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ladililn · 5 years

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What Rogue One taught me about the Jedi, despite no Jedi actually appearing in it

So I initially started writing this for @rogueoneanniversary last year, and then Real Life happened and I disappeared from Tumblr and then Tumblr disappeared from me and now here we are, a full standard year later, and guess who still has (now very belated) Thoughts she wants to share? This girl! Because guess who still hasn’t gotten over this movie? This me! (Not sure whether @celebraterogueone is the correct place for this now?)

The first time I saw Rogue One, I completely missed the fallen colossus in the sands of Jedha. I just thought it was an overhead shot of some weirdly-shaped mountain. The second time, it took a moment for my brain to register and make sense of the image, and then I wondered how I'd ever missed it.

This one object, one blink-and-you-miss-it set piece, tells us so much about Jedha and the "ancient religion" of the Jedi and themes that run through the entire saga and even, I think, characters who aren't even in Rogue One (there's a reason the fallen Jedi statue looks exactly like Old Ben). It immediately calls to mind Shelley’s Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies[…]

[…]Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

To return for a moment to Admiral Motti’s “ancient religion” line in ANH—I’ve seen people point that out as a plot hole, or at least an early inconsistency, given that the Prequels show the Jedi faith alive and well a mere nineteen years earlier, which doesn’t seem very ancient. I find that charge specious for several reasons—first of all, “ancient” doesn’t mean “dead." I think you could easily and accurately refer to Judaism or Christianity as “ancient religions,” and both of those are alive and well now. The religion began a long, long time ago; thus it is “ancient.” I’d also argue that we hardly needed the Prequels to belie the idea that the Jedi Order was beyond human memory. We know in ANH that Obi-Wan used to be a Jedi Knight, and although Alec Guinness looked (and was) older than Obi-Wan’s actual age, there was nothing in that movie or the other two OT movies to indicate human lifespans differ significantly in the GFFA.

Still, I see the disconnect. On the one hand, we have a not-that-ancient man who was once one of the “guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.” On the other, you have Luke, who’s never even heard of the Jedi, and Han, who doesn’t believe in the Force. Again, some see these as errors, considering Han was already ten when the Republic fell, meaning the Jedi were still getting up to their incredible and well-documented feats when he should’ve been old enough to be aware and remember.

Explanations for this seeming disconnect can be found across the franchise, and they boil down to two main points: the Jedi’s (relative) lack of reach throughout the galaxy, and Order 66.

Here’s a fun figure: how many Jedi were there in the galaxy before Order 66? 10,000. Ten fucking thousand. That’s a ridiculously tiny number. A laughably tiny number. A Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale number. An entire galaxy, all those planets and star systems, billions and billions (trillions? quadrillions?) of sentient beings, and you could name every single Jedi in a few hours. Put them all in the smallest NFL stadium, and they couldn’t even fill half the seats.

Sometimes I find the Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale-ness of the GFFA frustrating (although IMO the “why is this galaxy filled with the same 10 people?!” complaints fans like to toss around ignores the history of the mythic storytelling tradition Star Wars is very much a part of and how the franchise fits into/plays with those genre conventions, but that’s a rant for another day). But in this case, I fucking love how ridiculous a number 10,000 is. I think it’s perfect. Our view of the Jedi’s relative size and stature in the galaxy is warped by the lens through which we see the galaxy; up until Rogue One, we’re pretty much just hanging out with Jedi. Not only that—in the Prequels and TCW, we’re hanging out with the best of the best, the council members and the freaking Chosen One. They’re the elite among the elite. The 1% of the 1%, only more like the .001% of the .0000000000000001%.

There’s an excerpt from the Rogue One novelization that I think illustrates my point perfectly. This comes from a section of the book that’s meant to be “supplemental data [from the] personal files of Mon Mothma,” a document entitled “Short Notes on the History of the Rebel Alliance Navy” (side note: how much do I love in-universe archival material? a whole fucking lot) (all emphasis mine):

What worked in the Clone Wars cannot work again: the partnership of Jedi Knights and Kaminoan clone armies constituted a peerless weapon that no longer exists.

Consider a brigade of clone troopers served by a Jedi commander: Such a unit might penetrate a world’s orbital defenses and seize control of the entire planet while taking (and inflicting!) minimal casualties… [W]hat blockade could be thorough enough to keep out a handful of determined star fighters and a single clone drop ship?

