA is morally dubious and can pass off “dude, trust me” as genuine credentials to several world governments. Even if this massive oversight was not noticed until after the fact, V1 of TAPP did at least include one quasi-safety feature: if any player became “significantly injured”, that player would be ejected from the simulation. Everyone else would be locked in the simulation (in case one of them was involved and tried to evade consequences) until an administrator could come and manually assess the situation. In theory, the physically-unharmed student could rejoin the simulation once the conflict was resolved.

But TAPP was built to write data to the brain. It was not built to identify what data it’s actually writing, and cannot differentiate between playing the piano and getting smashed in a hydraulic press. Data is data.

It does not help that Team Danganronpa (the group of Reserve Course kids, including Tsumugi) are foolish teenagers entirely unaware of this, assuming that “none of it is real, so none of it will actually matter! we’re just scaring them!” While skimming through the code and thoroughly Knowing Not What They Do, they manage to remove any defined cap for what constitutes ‘significant injury’ before player ejection. The only flag that can set it off is a lack of any other player flags. Virtual death.

This is where Rantaro earns the title of “Ultimate Survivor”. The shotput ball put him down too quickly for the damage to be fully reflected in his physical body, so he managed to get ejected with post-concussive symptoms, short-term memory issues, and persistent migraines instead of fully dying. Were his method of death much slower, he’d likely have been screwed (and wouldn’t have Komaeda’s luck cycle to save him).

Time scales differently in TAPP than in the physical world; while Rantaro’s been at the virtual Academy for several days, the students have been strapped in their pods for a few hours at most. Between the Responsible Older Sibling Energy seared over the person he may have been before and an extant knack for escape room puzzles, Amami is The Man with the skills and motivation to call in backup.

It’s a good thing he did, too! Their “observer”, having tired of watching a bunch of students play the piano and run around outside, only figures out something has gone horribly wrong the moment Rantaro practically busts down the door. The next tense hour-plus is spent doing damage control and imposing limits on the code of the simulation to prevent TAPP from letting the students actually die. Unfortunately, the TDR kids and their takeover took a sizeable chunk out of the spaghetti code holding the whole thing together in their haste. TDR, with proposed talents like Ultimate Cosplayer on their side, are primarily concerned with artistry and are only competent-enough programmers. As a result, there is no obvious way to manually override the lock completely and just let the students out without significant defragging, even as TDR members are still actively messing with the code, and who knows how long that will take. (About 6-ish chapters)

Instead, for now, they’ll have to settle for putting as many programming-adjacent talents as possible on the case and exploit a loophole that panicking overseer managed to write: if the remaining students are systematically ejected, the program will bypass the lock and let them out. During the rescue operation, the main objective is first to minimize the physical damage TAPP can inflict by lowering the tolerance required to eject the students (which is easier said than done) and by dampening its neural-carving functions, then to get everyone left out of there.

It is a very good thing they sprung into action as quickly as they did, as it doesn’t take long for Kaede to arrive.

KAEDE

The first thing Kaede notices coming out of the simulation is that she can’t hum the notes to get back on-pitch after the worst rendition of Der Flohwalzer she has ever heard. The second thing she notices, because it is far easier to be angry about something trivial than face the slow-dawning realization you are having, is that she can only barely speak. It hurts.

I think Kaede learns to sign early on, but still finds herself trying to speak aloud anyway since she’s so used to having her hands busy already playing piano. Shuichi often reminds her to take it easy, treat it like a vocal rest, and steadily she begins to improve. She is as exuberant as ever, with determination fitting of our protagonist. Kaede is the Class 79 representative, though with his renewed confidence Shuichi often accompanies her. Not only are they best friends (though it is strange, at first, to see her alive after spending so long grieving. Kaede last saw him, like, yesterday.) and Kaede will inevitably tell Shuichi all about the meeting anyway so why not cut out the middle man, but Shuichi initially came specifically to speak at meetings so Kaede wouldn’t strain her voice. She is immensely proud.

RANTARO (PT. 2)

Rantaro doesn’t hold the shotput ball against her; desperate times, and all. It made sense her proactive attitude would make her first to act for the ‘greater good’. She aimed to end the whole thing, not just comply. Even if she swung and missed, he (an older brother with faint recollections of failing to protect the people depending on him and guilt knowing he doesn’t have the stomach to take a victim and thus will be failing people in need of protection again) can’t fault her for swinging. She is confused when he asks her how she launched the ball that hard, though. Odd.

TENKO

Tenko has neck pain issues like Kaede, but hers are more acute. The seesaw effect was heinous but relatively precise; as the magnum opus of TDR’s homebrewed serial killer, they un/fortunately made him pretty good at it when he has a plan. Tenko has some of the least devastating lingering physical injuries of the class. Given the severity of her classmates’ injuries, though, that still leaves her with minor vocal strain, susceptibility to sore throats, and severe neck pain, among other things.

A lot of Tenko’s lingering trauma is mental: she isn’t quite as willing to immediately throw herself into the fray to help her friends, and certainly doesn’t want to leave her back exposed (a tendency she shares with Kokichi, of all people). While it did numbers on her perception of men again for a while, hearing about the trial left her with a lot to reconcile. In a ‘cool-motive-still-murder’ way, she does not forgive Kiyo (nor is she obligated to) but doesn’t hate him as much as she expected, either. Processing the idea that a girl could be horribly abusive, especially to a guy, and catalyze a cycle of violence… gets to her. She’s more wrapped up in the tragedy of the entire situation than the righteous indignation that’d fueled her for so long. Everybody lost that day.

She’s pleasantly surprised to see Himiko trying to lift her spirits now. Those two have a lot to talk about and boundaries to set, yes, but Tenko is still touched Himiko took her words to heart and seems to be benefiting from it.

ANGIE

Angie had bit more complicated situation than Tenko, getting KO’d before the fatal blow. Her migraines come on more often than Rantaro’s with high light, which is a special kind of awful for the SHSL Artist, but they’re generally closer to a dull ache. Once she gets going on a project she sets out to grin and bear it; Tenko and Himiko often check up on her. She does her best to stay just as upbeat as in the simulation, and if anything it seems more genuine now. She can actually relax, rather than mind-game her way to relative (unsteady) peace under duress.

(Angie is really interesting to me for many adjacent reasons to Kokichi, since they’re both willing to get morally gray and manipulative if it’ll keep everyone from killing each other. Angie-Kokichi compare contrast essay when?)

She hasn’t “forgiven” Kiyo either, but isn’t hostile while she evaluates whether or not his conviction in getting help and being better is genuine. She was pretty heavily affected by TDR’s “character rewrites” as well, after all, and empathizes with the feeling you’ve been used as a glorified dress-up doll. To some unknowable extent, she is a different person now, and it is frightening.

She’s trying to step back and re-analyze her sense of spirituality, particularly how it relates to her art. It’s existentially harrowing, having been made to toe the line between faith and fronting to either get people to either listen to her or not see her as a threat. She’s not even positive “Kami-sama” (not going with the localization here, my understanding is the Japanese version was deliberately more generic and at least a bit less disrespectful towards real people and their beliefs) is the same deity she’d believed in before TAPP, but it’s difficult to try and reconnect with your roots when none of you have any information on your previous lives.

They do, at least, have a resident anthropologist that might have a clue how to even start looking.

Hah. They sure do, huh.

I think Angie is the type to nominally forgive and never, ever forget. She holds the kind of grudge that lives beyond logic as all the compartmentalized emotions you don’t want to admit you have. A grudge that co-exists with an active desire to move on and seeps into her art.

KOREKIYO

Kiyo got burned.

Alive.

Also dead, somehow, an extension of the Ultimate Placebo Effect we have going on in the simulation; Kiyo was so certain ghosts were real and he’d be one that, through earnest conviction, the simulation made it so. I think this is how Komaeda’s luck works in SDR2 as well; the original Neo World Program was developed for therapy, and in doing so assesses whether or not it would be completely devastating (do more harm than good) to actively disprove something about the patient’s worldview at that time and adapts the environment accordingly. Hence you get a reality-warping luck cycle and ghosts are Definitely Real. Is either true in the outside world? No idea! Komaru talks to a ghost in UDG, once, but considering it’s unclear if Kiyo’s sister was ever a living person to begin with there are bigger fish to fry.

Or not. He’s pretty damn-well aware much that hurts. Or at least being boiled and seasoned does. Going by that kind of simulator-logic, I think in a technical sense it was the salt that killed him, not the torture. There’s probably something to unpack there I haven’t fully explored yet.

