this was a wild ride...

so for like, some scawwy history context

at the end of that game you got a wish if you'd linked with your monster partner, so he had one

and he had some of the same worries about whether he'd lose all his character development from the game when he went back home, and for that reason he'd been kind of like, skeptical of whether using a wish would even work for him

because he thought anything he wished for might just get overwritten so it would be a waste

which would normally be like well whatever try it anyway, but he had a huge crush on muelsyse and she was doing this research to try to save her whole race and he was like ok well that is a lot more important than any of the shit i'd be doing so might as well put this to use in a way that actually matters and won't just get negated by gag anime rules

(and also he thought he'd have more of a chance with her in the future that way lmao)

so anyway he used his wish for her instead of himself which was like one of the best things he ever did, and he was like well i really have had a whole lot of character development so maybe it'll stick this time! it'd probably be hard to undo all of this!

which he only really half believed but he thought there was a chance

he went home and like, was kind of better for a while, he got a part time job as an administrative assistant at a law office after all the fucking cyoa item wills he wrote up in scawwy lmao

but really quickly fell into the same old habits and traps and got influenced too much by his shitty NEET brothers again and so that only lasted for a few months before he just started slacking off really badly and quit

and then was right back to doing fucking nothing all day every day and having a meaningless life as a shitty freeloader, and being so far removed from everything that had happened in scawwy, it just kind of lost a lot of its impact on him after a while and he didn't think about it too much

he thought about wanting to see mumu again sometimes but then like, quickly stopped thinking about it each time because he was like actually it would be fucking embarrassing if she saw that i just ended up a total worthless loser again after talking about trying to make changes

and he didn't want to dwell too hard on that lmao

what's been really interesting is that the fourth season started earlier this month after almost 2 years since the last movie and 4 years since the last proper tv season

and the vibes of it are like

really weird

it does not feel like the old show at all and almost feels more like the osomatsu-kun 80s cartoon

in the past seasons they always had multiple stories in an episode, some of them were just full episodes of like 10 short gag segments

so even when you had segments that were just them being lazy and unemployed it somehow still felt fast paced because of the way the episodes were structured

with this season so far everything has been one story stretching out for the entire episode and there's actually been notable continuity

and only one episode out of the four has actually been very funny imo (the crew cut episode was so great i will fight anyone over that one)

and it just feels like it's really emphasizing the depression that they never really talk about a lot

like the first five minutes or something of the season premiere was just each of them waking up and going nah and going back to sleep

anyway THIS SEASON DIDN'T START UNTIL NEAR THE END OF THE GAME so i had no idea it was going to be like this but they really did just pick up where the season 3 finale and the takoyaki party movie left off with the aimless depression thing and crank it up which ended up working so well for the mental state i had him in

so when he got to this game he'd been back home for a year or so, he already knew they'd been picked up for a fourth season after that long break, and he was just very much back the old canon state of mind

which is generally being selfish and manipulative and lazy

a huge part of what had made him grow so much as a character in each of the other games was the general circumstances of the game

he's used to a world where nothing really matters, consequences don't really stick long term, no one stays dead, everything's scripted, everything's for the sake of entertainment

sprace was where he had the most dramatic character development because it was just like. the opposite of that in every way, and he in particular got hit so hard right off the bat

no one knew what was happening on the ship, people were just getting possessed and dying with no rhyme or reason, the npcs didn't know what the hell was happening either, and his roommate was the first person to die

so there was soooo much uncertainty and he had to confront the fact that he'd been thrown into what seemed like a completely different genre in the first fucking week and he didn't know how to deal with people dying in ways that weren't funny that they weren't (as far as they knew) going to come back from

and he's also canonically really scared of the dark and has a really bad time alone at night so losing his one roommate a week in fucked him up really bad and made him a lot more receptive to people than he otherwise would have been, and he also bonded super hard with his week 0 curfew group for a similar reason

anyway I HAVE A MEETING i will get back to this later

two days later...

anyway the bottom line is that sprace was like laser targeted character development

scawwy did not have the same impact because in that one everyone always knew what the cult was and what the ultimate goal was and why things were happening, it felt more scripted and he was a lot more comfortable with that even though the living conditions sucked ass

he did still have a w1 cyoa and that fucked him up a lot but in that one they spent most of their time separate rather than together like in sprace, and he like. had an emotional breakdown after being alone for a month and a half and went and murdered his friend in a nightclub so like. the vibes were very different lmao

he did end up getting attached to the people in the haunted house but on the whole he was just less open and more of a cold pragmatist when he needed to be

i feel like his overall development there was less about forming attachments and relationships and more about taking action and getting involved and doing hard things

and that version of him was closer to canon than the sprace one was

and then the allstars version of him was basically just the scawwy version but with most of his development erased so in a lot of ways he was almost fresh from canon

and the circumstances of that one were like. the perfect storm of NOT having character development lmfao

because everything was for entertainment and there wasn't much question that everyone would come back at the end of the game so dying didn't really mean anything

so it was just like his normal life basically but with more depressing scenes peppered in

so the stakes felt sooooo low to him... he didn't want to die because the process of dying sucks but that was about as far as that went

he could never understand the people who got so upset over every death because he was just like yeah it sucks that they had to go through that experience but they'll get over it??