...With the Clone Wars’ end, the destruction of the Jedi Order, and the decommissioning of the Kaminoan cloning facilities, the self-proclaimed Emperor and his military advisers determined that the future of warfare was in large-scale naval weaponry—in a fleet of battleships and battle stations that could atomize any enemy, whether on a planet’s surface or among the stars. They rebuilt a military not for precision strikes but for hammerblows… No potential rebellion could dare eschew infantry altogether, but—lacking the elite support of the Jedi or clones—the cost in lives would be abominable…

From an in-universe perspective, the Jedi are OP as shit. Guys, these are a tiny handful of beings with the ability to move shit with their minds! They can run and leap insane distances at inhuman (yeah, I know that’s an impossible term in the context of a galaxy filled with humans and aliens, but you know what I mean) speeds, they can move in ways other people could never imagine, they have the sort of reflexes that allow Anakin to participate in a sport other members of his species, the most populous in the galaxy by far, physically cannot. They can manipulate the environment around them telekinetically. They can manipulate people telepathically. Their weapons can cut through anything. It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: they are literal space wizards. I know this is all obvious, but think about it from the perspective of your average galactic citizen: here is a microscopically tiny group of people who can literally do magic.

Why are there so few of them? Well, the Force moves in mysterious ways. But also, there don’t really need to be more. Talk about casting an outsized shadow: 10,000 people holding the entire galaxy together. Like Mon Mothma says, one Jedi (and their handful of trusty clone troopers) = an entire fucking battle station in terms of military power. And with the Sith so long in hiding (side note: the Rule of Two makes the Order look positively overpopulated), the Jedi have had no real opponent of their own stature and ability level to contend with for a long, long time. (We see, especially in TCW, how difficult it is for a non-Force user to be made into a credible threat for the Jedi in any circumstances. Those plotlines almost always require characters to be nerfed, either by having to hide their powers (because undercover), being restrained by the Code and not wanting to harm civilians (a Jedi’s primary weapon—though obviously not their only weapon—is hard to make nonlethal, or at least non-maiming), or conveniently forgetting most of their powers.)

Now, it could be argued that there do “need” to be more, because are they actually doing such a great job guarding peace and justice? Are they successfully holding the galaxy together? Even before the Clone Wars, we see in TPM that their power doesn’t extend all the way into the far reaches of the galaxy. Of course, you could also argue that the lawlessness of the Outer Rim has less to do with the Jedi’s inability, in terms of sheer forcible (sorry) power, to do anything about it, and more to do with the politics of the Republic, and you could be right. But that’s part of the point. The Jedi are enforcers of peace, not rulers. They’re not supposed to be making decisions on galactic policy. (That “supposed to” is key, but again: a story for another day.)

So my point is: sure, on Coruscant in the year 20 BBY, you’re not going to have anyone blinking and saying “Jedi who?” It’s a Core World—the Core World—and most of the characters we’re familiar with in the Prequel Era are by necessity among the upper echelons of galactic society, or at least moving in circles that bring them into contact with the upper echelons. High-ranking politicians, rulers of various worlds, heads of planetary militia—people who have reason to be interacting with the Jedi. (Even the criminals they interact with are top-level, crime bosses and legendary bounty hunters. You’re not going to call a Jedi to arrest a petty thief.)

99.999% of the galaxy’s citizens have never seen a Jedi in person. (We’re going to leave beside the issue of the media in the GFFA, because that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of, uh, mynocks?) The farther you get from Coruscant, the farther removed you are from galactic high society, the less you probably know about the Jedi. Han, growing up on the streets of Corellia, has no reason to be an expert on Jedi. I’m sure he’s heard rumors, but he is perfectly justified in being a skeptic, particularly once the Jedi disappear seemingly easily.

Which brings us to the Jedi Purge. Here’s the thing: Order 66 wasn’t just about literally killing all the Jedi and burning their Temple down. It was a planned cultural genocide as well. A revision of history. We all know the line from 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Palpatine destroyed the memory of the Jedi as surely as he destroyed the Jedi themselves. We’ve met, in various canon sources, history professors who lost their jobs because any mention, scholarly or otherwise, of the Jedi Order had become verboten. We’ve seen kids studying for their galactic history class in which one of the questions concerns Mace Windu, leader of a “criminal gang that interfered with a legal execution on Geonosis and sparked the Clone Wars.” Talk about revisionist: that goes against everything Palpatine himself said and did during the Clone Wars, a not-insignificant timespan of at least three years of his own personal history he has to revise, but in his role as Emperor, he can pull that off. This is what totalitarian governments do. We already see it begin in RotS, when Palps tells the Senate all about the Jedi Order’s attempt at a coup. And it’s effective! Five years on, Tarkin himself says the Jedi already feel like a distant memory.

