esp since there's been a lot going on

raises legy

(spaciness hit, will get to these when brain arrives at the station)

okay rubs my little hands together
pfle So Shin's thoughts on Ranger have been shifting as his thoughts on AI have, naturally, because he's been having a sort of mini-arc on that. The kind of thing where he sort of knew it before but also it's really hitting all the existential horror connected to it, esp in the way asunaro's been doing it.

and he's naturally inclined to be sympathetic to people he sees as like him or like he was; taken advantage of, vulnerable, dependent.

which of course is naturally abutting up against his initial impressions and opinions of ranger formed in the game, things he's not inclined to be charitable about. ranger being abrasive, cruel, callous, killing someone to make a point...

and also beyond that being here in yogen asunaro's only current representative and thereby a bit of a heat sink for shin's dislike of that in general

but.... shin's actually a lot worse at holding grudges than he wants to be, he has to work at that and keep it firmly in mind, he's got those two opposing forces in him... he needs his sense of unfairness/justice/vindictiveness to stick them together on anything

and more than that ranger's changed as well, shin's like, suspicious of and puzzled by it, naturally, but it's hard to dismiss it

shin in general has been struggling with his previously clear-cut worldview that you can divide the world into manipulators who use people on a whim, and their victims, realising new motivations for why someone might hurt or help others and ranger's kind that in microcosm as someone who has both been hurt and hurt others

then there's the matter of trust and like. ranger trusting shin with his code is just like. oof there's so much wrapped up in there esp bc he knows ranger 'has sense' in the sense of knowing how dangerous that is, i love how like. shin kind of surprised himself with the tossing of the cord, like it's autonomic reflex for him to be kind honestly

and then it all kind of hitting him after the initial fix but by then he's committed to completing ranger's code

oh and also a factor is ranger being close to komaeda which is just like. terrifying for information transferral reasons bc shin does NOT trust ranger to keep secrets on him without a prior deal or smth of that kind bc like. why. would he do that??
that prior deal thing is fun i love that he's got that like. sense of mutual exchange with him it's cute

so right now his opinion on ranger is like. the kind of muddy where he's just not sure what he thinks, because there's so much he's still processing wrapped up in it. but... he'd probably help him out, because he has before, and he can't say he hates him, it's this weird sort of like. complicated scales and I love it.

I also find that element of like. Shin knowing Ranger is an AI and treating him as such but also treating him as a person really interesting as well, like the tossing him the cord 'plug yourself in' also sums that up in a way as well

anyway sounds keep happening in the background and obliterating my train of thought and that's why this is so rambly but i think that's the train in the station

on to helena!
helena has firmly landed in the 'Ride or die' zone of Shin's CR, that area where you might as well be family to him. It's been interesting to see them both put effort into being friends despite some aspects of their personalities and experiences interacting badly

shin's like... he knows how much helena values truth and information and what it means to her and that factors into things he does, like that she uses that as a measure of trust means he knows she knows what it means that he's telling her his name

but also, in a two steps forward one step back way after the prior disaster he's also MORE reluctant to tell her things about himself in some ways because he feels he really screwed up there and hasn't got a good bead on how and why so...

He's starting to get inklings that all is not well in Helena-land and again is sort of in that same position of ... what does he do to help, help. pointed pointings-out, will they work? (no)

presses hand to heart

shin....

dsfdgffdg shin really is a guy running into the fact that he did not put any points into a skill he's finding would be really useful for these sorts of problems :' )

but yeah he does care helena, and has been like, trying to avoid accidentally getting her with his thorns, it's fun to see the contrast in his reactions to helena's 'this is about you not me' and komaeda's doing of the same

it's such good CR and I love it so much

anyway i need to tag helena's december prompt, that's reminded me it's on the list

moonjelly for completion

inaba! inaba's interesting bc they're acquaintences, so most of what he thinks is impressions he's picked up

i love that he was like 'you and sara would get along' early on, he's falling a bit into the trap of thinking that people with similar personalities are naturally inclined to get along there but he does see her as that sort of like. straightforward, diligent kind of person and fact he's even saying that says things about his cr with both

i'm also crying about the fact that like, what he might have picked up of her distrust, things like not being in the dorms etc, makes perfect sense to him and hasn't really gotten past the subconscious level

mostly tho, he sees her as someone who's no-nonsense and very good at what she does, which does get in his insecurities a bit but also he's liked working on projects with her and it says something also that he gestured her in to helping him with ranger; sure he's obsessively going over changes she makes but that she's involved in the first place...