which is a big part of why he ended up finding scara and ryo and alex refreshing lmao he didn't have to pretend to be compassionate with them like he did with the nicer people

having rosamund and ichiban there who'd both been so close to his sprace version was really complicated because they both said a lot of things to him that he was just like "how the fuck were you friends with me if this is how you think, i am callous and underhanded and everything you guys don't like???"

and it got under his skin a lot because he felt like that other version of him was a much better person than he was ever going to be and it felt shitty comparing himself to him

and he was just like welp sorry i'm going to be a huge disappointment for you!!! but he also like. legitimately didn't want to fuck things up for his other self and part of why he tried to make his murder look better was because he didn't want them to see him as the kind of person who'd murder someone for a prize

and go back and see the other version of him like that too when that one had done the impossible and turned out kind of decent

anyway week 1 had scawwy as one of the destinations and like. i gave most people my same stupidly long introspective starter for pcs there but

being there again after a year back home really suddenly slapped him in the face with all the memories and feelings he'd had there before and he remembered how much he had changed there, even if it wasn't the same level of change as sprace

and that was the first time he actually became fully aware of just how fucking bad his backsliding had been because he did not feel like the same person who'd been there anymore

and he remembered how serious he'd been about changing his life at the end of it and how he'd really thought maybe he'd finally changed enough that his development couldn't get undone that time and things would be different

and was like lmao well that was my best shot at that and it didn't happen

and it's really never going to happen as long as i'm part of this anime and things keep working like this and i have no choice in the matter because i'm stuck being whatever character the writers want me to be forever

and immediately decided to kill someone for the storyteller's ink to change that lmao

because he could not deal with the idea of going through another one of these fucking things and then going home to be the same shitty person again, and ink in particular just seemed like it had a better chance at working than anything else did given what his world is

i submitted a proposal but it got pushed to the following week which lmao

it was pretty much always going to be either wis'adel or yoru because from what little they knew about how things worked at the time he was like i need to make this look a past game callback and the best way of doing that is to pick someone who was in a game with my identical brother and put in a bunch of references to what i've heard of that game from seo

he didn't want to kill astolfo because they were on kate's team and seemed nice and seo was on his own team, so it had to be one of the unpleasant wenis bitches

he REALLY wanted it to be wis'adel because he didn't know what the fuck yoru's deal was and he actually did feel kind of weird about killing someone who looked like asa even when he didn't know she was literally there

but then she killed w1 and got caught and he was so mad about it for screwing him over specifically lmfao he didn't give a shit about anything else

he voted for rosamund because he didn't want wis'adel to get executed because he wanted her to be around for him to murder the next week

and he was such a shitty bitch to her in jail lmao telling her she sucked at getting away with murder

so he was stuck with yoru!!!

and angrily planned his stupid taco bell murder all week

his claire's mark was this cute little rhinestone bow on his nails and the funny thing about that was that 1 - it was the same manicure he'd had all week because he'd planned this way in advance and if anyone had asked about that it would have been a clue to the fact that it was premeditated and definitely not possession

and 2 - i fucking photoshopped the rhinestone bow onto the nails myself so it REALLY WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE THERE

if anyone had looked super close the painting was messy around the bow because it was fused to his nail and he had to paint around it rather than sticking it on top of a coat of paint

he also ended up having his cyoa that week which was based on severance and just. jesus. if he'd had any doubts before that solidified how badly he felt like he needed to do it because the themes of being stuck in a meaningless loop while someone else has control over your life were sooooo relevant to his actual life and motive

that drilled it in really hard and in that cyoa they all murdered the fuck out of a bunch of their coworkers for their own freedom so he was super in that mindset that night anyway

and on that note he felt pretty close to the other people on the cyoa because they'd all seen each other willing to be shitty murderers for selfish reasons so he figured they'd understand, which is a huge part of why he got so mad at anders later after he got scaped, it just felt like this big betrayal and a throwing stones in glass houses situation

anyway he'd been holding onto the same sponsorship since the first week, which was the hyperfixation one, and as soon as midnight hit he used that on yoru to make her obsessed with shitty tex mex food to try to lure her to taco baco so he could do his wenis themed murder there