And of course it’s fairly ludicrous (though not, I suppose, impossible) to assume that the statue on Jedha fell and was partially buried in sand within the last 19 years. But that’s one of the things I love most about Star Wars, something it’s particularly famous for: its Used Future aesthetic, the continued reminders that this is a galaxy with a history, one as complex and mysterious and tangled in its own legends as our own. That fallen colossus is one of many clues throughout canon that the Old Republic, the Jedi Order, belief in the Force—all were in decline long before the events of the Prequel Era.

Similarly, it’s clear that Jedha itself, once among the most holy sites in the galaxy, was also only a shadow of its former glory long before it got wiped off the map entirely. From Wookieepedia (again, emphasis mine):

As more of the galaxy was mapped, more direct hyperspace routes were discovered. These new passages made the old, winding routes, such as those connecting with Jedha, obsolete. The once-popular Jedha became an antiquated curiosity rather than a relevant destination, a location for those who desired spiritual guidance, a deeper purpose, or to simply exile themselves from the larger galaxy.

It’s typical Imperial excess to take the idea of Jedha’s long-buried secrets lost to the sands of time and literalize it by blowing the damn thing up. Horace Smith’s Ozymandias is less famous, but as (if not more) relevant to our discussion (“The City’s gone,” anyone?), and I leave you with its last stanza:

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express

Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness

Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,

He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess

What powerful but unrecorded race

Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

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elizas-writing · 6 years

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Movie Reviews: Venom

**Mild Spoilers for Content Warnings**

This film includes scenes with bright flashing lights, high pitched sounds, and vomiting. While brief, they’re not so great if you’re photo and/or sound sensitive or squeamish. So when...

Eddie goes to take pictures in the dark facility

Eddie eats out of a garbage can

Eddie is in/near the MRI machine

Venom is on top of a building

And the big climatic showdown.... those are your cues to turn away and/or cover your ears.

On with the review!

I can’t remember the last time I saw such a mixed-bag of a movie in every sense of the phrase like Venom. The shared rights between Sony and Disney with Spider-Man in film is confusing enough as is, especially with the former starting universes completely unrelated to MCU. But at the same time, given the titular character’s embarrassing portrayal in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, it’s long overdue to do justice and give something better than....

... that.

With spooky, gritty trailers promising a dark character study to ring in October, it definitely pays off in ways I did and didn’t expect. However, despite some of the mindless enjoyment of the film and character, Venom also seems like it’s holding back from doing something greater to stand out among the likes of MCU and DCEU. But at what point does that really matter?

Tom Hardy plays investigative journalist, Eddie Brock, who built a hell of a career uncovering corruption throughout San Francisco but often gets in trouble for his bluntness and means to get the story. His next lead is the bioengineering startup company, the Life Foundation, after one of their rockets suddenly crashes on Earth after a mission to find habitable life in space. Going against his boss’s warnings and even snooping through his fiancee’s emails with her law firm defending the company, Eddie pressures the CEO, Carlton Drake, to answer about the crash and numerous mysterious deaths surrounding their pharmaceutical tests. Not only is he forcibly removed from the facility, but he also loses his job and fiancee when she finds out what he did.

Six months pass, and Eddie, down on his luck to find work and mental stability, meets a doctor working for the Life Foundation who reveals the secrets of their experiments. When the rocket crashed, it was carrying alien specimens which Drake calls symbiotes, and he believes by giving these creatures human hosts, it’ll unlock secrets for humanity to survive outside of Earth. But, as you do, these experiments are killing all his human subjects, so Eddie goes to further investigate. One of the symbiotes escapes and latches onto Eddie, giving him superhuman strength, hyper-acute senses, and an insatiable hunger. The symbiote reveals himself to Eddie and offers his aide to keep him safe from Drake (mainly by tapping into Eddie’s impulses). But the two have bigger problems on their hands when another escaped symbiote wants to use Drake technology to bring back more of their kind to take over the Earth, and this unlikely pair will have to work together before further disaster strikes.

The film has all the right pieces to create a better than average film, and when they’re done well, they really shine. Tom Hardy is a great actor choice for this rendition of Eddie Brock. He fancies himself a bad boy with the black clothes and motorcycle, but he always wants to do right for society in calling corruption where he sees it. But with his life spiraling out of control and a symbiote latched to him, he’s constantly on edge and struggles to maintain his morality. Hardy is also spectacular lending his voice to Venom with the help of some killer editing where you can hardly recognize him. Of course, he’s incredibly threatening and you never know what’s on his mind and what he has to gain out of all this. But there’s also this odd, buddy-comedy vibe the longer Venom and Eddie get to know each other. Venom is really more like a curious, impulsive five-year-old who grows a soft spot for Eddie and life on Earth.

