ok!!! datz lore/post-game plurk that i will gradually work on as i think of stuff. WARNING FOR BIG AA6 ENDGAME SPOILERS though i will try to limit them to one section when i get there and post a bold start and stop point so anyone can squint and scroll by
anyway the concept of datz lore is already really funny because he's so like. the goofy, chaotic, comic relief side character.
fandom calls him the larry butz of khura'in which isn't TOTALLY off base but kind of does him a disservice because he's also very competent and committed and does not ever make a single horny comment about anyone
(even though i also love larry)
but he just comes off as this annoying off-the-wall idiot so much of the time in canon that it's kind of mindblowing to me that he spent most of this mg being one of the most reasonable and responsible people there and had me kind of 
about whether i was just off the rails with my characterization
about whether i was just off the rails with my characterization
so for anyone who's waiting for the switch trilogy to play SoJ this is probably going to be a wild experience for you!!
but it really was just like. i have never seen the fallout of a tutorial case so thoroughly set the tone for the entire game and set so many characters on these really specific paths of who they were going to be for the rest of the game
like my original plan going in was to do some fucking yakety sax murder a few weeks in
and wow that could not be further from what ended up happening!!
when he first got there, like. well when everyone woke up in superhero kigus i had him in a plumed punisher one and his immediate reaction was to run outside and rant about how the ga'ran regime was clearly doing this to fuck with him because the plumed punisher's been anti-rebel propaganda for years!!!
which was funny but also just like
even though that was quickly proven to not be the case he woke up immediately distrusting the entire setup and that also made him really skeptical of the entire heroes vs villains concept since like. his rebel group that's fighting a corrupt regime is literally depicted as supervillains on a kids' superhero show back home
so he was like yeah who the heroes are and who the villains are depends entirely on your perspective and he was really suspicious about trusting the narrative
that the game was putting forward
which like super kickstarted his cr with nimona because that was their first pc lmao
where they were both like yeah sometimes the "heroes" are shitty government goons and the "villains" are just whoever doesn't think the same way they do
and he'd already just thought it was awesome that she turned into a horse to catch his apple on the intro log lmfao so they were just immediately like /fistbump
but anyway he was doomed by this being a team game because he was this 46 year old guy on a team with two cute children (hanako and mika), a college girl (chiemi), and an adult who was just kind of sad and worrying (ryuki)
and he likes kids and pretty much co-parented two with dhurke in canon so he was like okay! well! if they're saying concerning shit about our worlds being in danger, even if i personally think this whole thing is some shady-ass bullshit and don't buy any of it, on the off chance that it IS true i don't want to be the reason any of these kids can't go home
and if they were going to have to fight "villains" or whatever he was like well i'm a grown man and former soldier and i have done plenty of that and should be the one to handle the worst of it
which makes it so fucking funny that out of that whole team only he and ryuki never killed, all the kids did
but he INTENDED to take responsibility for whatever happened to them and do whatever he could to win the dumb contest so he pretended to be a lot more gung-ho about the hero thing than he really was
especially because mika had these issues about her past and being seen as a villain and wanting to be good and he was like oh no so he really went all in on "no you're gonna be a hero here and we'll help you be one and if you ever mess up and do anything unheroic we'll support you and get you back on track!!"