Rumors start going around campus that Kiyo is a vampire. It makes enough sense for watercooler gossip, the mask covering up fangs and an aversion to lingering out in the sun; Class 79 knows it’s actually because sunburn, for him, is a new brand of Unfun. He prefers to hole up in the library or his lab anyway, so it could be worse. He’s honestly kind of into becoming a school cryptid. It helps transition him from “avoiding my classmates and other people because they hate me, i also hate me, and we are all correct to do so. i am an extension of her so it does not matter what i want” towards “i am not my past, i cannot make up for what ive done but i can move forward and be better, i am forging a new self and it is mine this time and it always should have been”.

(Kokichi is particularly proud of having kickstarted the cryptid thing. Of course Shinguji would love to watch the evolution of new local lore in real time! Now he doesn’t mope in the corner half as much. He’s still in the corner, granted, but its probably reading while Rantaro sits next to him on his phone instead of moping!)

Kiyo’s also in therapy now. They all have therapy scheduled into their school weeks, but Kiyo has a session besides. Fabrication or not, everyone’s backstories are functionally now ‘real’ and need to be dealt with. Kiyo, Maki, and Kokichi got hit particularly hard on that front. Those scars run deep, but are starting to heal.

Of the students with whole-body injuries, Kiyo probably has the most manageable physical symptoms at this stage. He has to have long sleeves and generally keep as covered as he can so that he can subdue the part of his mind that expects the skin is still raw and flaking (it isn’t, but phantom sensations suck). Overheating pushes him toward a panic state like the end of his trial, which doesn’t exactly gel with the first point, but he’s working on it. Rantaro and Kokichi, occasionally Shuichi, tend to notice and start to defuse the situation. Part of me wonders if he’d have a black lace parasol on sunny days to lean in to the ‘mystery’ around him, plus for the sheer Aesthetic of it.

KIRUMI

Speaking of full-body injuries: Kirumi. She has similar ‘got-to-keep-covered’ issues to Kiyo, particularly wearing heavier work gloves now just to minimize any potential for cuts (and, in the back of her mind, ropeburn). Breaking several bones on impact was rough, though fast enough that she’s had remarkable improvement in a relatively short period of time. She started out on crutches, which made it difficult for her to keep up with her workaholic inclinations, but unlike some of the other students she has at least an idea of “when to quit” as not to make things worse. She’s still genuinely lost some bone density resulting from her treatment and coping methods, finding that she really does need to lean on her friends on occasion, but she is still resolute she is a care-giver, damn it. On both physical and mental fronts she’s dealing with reclaiming her agency and independence.

Kirumi is one of the few, with Maki, whose talent courses actively discourage the kinds of behavior they need for personal growth and mental health maintenance. Kirumi is still reconciling her “rewrite”, the encoded passivity in her and clash of her “selfless devotion” against her own will to live and thrive, a nightmarish reminder that You Are Not Your Own. The “Ultimate” maid needs to be agreeable, to follow orders, and hasn’t the tampering just improved her proficiency at her craft? Why be so upset? Never mind having to reconstruct her proper ability to tell people “no”, having to re-learn it’s okay to do things for yourself; according to her programmed instinct, her classes, those very things are antithetical to her talent. And everything relies on that talent, doesn’t it?

Kirumi and Kokichi are the two in Class 79 who were discharged with mobility devices that got students in the other classes… more than mildly concerned about what the hell happened to all of these freshmen (well, first year at HPA anyway), but luckily for HPA administration they’re also probably the two people least likely to offer details.

THE RIBS

There are enough students who have chest pain and associated issues that they made a club about it. It started out as Miu, Ryoma, and Kaito all independently concluding there was no way in hell they were making it through a mile run and sitting on the bleachers. Once they’d had an opportunity to gather themselves again, they do as teens are wont to do and started talking to each other. Hypoxia is an oddly effective experience to bond over. They call themselves the RIBs, standing for “Respiratory-Issue Beleaguered” (students), mostly because it made Miu laugh and for as irritating as the sound could be they’d missed it.

Kaede, Tenko, Gonta, and Kokichi also stop by from time-to-time, meaning precisely half of the 14 active Class 79 students revolving-door through this unofficial student group. HPA took notice. Class 79 has its own gym class, now, taking into account the state of everyone. One could argue that should have been the case from the onset. They would be correct.

RYOMA

Ryoma is fairly elusive. He generally keeps to himself and remains a Fairly Chill Guy with a cool temperament everyone wants to emulate (he doesn’t see what they see in him) and some Complicated Feelings now knowing he hasn’t killed anyone in the certified Real World and, by logic, should not have to have the memories of a hardened prisoner. He still does. The persistent rasp in his voice now surprises nobody, but it took a few days for everyone in the class to stop flinching a little hearing it. He frequently hangs out in the animal shed with Gonta, Gundham, and Peko to take care of the cats.

MIU

We’ve seen quite a bit of Miu in the AU so far, but to recap a lot of her deal:

She loathes having to “take it easy” but will do so reluctantly

She tries to talk less to stretch out her working time as much as she can (even if she can’t resist just a little banter when Kokichi swings by)

She’s trying to approach her death with a sense of humor. A choker with a huge heart-shaped buckle replaces her usual necklaces with full awareness of the irony. Ha-ha, a choker. It’s a dare for anybody to bring it up, ‘I’ve said it before anyone else could’. The first thing she did waking up was try and make an autoerotic asphyxiation joke. It did not make her feel better like she thought it would.

Miu spends most of her time in her lab, now. Granted, she did that already, but she’s particularly fixated on re-creating a certain Ultimate Robot, ground-up if she has to. Fortunately, she has a team assembled (re: two upperclassmen and the Ultimate Supreme Shit-for-brains). We’ll see how this pans out soon enough.

When not re-building Kiibo outright, she ““takes a break”” innovating in other areas (re: prototyping potential features for kIIbo, usually testing them on a bored Kokichi. He usually complies because Miu is one of the few who doesn’t look at him with a patronizing amount of pity she’s Not boring. Mm-hmm. All there is to it.)

Miu does not resent Gonta (or Kokichi, for that matter) for killing her. There's a small extent to which she's a little relieved she was stopped from going through with her plan to kill Kokichi, and a much bigger disconnect between her idea of reality and her memory of Chapter 4. Miu died in a VR game within another VR game. Having messed around with the programming and guts of the nested simulation personally, it still seems fake. She didn't really die, no matter how real it felt; they were in a simulation. Logically, she's well aware of how it works and the consequences, but it doesn't feel like it was more than a glorified fever dream on an emotional level. Both Gonta and Kokichi are more outwardly traumatized by her death than Miu as a byproduct of how she's processing it. She's not "better off" or "less impacted" so much as "disassociated from the whole thing and very much wanting to put it behind them before it catches up with her", thus burying herself in work and trying as hard as she can to bring back the one person she wants to comfort her.

Kiibo's absence is not great for her abandonment issues. It is hard to blame him when he never had a physical body to begin with, though.

GONTA

Gonta is also with the RIBs, and reeling from it the most visibly of everyone on account of just how. Much, his death was. An allergic reaction blocking off the air, puncturing at least one lung for certain, and living long enough to feel the shrapnel of the laptop lodge into the wound alongside the scythe, the fire quickly eating away any oxygen, any hope of gasping another breath… yeah no he acts as much the gentleman as ever but he is not okay. As Resident Buff Nature Boy Gonta tanked it better than anyone else in the class could have, but the sheer excess of the thing gets to him. Fond memories of setting a campfire in the woods with his adoptive family are overwritten, vespidae in general… hitting differently. But Gonta is kind, to a fault. More resolute than ever to make himself into a kind of person not perceived as ‘too intimidating’ to be friends with, acknowledging the capacity he has for violence is difficult. Somewhere deep down he knows that everybody does, especially in their circumstances, but still acts as though his case is exceptionally bad (nobody else does. This does not deter him, becoming a little less gullible when its least helpful).

He is also not as disconcerted by the occasional spontaneous sensation that your insides are going to lose structural integrity, even with no stitches to pop, that with only the damaged wake and no piercing sharp pain to focus on and blame for the mess could potentially be perceived as a bizarre, abstracted kind of crawling feeling from the inside-out. Things in motion, displaced from where they are meant to be. He knows it isn’t bugs, isn’t glass and metal and plastic, that it isn’t anything but himself. A teeny-tiny part of him wishes it were. At least being shelter for a hive of some sort would be helpful. Aren’t gentlemen helpful, they improve life for people, make things better and how could anyone even look at you again knowing what you’re capable of, who in their right mind would talk to you, you’re going to end up alone again talking to stray cats in the alley since not even the wolves would stay—

Gonta also has extra therapy. He already had to work out self-worth issues, but the game pushed them to interfere too much in daily life not to actively work on.