unfortunately she showed up with a big sword that deflected his first bullet and then he slipped on a fucking sauce packet and ended up shooting the other two really terribly as he was falling on his ass

so he was just like shit i should have made a backup plan!!!! and tried to run somewhere else to think through this as she was now chasing after him instead

but he's not a fast runner and he also just kept randomly thinking about spreadsheets every so often from the cyoa effect lmao so it did not go great, he tried to duck into the skating rink and she followed him in there and it was just a slapstick ice routine with him falling all over the place

she was about to stab him with the sword (while he was just like WELL FUCK MY STUPID GAG ANIME LIFE I GUESS!!!) but then asa took control and made her miss and told him to hurry up and kill her, and since it was AU week she was actually the asa he knew from scawwy!!!! and he truly did not even know she was there until that moment so he was just like :tails:

but he did it!!

and then washed off the blood in the shitty terminal 0 basement shower he spent the whole first weekend complaining about lmao

he did not regret it but he did feel Not Great about the asa part of it and was a little shaken up by that

he had some ice burn on his palms and bruises on his knees from falling on the ice but he'd specifically not shown anyone his injuries when he got back from cyoa so he could try to pass off any injuries he got that night as ones he'd gotten there and thought that would be a better cover than using the defibrillator

and like, he had gotten his palms kind of fucked up by thumbtacks during the cyoa, there were a bunch of little pricks and cuts, so it was kind of believable but they were never that red and definitely should not have been by saturday

i had not intended for him to investigate his own murder but that ended up being the location suggestion when i volunteered so i was just like 🥹 sure!!!! but it got an achievement so hey

the really damning evidence was that there was this taco sauce drip on the inside of his phone case that had dripped in there while he was trying to clean the sauce off the outside of it, which had stained the case in a few spots

but he just lied so smoothly and confidently lmao and hilariously tried to pretend it was bloodstains from cyoa return instead of taco sauce because blood was actually less suspicious

roxana asked why he hadn't replaced his case and he was just like "ugh i still had the dumb office effects from that thursday trip through yesterday and i didn't want to 'use my PTO' for a trip to the mall to get a new one"

he was very ??? about why she didn't say anything about it to everyone when he was pretty sure she didn't believe his bullshit but he took it

and then they had the taco sauce footprints narrowed down to four people and still no one checked him???? so he was like OKAY????

he was sure that people would suspect him afterward once they had more time to reflect on the evidence after the trial so he was just like are you fucking serious when everyone kept saying after he confessed to it that they hadn't

and might have not done the whole shady confession thing if he'd realized they weren't even close??? but also he felt justified about shitting on wis'adel's ability to get away with murder since he'd apparently done such a better job of it!!!

he also absolutely would not have done that in a first game but since it was a crau and they knew the gy existed and he'd already gotten a letter from boothill he was like well everyone's going to find out in like five days anyway when yoru either writes to someone to complain about him or mails him a package of live bees

so he wanted to get ahead of that and shape the narrative in a way that would make people not hold a grudge against him or make him a likely revenge target

he did not technically lie about anything in that confession, he just left blanks and didn't explain that the mindset he'd been in and things he'd believed at the time were just Him rather than coming from an outside influence

he DID believe he was trapped in a loop and that this was the only way out of it!! and he DID think it had to be yoru because the auditors would like the visual callbacks, but it was just his own judgment about what would be the most convincing for a fake possession rather than something someone made him think

what he was not doing was asking for pity, he was just trying to do preemptive damage control and it drove him crazy when people kept being super sympathetic about the terrible experience he'd gone through, like, ok thanks can we please stop talking about this!!! even if he really had been possessed he wouldn't have cared that much!!!

i don't think anyone ever straight up asked him if he'd been possessed, they just assumed it, which, like. had been the goal. but he was also always pretty clear with anyone he talked to about it that he didn't get a phone call or feel like a switch got flipped like rosamund had described, he still felt like himself and made his own choices based on what

he'd believed in that moment

in w5 when a few people asked him he did straight up say he wasn't possessed by an outside entity but usually used a backup story to blame it on the cyoa effects instead lmao which ALSO wasn't exactly a lie since the cyoa did very much have him focused on that motive and he was in the kill-for-freedom mindset even more than he otherwise would have been

but he was still full of shit and never admitted to planning in advance

i'll continue this tomorrow my brain is too tired

ok uhhh

at one point kate explained the yoru and asa arrangement to him better and after that point he was like oh i REALLY don't feel bad at all about killing yoru actually, it just sucks that whatever happens to her has to happen to asa too

which is icly the only reason he didn't kill her again as soon as she revived w5 lmao oocly the reason was natalia was having surgery on saturday and i couldn't guarantee i wouldn't have to leave during trial