anyway taking a break for dinner and nimona groupwatch so. to be continued in a few hours probably
ok i'm back
anyway so already on fucking w0 hanako tried to stab the mayor during the minievent lmao which he had to deal with and be like "hey let's maybe not stab people in public where it could get our team in trouble!" which again felt weird since threatening the government is kind of his thing lmao but he did not want to risk the mice getting disqualified
god the first mouse group thread was really so fucking cute
so
the tutorial murder was very jarring, just... because it happened at all, because icly no one knew murder was ever going to be a thing, they thought they were just here to beat up some dorky villains, and then they get to the courthouse and the npcs are like surprise apparently it was one of you :c
that was the one cold open datz did just because he was like well my best friend's a former lawyer so i kind of know how this used to go before the justice system went to shit but also this is insane because we don't even have a defendant wtf are we doing
the rebels' entire thing in canon is fighting for a fair justice system because the trials in khura'in are such a fucked up joke where you don't get any defense and everyone's been found guilty for 23 years so he was like well ok i'm used to fucked up trials but this is a new level??? and he was already kind of offended on principle
and then the first killer was mika!! and it was an accident!!! and my comment where he promised to help get her back on track if she messed up was in the receipts channel because lmao
teehees
and again because it was w0 and they knew nothing about what was going on and this was at least theoretically supposed to be a less ethically messed up place than khura'in he was like kind of encouraging her to tell the truth about it so they could help her (HE THOUGHT) while also telling people they should vote for him instead since he'd failed her
he tried voting for himself 6 times and it wouldn't let him so he finally voted for her because he was like, well, she really wants to turn things around and she'd end up feeling really bad about it if a random person got in trouble for it instead so it's probably better this way
and then they were like SURPRISE SHE'S GETTING EXECUTED FOR THIS ACCIDENTAL MANSLAUGHTER
so in an instant this became the worst legal system he'd ever seen despite his whole canon being about fighting bad legal systems and he was so fucking mad and felt so guilty about it at the same time
anyway the miracle of this game is that he had a pc with ace after trial where ace was like hey are we gonna break her out of jail
and he was like absolutely
and then the same suggestion kept coming up in all of datz and ace's pcs and zia and i were like what if we actually get a whole crew together to do this
and once reigen was in he immediately had these actually good plans and we were bringing in people based on powers they had, like we were going to try to have nico turn out the lights at the police station and have norma copy the key to the jail cell and rita blow something up outside for a distraction
obviously we oocly knew it was not going to work but IT WAS A SURPRISINGLY GOOD TRY ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, like, in another universe it could have worked
we ended up with fucking 10 of us and just had to stop there because that was the most we could fit in the dm
so it came down to like, what characters we first had pcs with and trusted who were awake after the trial and i'm sorry we had to cut it off there, jolyne is jail crew in my heart even though char was asleep
anyway it was amazing and i'm sorry to ray who had to deal with my 10pm mod dm that was like "ok so hypothetically if 10 characters were going to storm the prison to break mika out,"
even though it didn't work and they all just ended up in jail themselves for the entire weekend mika still appreciated that they tried to save her and laughed about it so it was this bittersweet thing that was like well at least we made her smile so it was worth it
and then they all just had to watch the execution on tv from their jail cells the next day
anyway it was like the ultimate bonding experience and the jail crew (minus one........) were all just ride or die for each other from that point on even if they hadn't really talked before, it was just like. we're all people who refuse to sit back in the face of this messed up injustice and are willing to risk our own lives even if the odds are against us
so it was like, we've seen each other for who we are, we worked on this big plan, we all want to fight this shitty system, we can trust each other
and then reigen rented out the casino penthouse so that was just our jail crew hq... and we had little meetings and parties and stuff and made friendship bracelets out of our prison uniform fabric
it was great!!
and actually worked pretty well as an info sharing thing too because rabbit was the only team that didn't have at least one representative in on it, so we could share stuff with each other and then pass on to our teams
so that was datz, ace, reigen, nimona, nico, will, hung, rita, norma, and chiemi
chiemi was on datz's team and he'd invited her to the breakin
so
lol
the mice were still suffering from losing mika all week, datz tried to get the team together for a meeting at one point to just like, try to share their priorities, like whether they really wanted to win the game or just wanted to fight the government so they could strategize accordingly
and tried to make it very clear that they were a team that could trust each other and that they didn't want another situation like last week, and that maybe if mika had told them before the trial they could have had more time to figure something out, and that he'd be there to help them out if anything happened
and then chiemi and norma got murdered!!!