KAITO

Kaito has made several background and supporting appearances without much central attention just yet. It's not that I don't like him or anything (I do!) but I guess because it seems like well-worn territory in V3 fic to me? Kaito is endlessly proud of Maki and Shuichi (Himiko too, less personally) for "winning" in the face of the killing game, and the training trio of them meet back up again regularly. Only.

It's different, now.

He's no longer sick and dying, but his lungs 'top out' at a certain level of activity and refuse to take in more air, this burning sensation that leaves him only able to huff and wheeze and brings his training regiment to a dead stop. He treasures those last moments in his failed execution where he got to see the stars, because a lingering anxiety in the back of his mind won't let him forget that he never will again. Not the way he'd dreamed of, the way he'd planned to, the way he'd centered his identity around. There is no way, as things are, that he will pass all the physical exams to become a proper astronaut.

The drawn-out deterioration of his health during the simulation chipped away at his physical lungs at a rate too gradual for the countermeasures the rescue team implemented; TAPP did more overt physical damage to Kaito than anyone else. It could certainly be worse and he is gradually improving, but some degree of it is permanent. It haunts him. He's trying not to think about it.

It does, though, drive a wedge between him and his sidekicks; the survivors are planning their futures, and Kaito is not too far from a slight tailspin without any idea what his might look like for the first time he can recall. Space has been the dream since he was a kid (as has getting there in this specific role) and it almost feels like a rejection. Like he got too cocky, and the cosmos decided it didn't want him.

It starts to make a little more sense, then, that he starts willingly hanging out with Kokichi. They went through the hangar together, of course, but even besides the traumabond (and a need to, after he woke from his coma, make sure the little brat is still alive, damn it, you can't run away anymore it counts now) but. If anyone else gets having such drastically shifted circumstances that life as you'd imagined it no longer makes logistical sense, it's probably the leader without an organization. There's no need to explain the feelings of inadequacy, or the aimlessness, going through the motions of classes and formal education because what the hell else am I going to do, right now? It's familiar.

Kokichi needs someone willing to chase him, no matter how circuitous the route becomes. Kaito needs someone willing to shake him by the shoulders and snap him out of his own head, so sure it's all-or-nothing and that if he can't be the Luminary as he'd dreamed of it whatever happens next is immaterial in comparison. Kaito needs to adapt and roll with the punches, Kokichi needs to double back from his logical leaps from point A to point Q and articulate his thoughts clearly to other people (at least some of the time.) The two of them concoct little daily and weekly rituals, like Kokichi stealing Kaito's notebook and drawing in it, just because the consistency of company reminds them both that they aren't the only one going through this.

None of the other students quite get it, but have come to accept it.

KOKICHI

Then there’s Kokichi.

Ah, Kokichi, whose whole deal in this scenario inspired me to write about this AU at all (and who manages to weasel his way into every comic and a other entries in these notes) . I’m biased, I know, but there are also a few reasons he’s singled out in-universe as well:

A) So a hydraulic press does not slam down quickly. The pause-and-play of the video deliberately makes it look much faster than it was; watching enough of the hydraulic press channel makes it abundantly clear that it was not instant. Kokichi was impaled with two crossbow bolts (the one in the back being bad enough already), poisoned by those bolts, and then pressed. He had to have felt non-zero of the Pressing, which, considering it already had to be agony before bones started breaking… the rest of the class might not have been fond of him, sure, but he’s right there with Gonta on “sheer level of excess.” Not even Maki is at a point of wishing that on him. Not after finding out how drawn out and excruciating it was. Veering into headcanon, I’m going to add “sleep deprivation” on the pile as exacerbating the whole thing, given his conspiracy whiteboard and everything after the concussion, honestly.

Combined with the World’s Worst Placebo Effect, King Horse takes the crown for top “my entire body hurts most of the time” severity. It’s not a desirable one, but when your previous life is all but erased there is exactly one choice available between Big and Home. Let it be said Kokichi Ouma has never half-assed anything he’s set his mind to, ever.

B) Ouma is paranoid and distrusting, which adds the psychological angle of “you literally shot me in the back” to a poison-laced crossbow bolt in his mind. TAPP will very literally never let him forget the bolt burying itself in the muscle of his back, barely kept from severing his spinal cord; he won’t forget the shivering and shaking from the poison, or the bile rising in the back of his throat handing Kaito the antidote. (He still wanted to live. He forfeit the right, he thought, after getting Gonta and Miu killed, but he still wanted to. That was all the more reason to quadruple-down on the press idea and making their three deaths mean something, damn it. Three, because Kaito could live. If the killing game ends there is no execution. It’ll be over. Can’t take back the past, but at least one of the pair of you has to walk out of this forsaken place!)

(… Can you really believe that? Or is it just another lie.

A lie you want, with all the heart they’re so sure you do not have, to blithely believe. There has to be a cure for whatever the hell has gotten into Kaito once the game ends and they can look for it, it might even stop cold the moment the game ends. That dumbass space cadet can go back to his sidekicks and he better appreciate it, the comradery you’ll never have, because he is the designated Hero and Heroes get happy endings. You want-want-want-want to trust in that lie, to trust him with the collected thoughts and notes and pieces of you spilled across reams of paper that have been so pointlessly important for you to keep secret this whole time. For once in your life, you want to believe you will not be betrayed. You want to believe in the closest thing you have left to a friend.

It will, in fact, be the last thing you do.)

C) Ouma is paranoid and distrusting. Again. Only this flavor has more to do with his persistent denial anything is wrong, in turn making things a lot worse for himself. Mental trauma and impressions of physical sensations can have physical effects. Clinging to his persona and trying to keep bouncing around like nothing ever happened turned a very difficult but potentially manageable condition into small amounts of permanent nerve damage within the first day of waking up. It screws with his coordination; just what he needed at a school that prizes talent above all else, when he is a leader with no organization and proficiencies in sleight of hand, forgery, lockpicking, and generally evading anything that might threaten him because he can’t take very many hits.

Whoops.

D) Kokichi was last of the class to wake up from the simulation, even after the survivors. They thought he was actually dead for a bit. Just when they were thinking of giving up on him Kokichi Ouma, SHSL Stubborn Son of a Bitch, refuses to stay down for the count.

HPA already knew Class 79 would need accommodations on account of their negligence, but it became much harder to sweep things under the rug when they thought they’d actually killed a student. Even worse, thirteen witnesses have been actively fraternizing and scaled the flashback-gaslighting required to cover it up to easily exceed what their current technology is capable of.

Half the class was positive Ouma was playing dead specifically to fuck with them and light the fire under them to act. He and Kaito are the only ones to know without a shred of doubt that he was not. He still gladly takes the credit, though.

E) Class 79 as a whole already adapted to Ouma Being Ouma, so when the definition of ‘Being Ouma’ expanded he’s still pretty distinct. He hangs out around the people closest to him often, particularly Miu, Kaito, and Rantaro, but the entire class knows now that he’s pretty much beyond the point of perfidy. Even if he were to lie about being in more pain than he is at a given moment, there’s constantly enough underlying truth in how vulnerable he is that it’s not strategically worth trying to use as a manipulative tactic. It’s too real. Plus, he knows better than to boy-that-cried-wolf his way out of help from his classmates after getting lost on campus once and fainting before he found his way back.

K1-B0

K1-B0, as far as has been established, is being re/built. Miu is spearheading the project. Presumably, he is currently hanging out on at least one computer in the school, somewhere. Per the AU, though, Chapter 6 did go a bit differently than canon, so we’ll catch up with him soon.

TSUMUGI

Nobody is exactly certain what happened to Shirogane. Or, at the very least, nobody in the class knows. Admin is certainly not about to tell them. Wouldn’t it be just like the Ultimate Cosplayer to Theseus her way back into their lives following a single loose thread…

THE SURVIVORS

Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko each emerged from the simulation minimally physically harmed in a lasting sense beyond initial fatigue from being hooked up for so long. Each is still moving forward on their established character arc: Himiko is finding her motivation, Maki is learning to open up, and Shuichi is becoming more sure of himself and his detective abilities.

I think Himiko begins embracing the 'stage' side of her magic, considering that TAPP was blocking my mana, and you know what? I survived a killing game, and I didn't even need it. What else can I do without my mana? As time goes on, she'll likely value her own practical skills more rather than relying on her want of more fantastical powers. Not to say she'd disown them, but more that she could admit to herself it's more for fun than a need to affix something exceptional to her identity. She is enough as she is.