It’s really fun to see Eddie and Venom figure out a balance as an anti-hero between doing the right thing and using any destructive means necessary to get the job done. And I really wish more of the film was like this.

I know audiences are miffed by the critics’ harshness, but despite how much I liked Venom, I can’t totally disagree that it’s so choppily edited together and some of the tonal dissonance is a bit distracting. The trailers and exposition build up a deep, dark study of Eddie’s character as he becomes more desperate to get the truth, breaks his fiancee’s trust, self-sabotages major chunks of his life, and passes the blame to Carlton Drake. But all that potential drama is wrapped up too quickly just to get to the action scenes, show off Venom’s powers, and Eddie going twitchy. Don’t get me wrong; I love some mindless action and Tom Hardy being silly, and Venom has a wonderfully aggressive fighting style. But the exposition drags when the built up themes around corruption, being an anti-hero, and the limitations of science just go no where.

I honestly have no idea what Riz Ahmed is doing as Carlton Drake. He’s somewhere between a stereotypical cartoon-y villain, but also wants to be taken seriously as a corrupt scientist without regards to morals. It’s one of the bits of tonal dissonance which just doesn’t work because sometimes you can’t tell when you’re supposed to be scared of him or laugh at him (especially when he lapses in logic like how his massive facility has only two inept security guards and no cameras). It’s hilarious to see him pull the cliches, and Ahmed’s working the best he can with the given material. But at the same time, you’re not sure what the hell the intention was behind this portrayal or if it suffered from the choppy edits. Again, it’s build up with no pay off, which sucks because the whole power and responsibility dynamic is super fun to see in Spider-Man villains.

The fight scenes suffer some of the worst edits as some of the CGI looks a bit too rushed out and plastic-y (though thankfully it doesn’t look like a video game which is more than I can say for Spider-Man 3). It’s also super obvious this was meant to be an R-rated film, but for some reason, they backed out and made it PG-13 at the last second and cut the decapitations. Given the rest of the film’s excess violence and adult themes, they honestly should’ve just gone all out. Screw the kids; just commit to a gritty, but funny anti-hero film.

And that’s the film’s biggest problem is its lack of commitment to one solid vision. It almost wants to follow the Deadpool formula minus the satire, but never goes full force in its ideas except for the two main characters’ interactions. It rushes over the character drama to get to all the action and big climax, and then it just ends. They definitely had another 10-20 minutes of content to squeeze in, but that was all cut just to get something out after over a decade in-and-out of pre-production. I can’t totally blame the studio since it was probably a bitch to work out the rights once Disney got a hold of Spider-Man and if this would technically be an MCU film. There is a dedicated team doing their damnedest to deliver something great with all their limitations, and the effort shows when you know where to look. And to its credit, it’s nowhere near the same level of dumpster fire like Suicide Squad or Justice League where they shoved so much shit in without rhyme or reason where I can’t even laugh at some of the bad stuff.

For all its flaws, it’s hard for me to hate Venom. The foundation is solid enough and if they commit to sequels, I hope they can learn from their mistakes to strengthen this new universe. I love Eddie and Venom’s interactions and their unique brand of anti-hero. The action is super fun and intense when it’s not too choppily edit. I love the little twist of comedy in an otherwise dark story. Hell, it’s one of the few instances I have an Eminem song playing on repeat. Those moments are definitely worth toughing out the slower and more ludicrous moments (especially the two end credits scenes). I’ll take “turd in the wind” over...

... that... any day.

If you’re looking for a super polished film and that great adaptation of a Venom origin story, this is probably not for you. But if you want to just shut your brain off to the Rotten Tomatoes scores and find another mindless guilty pleasure to enjoy, you’ll definitely get some great moments worth at least one viewing. Pick your poison, and see what you take away from it.

If you enjoyed this review and what I do here, consider buying me a ko-fi to show your support!

#venom #venom movie #venom marvel #eddie brock #marvel venom #marvel #sony #movie #movie review #movie reviews #review #reviews #my writing

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oumakokichi · 7 years

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Do you believe the V3 mastermind was a victim or they are really evil all along?Implying mastermind was brainwashed, I curious if anyone accept them as innocent despite their action.