he was fully intending to kill again w6 since people in the gy INCLUDING ASA had asked him to do it for the achievement, and he actually did plan to use an incentive to give asa full control over yoru in that case

he did say that in a letter to haru later and they talked about it so haru was going to try to use his for that which HOPEFULLY FUCKING WORKS SINCE YORU ALSO ENDED UP GETTING ONE

so he ended up feeling pretty neutral toward both him and rin in the end... like he was still annoyed with both of them but whatever

he was super pissed at everyone who voted for him w5 but he was also aware that it was objectively fair lmao it was just offensive because it felt like a straight up popularity contest and he's already sensitive about having LOSING POPULARITY POLLS as a skill on his profile

anyone who came to talk to him that night and was actually supportive went way up in his ranks which is also why he can't be that mad at rin for anything but being a fucking dumbass

and the gy was actually fine aside from the part where he got shot and died

which was so funny

francy had a tag with ryo trying to shoot boothill but she rolled bad and the bracket text was like "he misses and hits someone else i guess" and i was like "i will roll to get hit by this bullet and put him out of his misery" because he was having a crisis about being an eternal virgin on a sex boat and kept wishing he could die harder

and i got a nat 20 so i was like

ok,

he honestly did not want anyone to do the embarrassing ritual to bring him back either and would have preferred they just leave him dead

hilariously he did not hold that against ryo at all, ryo told him afterward that he hadn't meant to hit him and he was like yeah i know it's fine

he died 5 times in 24 hours nothing matters anymore

ryo and boothill being the only two people on meowsandry that he didn't have any negative feelings toward was so funny

ryo also had the benefit of being dead that week so he didn't have to worry about whether he would have voted for him lmfao

anyway ASIDE FROM THE THOTS INCIDENT the gy was fine and he was glad not to be on the living side because the curses were exhausting and he was mad at like half the people there by that point...

and then he and jae-ha got love cursed during a party and went off to bang in the middle of it so now he has finally broken the eternal virgin matsu curse even if it wasn't in the way he would have preferred

and he was like hm well that was enjoyable so i guess dicks are fine actually i just hate looking at ones that are identical to mine

so hallelujah for the bi awakening because he will have such better luck with guys who like twinks than he was ever going to have with women

let's see there's a few cr things i want to go into some since i didn't do tlcrs

alex was like, the best surprise cr lmao they were on the same team and were just like chill with each other on a shallow level for the most part until memshare when he learned about her brother, and he was like...his own brothers are terrible and he hates them and wants them to die but he also loves them and wouldn't know how to live in a world without them

and despite both of them usually acting really callous about things it was also obvious she'd cared a lot about her brother and really missed him and somehow he was just like... more empathetic to that than he would have been to the same thing coming from someone who was openly nice and caring all the time idk

so he just asked if she wanted to talk about him and listened to that, and she'd mentioned how they used to play board games together so he was like well let's buy some of those with our points and we can play games with our team here! and put in the request for that

so that was cute... we kept being so busy that we never actually played that out at all until the last week but it finally officially happened!!

w5 emotionshare was what really turboed things after that because they were both just so full of bad feelings and some of those feelings were really similar

so they were kind of sticking together a little more during that i think, because that way they weren't drowning anyone else in their bad feelings and it was also like, kind of nice having someone nearby that shared those feelings even if it could also be a bad echo chamber

they talked after the pool party and actually ended up talking about her time loop situation and his fiction one that left them both feeling trapped and apathetic in a lot of ways, and also about how they were both like, the shittier more disappointing versions of themselves compared to the versions of them that other people here had known

and how much that sucked

it was just a really good conversation that established that there was a level of understanding there even if neither of them actually like talking about personal stuff and never went that deep again

and they were just like, Actual Friends after that point and it was comfortable and low stress and nice

and he hopes to go to her hell whenever he dies for real instead of the shitty one he went to in canon lmao

his cr with ichiban was not much like it was in sprace because he was just such a different person there and it kind of freaked him out a little having someone around who seemed to know him so well in some regards (and not at all in others)

but switching to his sprace self during AU week helped with that some since he did at least remember some things and have some context after that, and he was able to more fully accept that this was someone he could definitely trust even if their views weren't very compatible

the wahoo-clover merger was so good because like-- he'd been a lot more upset about losing sqq than he'd let on, and he's terrible at being alone at night which had been one of the big things that had brought him and ichiban closer in sprace

and he was not going to ever say any of this out loud

but ichiban knew that from before so he just suggested moving into his room without him having to humiliate himself by asking and he was very glad for that...

and then ichiban was the one person who was completely sincere and enthusiastic about the stupid ritual to bring him back in thots lmfao and he HATED IT SO MUCH but he also did have to appreciate that he'd cared that much...