Maki enters HPA and immediately requests transfer out of 'Ultimate Assassin' classes. She hates fighting, per canon, and after going through the simulation she is no longer afraid of any authority figure that may deny her because she has certifiably seen worse. She initially tries to pivot and become the Ultimate Child Caregiver, for Real This Time; she is genuinely pretty good with kids. After a little incident nearly choking Kokichi, though? It confirms what she'd been afraid of all along: her patience is too thin, her instinct to defend too heavy on the trigger. She talks to Peko about it, among other people, Mukuro and Sakura chief among the other classes. She'd made their acquaintances during combat training in the first few days at HPA. She especially confides in Kaede, who carries a more-domestic-less-battlescorn perspective on it she can't help but appreciate. Kaede takes her to not-Claire's, playing with accessories and make-up and generally reclaiming some of the girlhood Maki has effectively never been allowed to have. In the whole process, Maki realizes she wants more than anything to protect the ability to have that kind of frivolity, that freedom: she changes tracks again, to become a SHSL Bodyguard.

Shuichi is a difficult one to place for me, exactly. He's in a state of becoming significantly more confident in the wake of the simulation, but the deviation from canon has turned the main conflict away from ending a destructive cycle and towards fighting the idea of predetermination by an external force. Shirogane was predetermined to stay in the Reserve Course despite her skills and aspirations, and railed against it; Kiibo was predetermined to be an AI helper and not a person, but embraced the role so hard he developed a soul of his own; Maki denies her talent and changes her destiny, Himiko embraces hers.

I suppose Saihara must fall somewhere in the middle, then. An observer steadfastly declaring that yes, there were aspects of life shaped for them beyond their control (entry into the simulation if they wanted a taste of success, the killing game, the "character rewrites" overriding the people they were before...) and yes they cannot control everything. What happened has happened. There are always going to be things you can't control (like how severely you burn in the sun, or whether you get headaches with the lights up too high, or even if your dream life rockets away too fast for you to catch unless you want to lose what you still have) but you can adapt to it. It's tempting to give in, to consider it all a lost cause, to submit to the forces you feel are puppeting you, but see. You keep living anyway, because you have to. The only way forward is through. Even if you were a puppet, you're still an independent you, and that means something. Maybe you can't snap your strings, but you can sure as hell stretch them out and bend them in a way you like better than this one.

Not having total control doesn't mean the control you do have doesn't matter.

So Shuichi is taking up cases as a detective, now. Seeing how he likes it. If not? Well. Skills are transferable.

He'll be okay.

They all will.

----

(The first screenshot I took of this ask to begin drafting vs. the last one:

I'm sorry I am bad at timely responses but I hope they are Good.)

106 notes · View notes

defaultfelix · 5 months

Text

Returning online

My name is Felix Kramer, and I'm the creator of Goodbye Strangers. I haven't been active online for quite some time, and I wanted to address this. There was a major falling out with the former collaborative team, and later on, a public "callout" was made against me. Due to the number of falsehoods in the post against me, I don't feel that it is appropriate to comment on the post in full – and as the circumstances leading to the split were personal and not public, I do not feel comfortable disclosing any information that would violate another person's privacy.

I wanted to specifically comment upon the following two points, however. First, I can confirm my former collaborator's statement that she did not approach me at any time with any of her concerns.

This second point is one that cannot be emphasized enough: I absolutely do not share my former collaborator's interpretation of my work, and fully disavow such a hateful interpretation. If discrimination and hate are the values that you see when you look into my work, you are not my audience. A deliberate theme of the project as a whole is the idea that whether it's because of race, sexuality, gender, body type, mental illness, or something else - every person on earth knows what it feels like to be "left out", or like they don't belong. That is what it means to be a "sensitive", and why members of minority groups are more likely to be able to see the strangers.

I understand that there are people who may have questions or concerns about myself or my actions, and in this regard, anyone is welcome to email me with any questions or concerns. Please consider me an open book, as I am happy to discuss anything that does not violate another person's privacy. I don't plan to give any further statement regarding these individuals, other than to wish them the best.

In terms of what I've been doing the past few years, I will admit that this has been a very, very difficult period for my mental health. My mental state had been gradually worsening prior to the split with the team, and the mass public shaming/ostracism triggered a psychotic break from reality. Recovering has been gradual; this incident was the single most traumatic event I've ever endured, and it has taken countless hours of self-reflection, therapy, and outside support to pick myself back up again. I've talked about my experiences here, and am happy to engage privately with anyone who might benefit from talking further, but otherwise, I would rather look towards the future.

I wanted to end this post with one final note about my mental health and general status. I've been living with psychotic/delusional mental health symptoms for many, many years, and these have had a significant impact on much of my behaviour. Though I've talked to some extent about things like synesthesia and audio hallucinations, the full extent of psychotic states and delusional thought patterns is something that I am only very recently opening up about and addressing more directly.

These symptoms have been a major obstacle in returning online. The voices that I hear are cruel and endlessly critical; the abusive language used in the callout post became a constant internal dialog. In the years following the break from the team, I've drafted countless public statements and responses – and, it has taken this long to be able to 'quiet down' my mind enough to write this without hearing snarling insults and rebuttals to every single line.

I acknowledge that my behaviour prior to the split was erratic, self-destructive, and alienated those close to me. I made poor judgments, my expectations of both myself and others were not realistic, and I was grossly unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. I live with debilitating, lifelong mental illness that includes psychotic and dissociative symptoms. This isn't an 'excuse' for erratic behaviour, and I sincerely apologize to those people made uncomfortable by my actions, or hurt by the fallout of the project, and am happy to answer any further questions via private correspondence.

It will always be an ongoing process to address my mental health challenges and to develop healthier coping mechanisms. This is exactly why I want to do what I can to better live up to my own values of personal responsibility – as well as fight past my own fears in order to share my work with others and contribute my value to the world.

I don't know what the future holds, but I know that I'm not the person I was three years ago – the person I was three years ago would never have been able to write this post.

Thank you so much for reading my words. Please take care of yourself and those around you, and don't ever give up on your dreams.

#goodbye strangers

12 notes · View notes

just-a-random-person24 · 20 days

Text

On a Rail episodes are next and I have SO much to say about those eps, those notes are gonna have more things to them but rn here's eps 15-22

Episode 15

“I last ate like, what? A day ago?” PLEASE EAT SOMETHING MY GUY

“Fucking hamdogs. That's racist.” He's worried about being racist to the literal aliens???

Casually picks up a shotgun off a dead security

“That is NOT a normal way to die!” The man violently ragdolled, that's definitely not normal

Episode 16

babygirl you've said fun 5 times too many

“I warned your kind what would happen if you jump me like that again.” I really don't think they can hear you

“A plain exposed door leading to where I need to be? Am I getting punked?” That door's always been there

“I wouldn't call 2 people a group.” What would you call them then?

“And by mental, I mean break down and cry.” I quote this way too much lmao

Episode 17

Logo change!!

Just, this whole beginning part. ‘Descent into madness schtick’

Just vent my man you need to </3

“The design for turning on the fan is balls.” It really is cause why is it under the fan blades??

“The amount of dead people in a single area may correlate to its significance. As dark as that may seem.” That is such a fucked up way at looking at it

“You know, I actually could go for a smoke right now.” Canonically smokes cigarettes (r.i.p man if the military doesn't get you)

“Now I have to look for scientists like they're lost 5 year olds. Fucking a.” He's a single mom 💔 (/j)

“They actually look pretty cute.” They're sleepy little puppy dogs ☹️

“Hopefully 2010 doesn't have me kickstarting the second apocalypse.” *que Half Life 2*

“But right now I am the judge, as well as jury, and executioner. With that in mind I hereby declare you all guilty!” He's losing it

Episode 18

“My autobiography isn't going to write itself.” THAT'S your biggest concern at the moment???

“Okay, fine, I'll do that. Since nobody would want to know what your condescending ass is here anyways.” YOU'RE BEING SUCH A DICK??

“I may not have the best sense of smell, but god this is rank.” ???

“I think they'd do well in the world of cinema.” For some reason I vaguely remember something about Mindrian wanting to be an actor or something. They should make a homemade movie together

“Jesus christ thats hot!” I hope fire is hot!

Episode 19

“I was originally gonna say that the guy who designed this ladder in particular should be fired. But that's a bit on the nose.” *ba dum tss*

“Guess I'm going the way of the radioactive road. Or the Seabird Street. The Transiuratic Turnpike. The Breckwell Boulevard.” I'm not putting all that bit here but you are saying a lot of things I do not understand (I also know I probably misspelled something)

“The n in fun stands for nuclear.” ??? that is not a saying my man

“That's uh… okay.” Again I just like the delivery he just, sounds small? you know?? Like shrinking down on yourself (I'm gonna shut up now)

Episode 20

“What are these? Cameras?” I have no clue what cameras you've seen but they do not look like cameras

“‘No smoking’? Thanks, I don't need any stress relief right now.” he's, such a dork sometimes

“Shame there's no rocket engine though.” I really don't think fire is effective against fire here

“Intruder spotter. *shoot* And subsequently eliminated.” God I hate him <3

“If you're really trying to kill me then try harder!” Don't hold your breath!