and he was blaming himself for chiemi so fucking bad, especially since he'd invited her out to the park for curfew and was like wow maybe if we'd stayed in the dorm this wouldn't have fucking happened!
he punched a hole in the penthouse wall and bummed a couple of cigarettes off reigen that weekend it was rough
and then over the course of that trial it ended up becoming clear that chiemi had prrrrrobably killed norma, which was FUCKED UP when they'd just made friendship bracelets together a few days ago!! but he wanted to believe the best of her and thought she must have just been really desperate to get home and having a hard time
so then he blamed himself for both of them because he didn't help her just like he didn't help mika
so after that point he was just. so fucking protective of hanako and ryuki
by w2 we were on our third dorm post because mice kept dropping dead and they kept having to update the filters!!!
AND AGAIN, HE TRIED SO HARD TO MAKE SURE THEY KNEW THEY COULD TRUST HIM AND TALK TO HIM ABOUT ANYTHING but he'd already failed that twice so he was always worried about it... and was right to be... gazes at hanako
w2 was like. he'd talked about this stuff with reigen a lot because they were in kind of similar positions -- actually i need to c/p this from siz's lore plurk because i was cracking up at how this reigen description also perfectly described datz:
he wanted to look after his team, bc he really did feel like. this is a scary and messed up situation but i can improve it by acting goofy and friendly and showing that im not a scary person and they can feel safe around me
yeah!! that was sure what they were both trying to do!!
anyway reigen and nico and will had their cyoa that week and he'd talked about that with him afterward and again it just felt very
oh same because reigen clearly cared so much about the other two and blamed himself for them getting hurt, and he was so worried about hurting nimona
so he just thought really highly of him as a person by that point
which is why he refused to vote for him that weekend!!! like. he actually had suspected hans in yae's murder early on and still kind of did until the poison detector thing happened and then like. the entire jail crew was just like oh. fuck.
but they also all felt like they knew him well enough to know there had to be a reason if he'd done it, and datz just like. had seen how much he and the kids cared about each other and saw how good his planning had been during the jailbreak and everything and was just like, ok, well, i can't vote for him
because he trusted that he really cared about a lot of people there and would keep doing whatever he could to protect them AND would be really valuable in helping them all get out of this situation
hilariously he
REALLY did not think satan's murder was hanako at that point
like he gave jolyne that look like NO STOP DON'T SAY THAT WORD when she mentioned godzilla because he didn't want people to start pursuing that as a theory, and like, he did see how that would be plausible, but really didn't think it was him, which may have partially been denial because he was still reeling from mika and chiemi
and could not deal with losing another kid on his team for a third week in a row
anyway he did reigen's patdown and just. pretended he didn't feel the cologne in his inner coat pocket. and voted for hans even though sigrun's camera had made it clear at that point that it wasn't him, just because that had been his initial guess and he was like... someone he DIDN'T trust even if he didn't dislike him
so he was like well this fucking sucks and i feel like the biggest hypocrite in the world right now after all my fighting against false convictions back home but i guess this is what i'm doing
so he felt shitty about it but also was like well that was my judgment call and i'd still do it again unfortunately
the ethics of this were like
interesting
because the first time you talk to him in canon he's some jackass amnesiac sasquatch who was like the most annoying witness in the world and he was just blatantly making up shit in court saying he's witnessed this murder and maya was totally guilty
when in fact he didn't see shit and was unconscious the entire time
and was just going along with potentially getting this girl executed because he thought it made his presence there less suspicious somehow??
