#kyoko is someone who thinks she knows the meaning of human bonds. hence her comforting makoto post-sayaka's death about the 11037

[dangans-ur-ronpas]

byakuya togami is someone who suffered through a competition that didn't recognize family ties or status, and so in the events of thh he believes he exists as a being outside of the game - not that he thinks he's not a participant, but he's more like someone who is above all the others. someone who's seen this scenario before and knows how it goes, and can know the characters well enough to predict all the plot twists. his actions of chapter 2 are exactly for the reason he said; to make things more interesting, to purposely throw a wrench into the investigation and raise the stakes for everyone, himself included, because he is someone who exists outside the spheres of existence for all these people. he never doubted that he wouldn't have been able to save himself at the end of it, because the characters - as bumbling as they were - would have figured it out. he can manipulate the corpse because it is a doll to him, because chihiro was never a 'real' person in his eyes. and neither was anyone else.

(even kyoko and makoto were characters, albeit annoying, observant ones. the ones that looked out of the pages and back at the reader, that you can't help but see parts of yourself in, flaws and all, until they look back at you and point out all the flaws you never noticed in yourself. they're always surprising him, being unpredictable, and it makes this game feel less like a contrived theater play and more like a real competition).

what chapter 4 does is it destroys those conceptions. aoi literally slaps him into reality, because she should have been just another character beneath him, outside of his realm of existence, someone who never should have been able to even dream of interacting with him in such away. he can really get hurt here. he doesn't get shaken up by it, but it irks him. he thinks he knows everything about everyone involved, because for his life up until that point, he's had to learn and know, had to roughly understand the thoughts and drives of the common masses so they can be manipulated and the beliefs and motives of people like him so he could outdo his siblings.

but then during the trial, he gets surprised, he gets proven wrong, and he doesn't understand, and it needs to be explained to him by someone he previously considered lesser. because despite everything that he's done and accomplished, he has never tried to understand the meaning of human connection and just how far people might be willing to go for the sake of those bonds - and without that understanding, he is no better than any of the others around him.

#byakuya togami #danganronpa #(gazes through lens of orv). man..... #reccommend reading omniscient reader's viewpoint to anyone btw. top ten things that changed my brainwaves of all time #byakuya togami you are a terrible terrible person. i want to inspect you under a microscope #this is also part of why tonaegiri is so sososoososo important to me btw. fyi. if you cared #kyoko is someone who thinks she knows the meaning of human bonds. hence her comforting makoto post-sayaka's death about the 11037 #but makoto is the one who is most familiar with it all bc unlike kyoko and byakuya he hasn't been betrayed up to that point by his family #and so he CAN bring himself to understand what love trust and mutual understanding can do to someone #makoto naegi ultimate son of a normal healthy family #my thoughts