“I'm not taking your guns though, cause of blood and other bodily fluids.” But, the ammo that was also covered in that stuff is fine??

Episode 21

Give his ass a map please

I'm… not even going to attempt transcribing what he just said, boy I get it YOU'RE A SCIENTIST GOD DAMN

“Trauma doesn't have a beneficial impact on the human mind as far as I'm concerned.” Give him a therapist too, and a map

“Maybe I can stack dead aliens and use them as a ladder.” That's your first idea???

“Maintenance and pest control? I don't get paid nearly enough for this!” Well, you would if you didn't take a $150 bribe

Episode 22

“That's just a theory though.” A GAME- 💥 (The immediate explosion after makes me absolutely love this line cause man)

“I may have killed myself a while ago.” HEY?? 💔

“Anything to take down ‘The Free Man’ I suppose.” I cannot with him

“ Cut the bravado, you're not fooling anyone! It's just ME! I can HELP you! So either LISTEN TO ME, OR YOU'RE GOING TO-... going to… god damn it.” Anion when I fucking get you god damn

“I can't let you die. I won't let anyone else die, not again. Not now. Not ever. Please, listen to me.” ANION WHEN I FUCKING GET YOU

He ran for 5 seconds and he ran out of breath, fucking Alan Wake ass stamina

“TAKE IT ALL AND DIE!” oh my god

I don't know how to explain it, but there's like. A shift this episode? I don't know, this one and the On a Rail eps feel so different from the other episodes (in a good way)

The immediate laughter after killing something??? good for him

“The first act ends with not a climactic victory, but a somber progression.” God let him be happy

#stark's mind #mindverse #im so tired #I HAVE 10 EPISODES LEFT

5 notes · View notes

switchcase · 11 months

Note

"Having multiple abusers does not mean that you underwent OA."

would you be able to explain a bit more about what OA is? would you explain what ISNT or DOESNT count as OA?

i recently saw a something basically saying anything from cult abuse to two parents agreeing to abuse a child is OA. this makes me wonder if theres a "line" between two parents absuing a kid together and two parents OA abusing a kid together. and this confuses me because it seems to me that by this definition two parents abusing a child in the same household should pretty much always be OA. to clarify, this has nothing to do with if one is "worse" than the other or not, im strictly curious about it definition-wise!

as a different (made up) example: if one individual experienced csa from two separate abusers who did not know each other, and another individual experienced csa from two individuals who knew eachother and agreed to abuse the individual; would this mean the second individual experienced OA while the first individual did not?

Yeah I remember seeing that whole "two parents equals organized abuse" post. You are completely right that it waters down the term organized abuse to the point of the term being drastically useless.

Neither of the examples you gave is organized abuse. Your example of 2 individuals agreeing to sexually abuse someone still fits a 2 parent situation, as well as instances of coordinated, single instance rape which many people experience (easier to get overpowered if there are at least 2 attackers).

Organized abuse is abuse conducted in a group with a hierarchy in which group members are participatory in the abuse of multiple victims. It is implied that there is a purpose to the abuse (eg, profit, social control), because otherwise it is a lot of work, resources, and coordination for something you could do on a smaller scale with less complications. Examples of organized abuse: cult abuse, pedophile rings, human trafficking.

"involving a network of perpetrators acting repeatedly and jointly on multiple victims" (2018, Psychiatric Impact of Organized and Ritual Child Sexual Abuse: Cross-Sectional Findings from Individuals Who Report Being Victimized)

"The term organized abuse refers to the sexual abuse of multiple children by multiple perpetrators acting in a coordinated way" (2016, Organized abuse in adulthood: Survivor and professional perspectives) [mild note here, the researcher involved is focused on CSA, CSEM, hence the focus on that]

"coordinated by networks of perpetrators, acting jointly, repeatedly and systematically on multiple victims, is defined as 'organized abuse'" (2012, Organised abuse: A neglected category of sexual abuse with significant lifetime mental healthcare sequelae)

(2020, Improved psychosocial and federal support for victims of organized ritual abuse in Germany)

#ask #anonymous #ramcoa #organized abuse #CSA mention #rape mention #incest mention

31 notes · View notes

addictedtostorytelling · 2 months

Note

Thank you for your thoughtful answer about Abby Fisher! You sort of answered this in your original response, but if you wouldn't mind elaborating, how would you have written an arc like that? In canon, we see Sara connect to so many victims/survivors in a way that impacts her own mental wellbeing, and I am wondering what it might look like if that connection was maybe drawn out longer than the arc of one episode, especially because the Abby plot has all the holes you pointed out.

hi, anon!

unsurprisingly, my answer got away from me here, so in case you don't want to read this whole monstrosity, the tl;dr version is:

i'd move the storyline up, making both sara and the kid older when it took place. i'd also show their relationship develop in real time as opposed to inserting it into previously established narrative as a retcon. from there, i'd change certain details to make it more feasible that sara and the kid could stay in contact. finally, i'd put different kinds of narrative pressure on sara to make her more willing and able to open up to the kid regarding her own past.

much, much longer version after the "keep reading," if you're interested.

so to start off here, let's discuss the background specs for this potential arc:

as mentioned in the previous post, i'm convinced this storyline would actually work better and be more viable if it were to take place with an older sara who had already "come out the other side" on her s4/s5 story arc and achieved some stability and healing in her life.

i just can't really see her being prepared to adopt a mentorship role for a vulnerable child probably any earlier than s6.

that said, i also think the most ideal time for the story to unfold would be sometime after her breakdown in s8/s9, as well.

for me, the real sweet spot with her would probably be in the s10/s11 range, when she is happy, settled, stable, and thriving (and also has some free time on her hands because grissom is living abroad).

i'm likewise of the opinion that the story itself would work better if we saw sara's bond with the kid in question develop in real time, as opposed to being told about its development long after the fact (and being asked to believe that sara has maintained this really significant and even life-changing relationship for the past ten years that we have nevertheless known nothing about until present).

along those same lines, i also think the storyline would work better if the kid in question were older than five years-old when sara actually bonded with them.

the kid can still be around early elementary school-age (between 5 and 8 years-old) during the commission of the original crime that puts them into contact with csi, but when sara finally gets to know them and adopts that mentorship role in their life, they should be older, between 15 and 18 years-old.

though i don't actually believe sara is bad with small children—again, i am the one writing a sprawling geek!baby au right now—i think the fact that she thinks she is bad with small children would make her reluctant to try to befriend one (see, for example, her protestations to grissom about taking care of brenda collins in episode 01x07 "blood drops").

that so, i tend to suppose she would have an easier time dropping her guard and bonding with a somewhat older foster child in the preteen to teen age group than she would with a literal kindergartener.

i also think that her dynamic with an older kid would just plain be more interesting than one with a younger kid (because older kids can be held morally and intellectually accountable in ways younger kids can't).

as for the kid's foster situation, i think that whereas episode 15x12 "dead woods" has abby fisher in a relatively new placement with foster parents who don't know her as well as sara supposedly does, in this scenario, it would work better to say that the kid had been in the current placement for several years and that their foster parents know them well.

since sara seemingly never experienced that kind of long-term stability in a single placement herself—according to her conversation with glynnis in episode 05x10 "no humans involved," she bounced around a lot—she might end up being a little bit weird and flighty about the kid's situation in an "i'm not quite sure how to relate" type of way that would make this whole scenario more interesting.

so then thinking of the scenario itself:

let's imagine this story as a three-episode arc (which i'm going to title the "memoriae sacrum" arc).

like i said in my other post, i'm not 100% married to the "foster kid realizes, ten years ex post facto, that their father was not in fact a murderer" storyline (particularly as i find it somewhat ham-fisted), but for the purposes of this thought exercise, we can more or less stick to those bare bones.

that said, one element from the original storyline we're definitely not going to retain is the part where they retconned the nature of sara's father's abuse from what we had always known it to be in earlier seasons.

episode 1

in real life, gary dourdan became a persona non grata at cbs after he left csi under unpleasant circumstances back in 2008—hence the reason why tptb at the show never brought warrick back even in flashback in any subsequent seasons.

that so, if these were "real episodes," there'd probably be no way to swing an appearance from him.

however, let's imagine this arc more like a fic, where we can play around with what characters we want.

so let's say that back in 2000 or 2001 or so, sara and warrick work an apparent murder-suicide case together wherein a father seemingly kills his wife and eldest child and severely wounds his youngest child, shooting them*, before dispatching of himself.