basically he's sort of putting her in a similar box as senku which is fun bc it means he's started to branch out to using archetypes he's created in yogen

tsundereban

sidney... his thoughts on sidney have had time to sort of settle out like lake silt, occasionally stirred up by stuff like his conversation with sara on responsibility or the other external questionings of the idea he's sort of unfortunately attached to the guy. shin you've got a bit of a habit of seeing people as symbols

for sidney himself there's the tiny crush shin will never do anything about, but also some of that same what do i do concern so many of the people shin's attached himself to have been internally getting. mostly this has probably manifested as the hand waved investigations

for nene it's definitely a lot stronger. his thoughts on her haven't changed much now that he's got to seeing her as her own person and not a shadow of kanna from exposure and time, but still effectively a younger sister. i've talked about it elsewhere i think but if it came down to picking a world to go back to and his wasn't an option, he'd pick hers

i think that like, now that he knows how she died that's something that's sticking with him as well, depending on the details

amity_rose

we can hash out the details so you can work with them while we're still doing that thread if you want!!

but ugh i love our cr

ah that'd be good!
yesss it's so gooddd
both of them absolutely not acknowledging they are basically sibs in order to avoid The Curse
i do want him to give her his name at some point as well potentially

ok komaeda now
there is SO MUCH here

ultimately the core projection hasn't changed, but things have sort of shifted around it, changed and added

shin has definitely dropped the thought he can use komaeda and the pretense of being friends after the chase and now sticks to snark and taking potshots where he can im crying
he's also under the impression komaeda's goading isn't to get someone to kill him but to fuck people up when they intervene

he's getting.... comfortable is the wrong word, he will never be comfortable around the guy but he's definitely like. gone 'fuck it' a bit
and thereby is pushing boundaries

when that's like the one thing he's actually fully sincere about

EXACTLY YEAH it's fantastic

he HAS worked out komaeda likes it when people physically attack him but assumes it's bc he elicited a reaction

komaeda:

HE REALLY IS

HE HAS THE DROP PAGE OPEN MENTALLY AT ALL TIMES

and im crying bc this is all bc sara told shin midori feared death and he just copy pasted that onto komaeda

he's projecting

he's super projecting, he's a pro at it

can't believe midori sour, a character whose personality is, to my knowledge, "tiny crazy man," is somehow more reasonable than komaeda.

live footage of shin

MIDORI SOUR

like that's not a name real people have right who names their child "green"

i mean. i'd say it's a bit of a stretch to say he's more reasonable than komaeda
about the same level of buck wild but he invested more in slime

didn't sara name him midori bc he was like

sara does
stop sara naming people 2k

sou can have the name now

im nameless

to be fair that's how i name feral cats

yeets midori into the shredder again

i have like an approximate knowledge of this canon but the dolls are basically just feral cats right

sfdgfsdg YEAH
he was like yeah shin is already me by now so anyway name me sara and then he holds up the character name select screen
the "canon" choice being midori shows remarkable restraint on sara's part i named him Asshole

although tbf he hadn't gone full on with the slime yet

SFDGDF YEAH THAT SUMS THEM UP REALLY

someone go name him slimeman

wait didn't sou come first

"he can have the name" it's not yours to start with???

sou came first narratively
i have a stringboard theory that midori was created as a character halfway through the game

hang on gotta figure out how to spoiler mark on plurk

you can't

you just gotta label a plurk as spoilers

just note it up top so people that aren't me and care can avoid it

damn. okay got that down at least

i like never consuming people's canons and instead just absorbing information until i've made my own in my head

mood and valid honestly

i'm watching oh my general and that may take years so i can't do anything else until then

the stars are not right

okay so the tldr is
shin's og name is shin tsukimi
but he found out he had a 0% survival chance and decided that this meant if he was going to survive at all he had to be someone completely different
someone who COULD survive a death game
sou hiyori

that's another of my evidences midori might have been a late addition honestly bc shin tsumiki is 'real/genuine moonviewing' to match the sun kanji in hiyori and i love it

but yeah shin basically took the name of his abuser and said guy was like 'lol sure yeah he can keep it name me instead sara'

he's still going by sou in yogen and this is why it's a big deal to him when people know his other name

bc to him it's deeply connected to the idea of his death

do they get, like. a horoscope reading when they enter the murder game.