The thing is, there aren’tany implications that the ringleader was brainwashed. Whether the ringleaderseized control of the game forcibly in order to make a “copycat rendition” ofsomeone else’s killing game, or whether they went up to Team Danganronpa andasked to be made into the ringleader specifically, the implications are stillthat the ringleader was a very deliberate and knowing antagonist who didabsolutely everything willingly, and had funwith it (which is why they’re such a fun character, if you ask me).

I’ll be discussing spoilers for the whole game under thecut, including the ringleader’s identity, so only read if you’re comfortablewith that!

There’s no reason to assume that Tsumugi was brainwashedinto anything she did in ndrv3. The word “brainwashing” certainly comes up afew times in-game, particularly in Chapter 2, but never for anything that hasto do with her. Angie’s art talent is implied to work very similarly to Mitarai’s,and it’s heavily, heavily impliedthat she brainwashes people both on her island and the Religious StudentCouncil into doing what she wants, but that’s about it. And even then, Angie’sbrainwashing is never brought up on as much of a plot-relevant level as Mitarai’s,nor does it seem like it’s infallible, considering Saihara keeps refusing tofall for her gaslighting in her FTEs and prison mode.

But as for Tsumugi, the term never applies to her. There’sno implication of brainwashing or mind control or anything of the sort in herFTEs or her prison mode events; if anything, she’s very obviously pulling thestrings and knows much more about things that are going on with the othercharacters, with Saishuu Academy, and with the killing game. If she wereactually brainwashed or just another poor victim in the midst of the group,that would need to be foreshadowed and clues would need to be presented—consideringthey’re not, I’d say it’s pretty safe to say she does everything of her ownaccord. Tsumugi is a master manipulator, not really one to be manipulatedherself.

I think people still have a mistaken impression that the rememberlights are brainwashing tools the same way that Junko’s and Mitarai’sbrainwashing videos in dr3 were. But that’s not the case. Everything we knowabout the remember lights proves that they work much, much weaker than any ofMitarai’s brainwashing videos.

Tsumugi herself says that once you know how they work, i.e. by implanting false memories into your mind andtriggering a reaction somewhat like déjà vu, that pretty much negates theireffectiveness. Ouma himself is living proof of this; he obviously doubts theremember lights’ credibility right from the start, and as such, is the onlycharacter early on who doesn’t believe that their memories or backstories arereal. Just by doubting that the remember lights are telling the truth, you canmake yourself immune to their effects. Knowing for a fact that the memories on them are fake means never believing asingle thing they implant into your mind.

As the ringleader, Tsumugi was the one responsible forcreating the remember lights used on the other characters. We know very littleabout how the killing game show works, but we do know at least a few of Tsumugi’sprivileges as the ringleader. The first is that she had access to the secretroom in the library, along with the Mother Monokuma which informed her of allthe goings-on in the school and allowed her to directly control Monokuma. Thesecond is that she could use the remember light setup in one of the classroomsto make new remember lights in plain sight, since even if someone walked in onher using it, it was programmed to close up and hide itself the moment someoneelse’s footsteps approached.

Since Tsumugi was the one programming those remember lights,selecting the memories to input into everyone else’s minds, we know then for afact that she definitely knew how those remember lights worked. There’s no wayto assume she could’ve been unknowingly brainwashed into being the ringleaderor set up to take the fall for someone else while also knowing how to use theremember lights herself. It just wouldn’t add up—therefore, we have to assumeshe was doing everything willingly.

I’ve mentioned it before in a few other pieces of meta, butone of the things I like the most about ndrv3 is how much of an element ofchoice and free will there is among the cast and their decisions. Certainly,the remember lights and their implanted backstories can make certain charactersmore likely to do something or to behave in a certain way. It can influencetheir mindsets, particularly when they don’t know how those remember lightswork, and it can really influence their motivations. But there’s always an element of choice.

Any of the characters had the potential at any point in timeto start acting differently from how they were “scripted” to act on the show.Saihara is perhaps the best proof of this: despite being picked by Tsumugi tobe a detective who was “weaker than anyone,” he changes arguably the most outof the entire cast, putting aside his hat as a symbol of his insecurities andfear of exposing the truth by as early as Chapter 2. Every single time Saiharabecame stronger and more capable of handling the truth he was so afraid of,every single time Himiko began facing her emotions head-on and tackling thingsenergetically instead of using her laziness as an excuse, we’re given proofthat the characters can change at any point in time, as long as they reallywant to.