* i don't really think the gender of the kid would matter, so imagine what you like here. this kid can still be abby fisher or it could be anyone else. i'm going to use they/them pronouns in reference to the kid to leave the possibilities open.

whereas in the original case, the killings took place at a mountain campsite, let's say, in this one, they happen inside the family home (which makes them even more similar to sara's own family tragedy and also adds to the circumstantial evidence suggesting the father is the cuprit).

at this time, sara is still a csi level ii, so warrick, at csi level iii, is the actual lead on the case.

the youngest child's injuries are profound. however, when they do eventually come-to enough, warrick is able to interview them.

(sara plays no part in the interviews by her own choosing and never interacts with the kid herself at any point during the investigation.)

unfortunately, the kid is unable to provide any kind of useful information to warrick, as, at this time, they are very young and the situation is so traumatic that they simply can't recall much. they also may have sustained injuries during the attack which impact their cognitive abilities/memory*.

* whereas in episode 15x12 "dead woods," abby fisher is rather improbably shown to survive a close-range gunshot to the head with no long-term impact to her cognitive abilities, i think it'd be more realistic for injury to either be entirely noncerebral in nature or to result in some actual traumatic brain injury symptoms.

warrick being warrick bonds with the child pretty immediately—seriously: one of the joys of the early seasons is watching warrick interact with kids, like when he used to babysit lindsey willows or when he interviews suzy in episode 07x10 "loco motives"—and, as is often his wont with child victims of the crimes he investigates, gives his contact information to them and/or their new social worker, telling them to get in touch with him again in case they ever remember anything and/or even just want to talk about the case with him when they're older and interested in learning the facts.

however, in the absence of any testimony from the child which might suggest differently, the evidence in the case does seem to (more or less) indicate the father's guilt.

since the father is dead along with the rest of the family, there's no one to arrest, so, in consultation with grissom, warrick closes the case—a decision sara has no real reason to question at the time.

particularly as, even back then, as would be shown in the flashback scenes, the case does squeeg her out and somewhat trigger her, given its likeness to her own family history, and she feels like the sooner she can move on from it, the better.

fast forward to ten years later, to 2010 or 2011 (i.e., s10 or s11).

at this point, said surviving child, now an older teenager, appears in the lobby of the crime lab one morning at the tail end of the graveyard shift, requesting to see warrick.

of course, by this time, warrick is dead, so once it's determined what the kid wants—which is apparently to discuss their family's case—sara is summoned to meet with them, as she was the other investigator back in 2000/2001.

and let's say the detective on the case was ray o'riley, who is also, by 2010/2011, canonically deceased, so he's not available, either.

sara is, initially, shown to be uncomfortable at this prospect, citing the fact that she's not warrick and doesn't "have a way with kids" like he used to. however, since she is the only csi still working at the lab who has any direct knowledge of the case and its details—grissom signed off on it as supervisor back in the day, but of course he's no longer on staff—she's pushed into taking the meeting, never mind her objections.

here, i'm picturing ecklie being like, "come on, sidle, just deal with this. it was your case."

she initially tries to be very formal with the kid, but it should be clear to the audience that she's wildly uncomfortable and masking.

however, while her going line is that she's "just not good with kids," between the flashbacks and the real-time scenes, the true source of her discomfiture quickly becomes apparent: namely, the whole "orphan whose one parent killed the other in front of them" likeness between her and this kid in particular.

at first, she assumes the kid has come to the lab because, now that they are old enough, they want to hear the full details on their family's case, as per warrick's offer to them back in 2000/2001 (of which sara is aware because warrick wrote it on the business card he gave to the kid and/or their social worker back in the day).

however, to her great surprise, the kid corrects her: they've actually come to provide new testimony in their family's case, based on some newly retrieved memories of theirs.

much like in canon, they would explain that something had recently caused them to remember details about the murder they were unable to remember previously—and these details contradict the notion that their father was the murderer.

however, let's say that in this version of the story, this recollection on their part happens under even more dubious circumstances than the ones in abby fisher's case, like while the kid is under hypnosis or experimenting with hallucinogenic mushrooms or undergoing a controversial form of therapy or the like.

much as in canon, sara is skeptical, believing the kid simply wants to "rewrite their family history" (an impulse she understands but doesn't necessarily condone).

let's say unlike in canon: the thing that draws sara to this kid even more than just the similarities between their respective family histories is their personality.

honestly? the kid is whip-smart and well-spoken but also angry and rough around the edges; blunt and a little bit awkward, etc.

they match sara pretty much toe-to-toe during this interview, countering her every argument.

when sara tries to let them down gently and tell them that in the absence of any new physical evidence, there's no reason for the crime lab to reopen what seems to have been an open-and-shut case, they get in her face, citing (obviously researched) precedents re: the legitimacy of their chosen memory recovery techniques to her in an attempt to change her mind.

with all of their tenacity, it's hard not to be reminded of her younger self.

but in that resemblance, it's also hard for her not to think of how she operated as a young csi: that tendency she had to "chase rabbits" and let her feelings get in the way of her professional judgment.

she remembers how often she used to be disappointed back then; how she'd get her heart hung up on certain outcomes and then have it shattered when they didn't pan out.

let's say—again, since we're pretending we can get whatever "guest stars" we want here—that after sara goes home for the day, this dilemma is one she talks to grissom (on one of his visits to the states) about, explaining to him that for as much as this kid may want her to start digging, it's possible they may not like what she finds if she does, and she'd hate to cause them even more pain.

she opens up to him: she knows what it feels like to be this kid.

maybe she even admits that when she surreptitiously searched through her mom's legal files back in 2004 (see episode 05x10 "no humans involved"), she was hoping to find not "exonerating" information, per se—as her mother's guilt was never really in question—but at least some new context that might have helped her to better understand or come to terms with her mother's actions, or at least to fill in some of the blanks in her memories.

so she gets the impulse, you know?

(of course, she notes, she never did find any previously unknown information to contextualize her mother's crime. there's nothing that could ever really ameliorate "abused schizophrenic wife brutally stabs alcoholic abuser husband to death in his sleep," is there? the whole situation was just as awful and senseless as she always remembered.)

now, she wonders what her role is here as the adult: to play the realist and put her foot down, telling the kid there is no probative evidence to suggest their father's innocence; or to actually listen to the kid and reopen the investigation (because she understands how often kids—and especially foster kids—tend to have their thoughts and feelings discounted and she doesn't intend to be one of those grownups who just brushes off everything a kid says simply because they are a kid)?

at this point, grissom gives her a nudge: asks her when she looked through her mother's files what she felt when she discovered that there was no "hidden context" and things were always just as bleak and awful as she'd always known they were.

her realization: she accepted it.

was disappointed, but accepted it.

because at least then she knew for sure, you know?

and with that determination, sara decides to reopen the case, securing permission from catherine (who is at this time her supervisor) to do so, albeit perhaps more in a "well, i guess i can't really stop you" way than an "i fully support you in this endeavor" one.

she also enlists greg to help her—or rather, he volunteers because he remembers running dna on the original case back in the day, recalling some unknown exemplar collected from the crime scene he couldn't find a match to then and wanting to follow up on it now that codis is a more fully-developed technology.

the next morning, when the kid once again turns up at the lab, sara gives them the news that she's officially reopening the case, though she makes sure to stress: she's not promising them anything.

even with that caution, the kid still lights up.

for the first time, sara sees them smile—and on the one hand, it obviously terrifies her, having all this kid's hopes rest on her, but on the other, she also can't help but feel somewhat exhilarated, offering this kid at least a chance at an outcome she never had available to herself.

episode 2

this episode marks the beginning of sara's investigation in earnest.

the physical evidence in the original case is both limited and ambiguous in nature.

there were no signs of breaking and entering at the house.

the family members were shot with a gun belonging to the kid's father, and his prints were found on the weapon, which was recovered from next to his body, right where one would expect to find it had he dropped it after committing suicide.

however, there was also a pair of microfiber gloves found next to the father's body, which, while roughly the same size as his hands, were not ones the kid recognizes as belonging to their father.

sara and warrick's going theory at the time was that he had worn the gloves to shoot his family members but then taken them off to shoot himself, though they couldn't figure out why he would have done so, given that he didn't necessarily need to conceal his identity as the killer, his intention always being to commit suicide in the end.

inside the gloves, there is one unsmudged print. however, it is seemingly unrecoverable, due to the nature of the fabric.

the mystery dna greg couldn't match back in 2000/2001 comes from a sweaty handprint on a door handle to a part of the house seemingly out of the way of the murders; it doesn't belong to any of the family members, though it's unknown as of yet to whom it does belong or if it is even probative.