"i'm sorry my g your vibes are really bad and mercury is in retrograde you are gonna be murdered."

sadly only shin got the horoscope reading
and by horoscope reading i mean the results of exacting simulations run using ai modelled on the participants

if you think this would have to involve a creepy amount of observation in order to be in any way accurate, you would be right

this is why i make jokes about 'hello shin tsukimi. welcome to stats 301. no, i've locked the doors'

wait hang on

shin voice: they can't kill me if i'm not me

cheat codes irl

HE REALLY WAS LIKE THAT

but he does die tho so

maybe the algorithms are correct

taps head meme and all
like on one level there's like. a very rusty point there in that if he acts differently maybe he can achieve results the simulation didn't account for
but it's also just like. that symbolic form of thinking i keep mentioning occasionally

that's the fun thing

there's two routes, one where he dies and one where he's still alive

schrodinger's shin

he's not out of the woods yet bc the final chapter is yet to be released but

it'd be very funny if he doesn't die so i hope he doesn't

but also it'd be funny if he does. so I am happy either way.

sameeeee i do want him to live but i'm scared of the implications of him living

fingers crossed they all manage to escape

if he lives, numbers are fake

math is dead and we killed it

they really are
im crying hang on

it has taken six months to realise this

the numbers were also fake bc there were steps taken to balance the odds in the actual game as well

he literally did this for nothing and it kills me

... that's really funny

'yttd is a comedy' is a meme for a reason

y'know that's a real major thing with algorithms

people try to act like they're these perfect unbiased math gods but they're only as good as the info that's input in them, and that's from biased humans.

like it's honestly a pleasant surprise when an AI trained on human faces isn't racist

adsfdgffdg YEAH
i do love that yttd has those elements of realism in it
'yeah this is biased as hell actually'
god tho yeah. garbage in, garbage out

what a dumbass tho he should've kept them on ice

which gets funny considering the people making these ai bc hoo boy they are
not happy people
that's going to colour some interpretations i bet

kept them on ice?

yeah, if he had to wait the three years to be ready

if you based it on the 15 year old, you should make sure it's the 15 year old going in. cryo them.

but of course i am just smarter and better at villainy than. idk. whoever's behind it. sara's dad? he seems sketchy.

sfdgfdfg sara's dad is involved but current speculation is it's the survivor of the killing game before this
recreating his trauma
my guy please you've been at this for 30 years

i think it's bc they're getting overconfident and trying to get the final personality update based on the actions of the candidates in the game itself

these dumbasses only found out they couldn't get an ai to remember it's own death when they tried to update one as the game was running

so does he just put the personalities in the dolls and have them just

run murdergames forever

i love how much of a shitshow the game is behind the scenes honestly it makes it kind of scarier in a way than if it was some perfectly oiled machine

i mean i guess that's only slightly more fucked up than dr2

no he just wants his crush to have lived instead of him and if that means putting a 17 year old highschooler through a death game with some other peeps so he can get a perfect map of her reactions for a doll of her and/or have "her" finally "win" then so be it
i want to push this man out a window

this is meant to be the sort of like. moment of truth after decades of observation and research and trial runs

... wait did he wanna fuck sara's mom or something

no, give me a mo

basically he's trying to recreate this person from scratch

effectively bringing her back to life
but he needs a template

it's skeevy as hell

the 'run murdergames forever' part was just with the ais alone, to get the statistics :' )
and that gets fucked considering to all intents and purposes the ai seem to genuinely be people

so sara is just a completely random person but he's like "she reminds me of the teenage girl i wanted to bone when i was a teenager and thus it was kinda socially acceptable but now i'm an adult and it's very much not."

oh it gets worse

ah it's going all asimov on his ass, huh

bc like
it's implied that every candidate was hand-picked from birth to be in the death game

so it's less she reminds him of
and more she was deliberately groomed to be

a lot of this is inference from clues scattered about, rather than outright confirmation but uh. it's not good

so he picked her for this

as a newborn

sits next to you

well, we think there were backups

like anzu, the other highschool girl in the game

hedges, just in case

anyway you can see why shin wanted to murder the guy when he found out
esp since there's the vague implication that if sara is meant to be a stand in for this girl
then shin is supposed to be a stand in for the guy himself
which like. kind of a super fucked thing to find out about! you're some skeevy guy who hates himself's OC donut steal!

so, like, multiple babies are being groomed to be his-- okay so like when he creates this doll is she gonna

be. also an adult?

anyway like the whole ai predictions, there's holes in this, bc you can't actually mold people into perfect carbon copies of yourself and others
at creepy best you get your own idea of them

please

we do not know
and that's the worst part of all

YEAH
THAT'S THE MOOD

yttd is really good at slow burn existential horror

and hoo boy that's part of it

a lot of this stuff just lurks in the corners, like it's ever outright said midori abused shin but it doesn't need to be given the ways shin acts and midori acts