To assume that Tsumugi was “brainwashed” into being theringleader or was “actually innocent all along” is to deny a huge part of hercharacter, and that takes all the fun right out. Who wants a ringleader or amastermind figure that was only actually doing it because they were justanother pawn in someone else’s schemes? Tsumugi is so incredibly fun andinteresting as an antagonist because she definitelythrives on pulling strings and manipulating scenarios from behind the scenes—sheloves to plant little seeds of doubt, sit back, and observe her handiwork, andyou can really tell on a reread.

Trying to delegate her to the role of “brainwashed victim” alsopretty much ignores all the reasons why it’s heavily implied Tsumugi throwsherself into “the world of Danganronpa” and fiction in general so much. Tsumugiisn’t someone manipulated or forced into the bad guy role. Rather, she’ssomeone who asked for it, whether bydirectly asking Team DR to let her be the ringleader on the show or by puttingon a copycat show of her own as the epilogue implies.

She’s a cautionary tale of the dangers of immersing oneselfin fiction too much. Ndrv3’s ending provides much-needed commentary on the waysin which fiction can and does influence the world around us. Tsumugi has thrownherself so far into fiction that she no longer wants to even interact withreality and willingly chooses to view the people around her as little more thanexpendable fictional characters. She, and the people like her (of which thereare implied to be many in the ndrv3 killing game audience), claim thateverything’s okay “because it’s justfiction.” Fiction is “just a lie,” therefore it “can’t influence reality anyway.”

These words are a reflection of her mindset, and provide uswith a little bit of a closer look at how desensitized society must be in ndrv3in order for this killing game to have thrived for 53 seasons. If Tsumugi is avictim of anything, perhaps she’s a victim of the state of society in ndrv3,which is heavily implied to be bleak and boring and horrible enough that thepressure makes people want to live inside “the world of Danganronpa.” But eventhen, that’s by her own choice.

Characters like Saihara are implied to have been just asdesperate to escape from reality, judging by his audition video, and yet he changedhis outlook and his behavior drastically by choice. So we can assume thatTsumugi remains on the outskirts of things, manipulative and uncaring ofeveryone around her while viewing them all as “fiction” because… she wants to.Because she honestly values the entertainment of the killing game more than thelives of the people she’s with—after all, those lives are completely disposable.As she and Monokuma point out several times in the game, there are plenty of people who would step up totake the characters’ places on the show, who would love to be willing substitutes if it meant getting to be a part ofDR.

Tsumugi is fun as a character because her mindset is soabsolutely cold and removed from everyone and everything around her. The factthat she can’t entirely view them all as fictional characters despite wantingto drives her up the wall in Chapter 6, which is why she becomes so desperateto try and crush their spirits and make themaccept the fact that that they’re “nothing more than fictional characters.”

Since we’re never given any indication at all, not in themain story or Tsumugi’s FTEs or bonus mode content, to think that she wasactually just brainwashed into taking the fall for everything, I would say it’shighly unlikely. And if it did turn out to be the case, I would be incrediblydisappointed, since it would take away everything that makes her so enjoyableas an antagonist. Even in the epilogue, Saihara speculates about how muchTsumugi said was the truth and how much was a lie—but he never once speculates thatshe might’ve been a victim just like the rest of them.

I think people’s refusal to acknowledge Tsumugi as her ownantagonist, and a very different kind of antagonist from Junko at that, islargely because people don’t know what to make of her or the unansweredquestions that she left. But people fail to realize that even dr1 hardlyaddressed all the questions or mysteries by the end of the game. The state ofthe outside world and how much of what Junko said was true or not was left in acatbox at the end of dr1 in very much the same way that Tsumugi’s mysteries areleft in the catbox by the end of ndrv3.

It wasn’t until dr0 and sdr2 that Kodaka decided to providemore explanations about Junko’s motivations, her talent and backstory, and whatexactly happened to the dr1 survivors after opening that door. So in the sameway, I think future side materials will shed a lot more light on Tsumugi—after Kodaka’shad his fun teasing players along for a while, at least.

Anyway, this is my take on it! There’s a lot of room for speculationwith Tsumugi and whether she was lying about certain claims or not, but it’s atleast pretty clear from all the evidence in-game that she wasn’t brainwashed,at least. And that’s something I’m grateful for, really. I’ve had more thanenough of brainwashing subplots thanks to dr3. Thanks for asking, anon!

#ndrv3 #drv3 #new danganronpa v3 #tsumugi shirogane #shirogane tsumugi #ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta #okay to reblog #anonymous

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