there is also circumstantial evidence to suggest that the kid's father may have been experiencing financial troubles at the time of the murders and that the kid's mother may have been having an affair back then, as well, of which her husband had perhaps recently become aware.

there was nothing at the scene to indicate anyone in the family struggled with assailants prior to their deaths, and both the mother and elder sibling were covered over with blankets, indicating remorse on the part of their killer.

meanwhile, the kid's "recovered memory" suggests that the man who came into their bedroom that night had some distinguishing physical characteristic that their father didn't have.

in episode 15x12 "dead woods," abby fisher's memory centers on a distinctive smell, and maybe the same thing could be the case here, though there might also be some other difference instead; i don't suppose this point really matters much, in terms of the overall story arc.

sara decides to run everything from the top, grissom-style (see episode 01x12 "fahrenheit 932").

of course, in this scenario, the added "warrick of it all" would throw a new wrinkle into the whole operation, as she would be sifting through his old work, potentially looking to overturn it.

imagine: once word gets out that sara is revisiting this case, nick becomes upset with her for distrusting warrick's original determination, feeling as if she is just being contrary and maybe even taking advantage of the fact that warrick isn't around to defend his own conclusions anymore.

and for what?

all because some weirdo (possibly drugged-up) teenager dreamt up a pseudo-memory ten years after the fact?

of course, given his ignorance of sara's past, nick doesn't understand sara's sense of personal connection with (and obligation to) this kid—and especially not because sara is trying with all her might to repress her own feelings and memories and "remain objective" on this case, not allowing her own trauma to color either her investigation OR her interactions with the kid.

—speaking of whom.

the kid turns up again at the lab for what is now a third morning in a row to check on sara's progress.

whereas in all of their previous encounters, the kid has had this somewhat surly attitude—think sara fending off grissom's inquiries about her "diversions" in episode 01x16 "too tough to die"—now, they are starting to come out of their shell.

while it's not a total transformation just yet (much like sara, this kid has been burned a lot and is fairly "slow to warm up"), they are becoming gradually more animated and expressing curiosity about sara and greg's investigative activities.

while it's clear they're trying not to get their hopes up too much—per sara's caution—it's also clear they're not fully succeeding in that trying.

more and more, they're becoming invested.

—and so is sara, who, despite her general trepidations about being "bad with kids," finds herself getting along with this one, especially as she starts to see their personality emerge out from behind that façade of jadedness, and especially as the kid starts to speak somewhat more freely about what their life in foster care has been like for the last ten years.

though sara lets on nothing to the kid regarding her own time in the system, we as the audience should be able to tell: the instability and uncertainty of "living with strangers," of always being the "odd kid out," is something she can very much relate to, and she feels for this kid.

deeply.

unfortunately, the gods of forensics don't seem to be on their side: it seems like whatever new investigative avenues sara and greg develop all eventually terminate in dead ends.

the mystery dna isn't in codis.

the details from the kid's memories are hard to get a fix on.

as the episode goes on, sara's stress grows.

she's still fielding passive-aggression from nick, who resents her taking on the case in the first place, and she is also starting to feel pressure from catherine and/or ecklie, who are annoyed with her for continually tying up department resources (including both herself and greg) as she pursues admittedly flimsy leads in a ten year-old solved case.

worse: the more time she spends with the kid, the harder she's finding it to keep her personal feelings out of the case AND out of her interactions with them.

despite her best efforts, she's getting her heartstrings tangled up in the investigation and in them.

she's also thinking about memories from her own past that she hasn't allowed herself to think about for a long time, and she's, frankly, worse for the wear for it.

after a hard shift fraught with disappointment for both her and the kid, she goes home to grissom, and we get a cuddling in bed scene where she admits, somewhat tearfully, to him that there is still so much she doesn't know about what happened between her parents; so much she can't remember either because it all happened when she was still so young or else because she's repressed it.

memory can be a fickle thing, grissom muses, and she agrees.

tells him she doesn't remember when her mom first got sick or why she (seemingly) never received treatment. doesn't remember when her father's abuse started. doesn't remember why her mother never tried to leave or if she perhaps did but maybe somehow failed. she can't recall what, if anything, precipitated the murder—if her dad's abuse of her mom had recently gotten worse or if her mom just finally after so many years snapped or if her mom's delusions perhaps had become stronger or more violent in nature.

she admits: there is so much about that night she has actively tried to forget and so much she is terrified she will someday be triggered to, against her will, remember.

worried about her, grissom wonders if maybe she should hand this case over to greg, but she tells him she feels she owes it to the kid to keep going, at least until she can definitively say whether or not their father was involved in the murders (regardless of if they ever identify any other potential suspects outside of him).

resolved, sara returns to work the next night.

however, as she starts to dig into the case again, she still isn't coming up with anything to challenge the original narrative.

at a team meeting, nick (who, remember, is the assistant supervisor on grave shift at this point) motions for her and greg to shelve the case, as active/current cases have been piling up in the meanwhile "and warrick already solved this one ten years ago anyway." sara pleads to be allowed to continue her investigation, and catherine compromises by pulling greg off the case while allowing sara to continue to work it solo. she also presents sara with a hard deadline: if she hasn't come up with anything probative by the end of the week, then she's got to drop the whole thing and move onto something new.

the kid appears—like clockwork—the next morning and, upon sara's dismal report, practically begs her to keep going, pushing her to dig deeper, to try just one more thing, please, please.

it's here where, overwhelmed by facing so much opposition on all sides, triggered, mixed-up, and half-defeated, sara finally snaps at the kid—says something harsh about how you can't rewrite history just because you want to; tells them that they have to learn to accept the fact that their father was a bad man, and there's nothing anyone can do to change that reality.

at this point, for the first time, the kid—who, until now, has been very tough and even recalcitrant—breaks.

starts crying.

and sara immediately feels awful.

apologizes—and, in an attempt to extend an olive branch—admits (in her awkward but heartfelt sara way) that she was maybe talking more about herself and her father than she was about them and theirs.

slowly, hesitantly, she tells the kid an abridged version of her story, enough that they also can see the similarities between their experience and sara's and know that she understands where they're coming from.

earnestly, she tells them: she wishes more than anything in the world that she could tell them for sure that their father was innocent and that she could find "the real killer" and lock them away.

but the truth, she says, is that that answer may not be the right one, however attractive it may seem.

she gets real with the kid: without more details, there's starting to be nowhere left to go in this case.

the kid offers to try more of the memory recovery technique—i.e., the hypnosis or the shrooms or the therapy—to help in the effort.

but sara tells them: memory is unreliable, and that technique is unproven.

better to stick to science.

she vows, for now, to keep going.

the kid is grateful to her, expressing that they feel like she "just gets it."

cut to the final shot of the episode: sara appearing super conflicted—honored, on the one hand, to have won this kid's trust, rare commodity that it is; but terrified, on the other, that she is still ultimately going to end up letting them down, which is the absolute last thing in the world she wants to do.

episode 3

insert sara wracking her brain to come up with one last avenue of potential investigation here.

eventually, she comes back to the latent print in the microfiber glove—one piece of evidence that was never run back in 2000/2001.

she thinks the print could be the key to unlocking this case now.

however, recovery will be nearly impossible using traditional collection methods.

even with mandy's help, there's no clear answer as to how to lift the print off of the microfiber without destroying it and while still maintaining all its ridge detail.

as the end of the work week is rapidly approaching, sara fears her time to investigate may well run out before she can derive a solution to her problem. not only does she feel like she's letting the kid down but also in a weird way warrick, who she knows would have done everything in his power to get to the truth, were he still around to run this investigation instead of her.

but just as she is about to succumb to total despair, who should approach her but nick, offering up a memory of his own?