*never

the game doesn't need to outright state the implications of a company creating dolls as manipulable versions of people, it lets them unfold

that's always more fun

exactly
i love how it's like PSYCH you thought this was gonna be murder mystery genre didn't you but it's sci fi hours now

yttd is like
nailbiting in the sense the creators of the game have so much power outside of it that it isn't even as simple as escaping when they have the police in their pocket and know where you live

anyway i got super sidetracked where was i

right, shin projecting midori on komaeda

he's definitely increasingly concerned about people he's friends with also being friends with komaeda... partly bc of things he tells them getting back to komaeda but also in vast majority in a 'what are you doing don't touch that' way

it kills me bc like. to him he straight up told helena that he was worried about her ending up like him due to komaeda but did this in such a fashion that he really wasn't as clear as he thinks he was

oh that's so cute hello...

not komaeda a threat

:''' ) komaeda sets off his radar something fierce

and toss the fact that their school selves were friends (which also feeds into the projection) into the mix and it's a Mess

just thinking about that ko tumblr post like komaeda's gaydar sending gay little pulses at shin

and shin's panicking thinking he's under attack

DSFDGDSFDG which post i must see
but got yeah that's it that's really the vibe

every day i think about komaeda chasing shin down and pinning him and shin genuinely thinking he was going to die

they were communicating in friendship

rather shin was running for his life and komaeda wanted to catch up to him badly!!!! his buddy : )

it's so good it's like a rabbit and a border collie in the same house

the fact that komaeda didn't actually kill him has done something tho
increased that 'fuck it' quotient i think

SDFDGGFSDFDG YES

enh telling me in call the sheep dog is excited to play and i called komaeda lassie, shin's emotional support rescue anxiety ticker

i dont think komaeda ever threatened shin or actually TRIED to kill him so its funny he can risk it all on some days that fuck it quotient is so strong

dsfdgsfdgf yeah it's great it was literally all bc komaeda talked about killing someone in the crawlspace + followed him when he disappeared + sent them to void + chased him when he ran

and then all of his brain go brrr filling in the gaps

sfdgffd LASSIE

emotional support anxiety ticker im crying

IM CRYING THAT WAS LIKE THE SCARIEST MOMENT FOR SHIN bc he thought he was next but i hope he knows komaeda doesnt kill just to kill hes against that!!! im crying he kills for hope but how can shins hope grow if he kills him shakes his lil rabbit self grow bigger

if you play along with the insanity you wind up ok

just

learn to speak his language

THE FLUFF
god im crying bc you'd think as a fellow komaedaling they would speak the same language but no he does not

we need ranger to act as a translator one day

shin doesn't understand what komaeda means by hope and thereby assumes it's just self-justification for whatever he wants to do

im crying at that shakes him grow bigger
he is, by accident

helena sits down and translates between shin speak and komaeda speak

i'm thinking about helena doing this

but it's shin, komaeda, and ranger

she can translate for all three

it's fine

the tricky part is making them keep still

we put chains back on komaeda that'll be enough

SFDGGDFDGDS

okay i think that's all of it sakasaki

sighs how this says we just have to explain hope to him

HELP NOT THIS IS SHIN KOMAEDA AND RANGER

i loved it thank u for ur thoughts

sighs and opens photoshop

fdgfhgsdfdgf miraaaa
hope sight might go some way towards it
most of the barrier is that like
shin absolutely does not trust komaeda so he's not willing to meet his philosophy halfway

another fun contrast with helena honestly where like. he's engaging with her desire for truth

YESSSSSSS THAT'S THEM

anyway next is sara!

in hindsight i made this meme at the wrong time bc i have no idea what the revelation will do but there's been stuff happening

shin like. he arrived here not hating sara and willing to work with her but he still was putting her on a bit of a pedestal; even more so on learning she'd killed midori

that's been slowly wearing away over time and interaction

and also seeing some of himself in her rip, in the sense of using a facade to survive

but he's also recently starting to realise just how deep it goes with her sense of responsibility because shin in general struggles with the idea that people depending on you or hanging on your words could be something bad for YOU, he's so used to the balance of stress and power going the other way

so he's kind of heading out into unknown conceptual territory just as a result of realising the effects this has had on her

then there's the whole thing with joe bc hhhhh the pain

he's learning why they aren't as instant buds as he thought they might be but he still like, expects to be replaced in the back of his brain and also there's that guilt rearing it's head and it's just so good chefs kiss

anyway things are delightfully complex blueseawitch

okay i'll get to the last two tomorrow