—namely, a technique warrick taught him back in the day that might be applicable to her problem.

cue both nick and sara doing their best warrick impersonations: "i can pull a fingerprint off the air!"

of course, there's no guarantee warrick's technique will work, and it could still result in the destruction of the print. however, it is the best option sara has yet encountered.

so, when the foster kid appears at the lab the next morning, sara poses the choice to them: do they want her to take this one-in-a-million chance (knowing that it could well destroy the only remaining physical evidence that might possibly exonerate their father in the process of so doing) or do they perhaps want to hold off in the hopes that technology will eventually advance to the point where the print will be recoverable by some other, less invasive means sometime in the eventual future?

though they are nervous about the prospect, the kid ultimately decides to take the chance.

so sara pulls the print and is successful in so doing. however, she also destroys the surface from which she pulled the print as she collects it, meaning that the print now only exists in digital facsimile form.

mandy then runs the print, and eventually she determines: it doesn't belong to the kid's father.

its existence strongly suggests that another person was on scene during the commission of the murders and that they handled the murder weapon.

unfortunately, there are no hits on this mystery person's identity.

all of these determinations are made during the night, while the kid isn't at the lab, and sara knows that the next morning, she's going to have to tell the kid: while there's a possibility—and even a good one—that their father isn't to blame for the murders, as of yet, there is no empirical way to definitely prove as much, much less to find out who the real killer is.

and there may not ever be.

however, sara doesn't get the chance to tell the kid anything, because they don't turn up at the lab the next morning.

instead, their foster parent does.

come to find out, the kid had been lying to their foster parents, claiming they were going to early-morning "sat prep" and then beelining for the lab instead.

after one of the kid's friends accidentally let it slip to the foster parents that the kid had never actually attended any of the prep sessions, yesterday morning, the foster parents had trailed the kid to the lab. after the kid got home, they then confronted them.

now, upon discovering what the kid was up to, they have become concerned about the kid's level of investment in the case, fearing they are setting themselves up for a major letdown.

the foster parent explains the situation to sara.

apparently, after their family's murders, the kid bounced around in the system for years. during this time, they experienced all sorts of behavioral problems. earned a reputation with the dcfs as a "problem child."

the foster parent and their spouse were kind of a last-ditch solution; the only ones willing to take the kid in anymore.

it took them a while, but they were eventually able to earn the kid's trust and stabilize them.

now, after four or five years of living in their home, the kid is finally on an upswing: doing well in school, enjoying a social life, and just really thriving for the first time since the murders.

however, given the kid's obvious emotional investment in this case, their foster parent is worried that if they don't get the results they want, they might not be equipped to handle to the disappointment and could suffer a major backslide, right at a time when they're getting ready to "launch." the foster parent doesn't want to see them get derailed or "sacrifice their future for the past."

unaware that sara knows this fact all too well for herself, the foster parent explains: the stats on most "graduates" of the foster system are abysmal, so the best chance this foster kid has is to buckle down and study for the sat, get good grades, and attend college.

"that's their pathway out."

the foster parent has now come to sara in order to ascertain whether or not there is actually any hope that the kid will get the answer that they want, all said and done.

when sara explains the somewhat ambiguous outcome with the print, the foster parent decides not to tell the kid and asks sara for help in thinking up some way to "put the kid off the scent" for the time being, at least until they're emotionally prepared to hear potentially disappointing news.

though conflicted, sara suggests that the foster parent could perhaps tell the kid that she'd sent the print off to the fbi for further analysis and that it might be "in process" for a while (months or even years), and the foster parent thanks her for the idea, assuring her it's in the kid's best interest.

they also tell her: she shouldn't expect to see the kid back at the crime lab anytime soon, as it's probably not the best place for a teenager (and especially a traumatized teenager) to be hanging out before school everyday.

though sara outwardly expresses support for this decision, it's clear she's not 100% sold on the notion that concealing the truth is the best course of action here. she is also obviously devastated that she won't even get to say goodbye to this kid.

after her encounter with the foster parent, greg quickly sniffs out sara's upset, which she blames on the fact that she regrets not being able to get the kid a more straightforward answer.

however, he intuits: she's also sad because, despite all her protestations about not liking children, she's actually gotten attached to the kid, and now she's not going to see them again; she is going to miss them.

though he expects sara to resist this assertion, she surprises him by admitting he's right.

cut to a time jump.

the next morning.

and who should turn up at the lab but the kid, having snuck out on their foster parents yet again?

like sara, this kid has the uncanny ability to detect bullshit, and they're not buying the whole "fbi" story that their foster parents tried to sell them. they want to hear the truth from sara herself about her findings, even if it hurts, they say.

please.

at first, sara is reluctant to defy the kid's foster parents' wishes. she is also scared of sending the kid on a downward spiral and fucking up their life.

but then she realizes: she knows for herself how hard not knowing can be.

so she reaches deep inside herself, sits the kid down, and presents them with the truth in the best, most honest way she can think to, even though it's not altogether positive.

she admits: she can't tell them for certain that their father is innocent, though there's at least a chance he is. she also can't tell them who besides their father might potentially be to blame, though perhaps there is someone out there.

maybe, she conjectures, the databases will eventually kick out a match to that print or the dna that at the moment doesn't exist in their datasets; maybe technology will improve enough to someday fill in some of those blanks.

she'll absolutely keep trying, running the evidence periodically to see if anything turns up.

but in the meanwhile, there's no answer.

and there's also a chance that there will never be one.

on instinct, she confesses to the kid: she's never been certain if her mother habitually kept the knife she stabbed her father with under the pillow and pulled it out "in the heat of the moment" to defend herself OR if she had, in an act of premeditation, fetched it from downstairs after he fell asleep that night.

back when she was a kid, the detectives who worked her father's case had asked her, but she couldn't tell them.

and now she's never going to know.

"i keep trying to remember," she says, "the knife block in our kitchen. if there was an empty slot. if i heard her go back down the stairs and then up again. but i can't. that memory is just gone."

she's sorry, she says, she can't give the kid the answer they wanted.

but.

you can live with it.

there are ways to live with it.

someday, she promises, the kid will make other memories that their brain will allow them to retain; happy ones. they'll still carry the memories of their family with them, too. but they'll grow around the grief. have new experiences. give and receive love.

the kid ends up crying then, sobbing, totally unguarded and childlike, that they miss their family, and sara hugs them and says she knows, she knows.

cut to the end of the episode.

the kid's foster parents have come to pick them up from the lab.

they're apologetic to sara that the kid was "bothering her," but she tells them she doesn't mind. she also explains: she told the kid the truth, and they took it well.

"kids are more resilient than you think," she offers.

the foster parents agree.

they start to take the kid home, gently chastising them, on the way out the door, that now that they've skipped sat prep for a week, they're going to have to enroll in another session and take the course over again.

on hearing this statement, sara pipes up, "i could maybe help with that—if you want." stumblingly, she explains that she got a near-perfect score on the sat and attended harvard at age sixteen. "out of foster care," she adds.

and so it is that sara becomes this kid's tutor.

i imagine from this point, though the main storyline would be concluded, we (as the audience) would still see periodic evidence that sara was indeed keeping up with this kid and continuing to meet with them fairly regularly.

there could in time be other storylines for them.

if we want to go the tamer route:

maybe something to do with sara struggling to balance her work responsibilities with her new mentorship role.

alternatively or additionally, maybe her supporting the kid as they deal with some complicated feelings after their current foster parents propose adopting them.

on the one hand, they want to say yes, because they love their foster family and crave that sense of belonging. on the other hand, it feels like a betrayal to their bio family in some way, especially since they're so close to "aging out" anyhow.

maybe the kid meeting grissom and developing a relationship with him, too.

maybe the kid doing some kind of volunteer work or internship connected to the lab to help with their college applications, with sara supervising.

maybe them, with sara's help, starting a forensics club at their high school.

if we want to go the angstier route:

perhaps the kid still occasionally struggles. gets involved with substance abuse or has serious behavioral problems. ends up in trouble with the law, to the point that sara is obliged to confront them.

alternatively, maybe the kid has to unexpectedly move placements, and when they do, they confront sara: ask her why, if she supposedly cares so much, she doesn't offer to foster or adopt them herself. after all, aren't they close? doesn't she get it?

and who knows? maybe sara actually considers the possibility or even decides to go for it. has to broach the topic with grissom. reevaluate their lifestyle. could be an interesting development for both of them.

if we want to go the super angsty route:

turns out, the kid's dad didn't kill their family, and the real killer has somehow realized that the kid survived and the case has been reopened and that sara is periodically checking into it. maybe the killer then targets the kid, knowing they are the only person who could potentially identify them. maybe the kid is in real danger, and it's up to sara to catch the killer before they come to harm.

in any case, i'd definitely want to see more of sara interacting with this kid, building a real relationship with them over time—one that fit with her core characterization and didn't attempt to make her into something she wasn't.

excepting a scenario in which she did actually choose to foster or adopt this kid, i'd like her to toe that line, being a friend and supportive adult but not trying to fill the role of "mom."

i'd like to see her friendship with this kid challenge her in productive character ways and be consistently depicted, to the point where it was easy to believe that this bond was an important and regular part of her life.

anyway.

there would be other ways to write the whole thing than with this "memoriae sacrum" version, certainly.

but that's at least one way i could see the premise of "sara befriends a foster kid" working better than the option we're offered in canon.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

#answered #anon #asks: csi #**#my meta #meta: csi #hypothetical scenario #let's talk shop #csiverse

5 notes · View notes