so like, IT'S TECHNICALLY NOT THE FIRST TIME HE'S FUCKED SOMEONE OVER IN COURT EVEN THOUGH, AGAIN, FAIR TRIALS ARE THE THING HE'S FIGHTING FOR
but also in that case like. he legitimately had no idea if she'd done it or not and didn't really have much reason to think she HADN'T since he hadn't witnessed anything, and he'd never met her before, and at least at the start of the testimony while he still had amnesia he didn't even remember he was a rebel
anyway all that to say this is a murky area i had to think about more than the game did
but i think it makes sense that he WOULD do this while also feeling weird and bad about it because in this case he actually knows everyone involved and he knew it would probably hurt adlet a lot which he hated because at the time he thought he was a swell guy
god that was the week ryuki was losing track of time during the trial and thinking it was still chiemi's case too, WHAT A BAD WEEK
this tama thread after the trial was kind of the best example of him dealing with all that
and then siz already linked it in their plurk but this reigen thread after execution was just Good
god he also talked to hanako after that execution and it ironically made him more confident that he DIDN'T kill satan because hanako was saying how he was feeling really desperate to do something instead of just sitting around so datz was like "oh then that probably means he hasn't ALREADY done something if he still feels like he needs to! thank god!"
hanako was the only one who'd straight up said he needed to win the game when datz had asked the team about that before so he was like hhhh and was like well i'd help him if he actually did need to do it but we're also in first place every single week so there's no need to consider that unless we start dropping in the ranks
for now we should just do the tasks and stuff to try to get points the actual hero way and focus on figuring out what's up with the moon and maybe blow it up
when like hilariously they were always ranked first because no actually they were just killing all the time
w3 then was clone minievent where i like. simultaneously did something goofy by having his clone be his shaggy sprites and also got kind of Oof with it, which is here
clutches heart
and then ryuki had his gun incident and datz just held onto his bullets for him until endgame...
god it was also at the end of that week when temenos and reigen got that note about the quota where every team needed a kill and pulled datz into that so they could all discuss, and lmfao THE REASON THEY DIDN'T SPREAD IT AROUND YET WAS BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO BE SURE OF WHICH TEAMS WERE ALREADY COVERED SO THEY COULD AVOID REPEAT KILLS
WHICH MEANT THEY WERE JUST TRYING REALLY HARD TO FIGURE OUT SATAN'S CASE BUT NOT GETTING ANYWHERE WITH IT
so it was kind of hilarious every time someone icly accused him of looking away from that case because he was actually busting his ass to find the answer afterward and just truly did not believe it was hanako at that point
and then because he did not yet pass on the one per team information because he was trying to find out if satan's killer was a repeat team first, that killer DID IT AGAIN
god i keep
forgetting how fucking bad this week was
and then going back and looking at things like
because that was also the week where BOTH HANAKO AND RYUKI CAME BACK DEAD FROM A CYOA THE DAY AFTER THE CLONE THING HAPPENED AND HE ABOUT HAD A BREAKDOWN THINKING HE WAS THE LAST ONE STANDING
and then the terrible irony of him and reigen talking that night about how terrible it was to find your teammates dead and how useless he felt because of it
when reigen lost whisper the next day and it was like the same discussion just flipped around but it was worse because she was ACTUALLY dead and not just temporary cyoa dead
with janeway he actually DID think it was probably hanako when reigen told him about the apples at the school but he also just. really didn't want to think that in case he was wrong, especially since hanako had been having a rough time talking about how he always makes things worse for everyone earlier that evening
so he talked to him and was trying to give him an opportunity to confess to it without actually accusing him because he didn't want him to think he didn't believe in him
so he was just like "so reigen says he found a bunch of apples at the crime scene............ you think someone was trying to frame you......?"
but instead of confessing anything he just seemed sad about the idea of people wanting to frame him so datz was like well fuck
and kind of talked himself into believing the framing thing instead because after everything that happened that week he just really really didn't want to think hanako was hiding that from him
I admit I'm pretty surprised he didn't know for this long Hanako had done either of those, golly. I admit once I found out Hanako had done them, I was sure Datz might have known pretty quickly, haha
during that trial he kept looking at things that pointed to hanako and then just tried to avoid drawing attention to them, which like, tbf, whisper's murder was just so much more brutal and horrifying that it seemed like an objectively higher priority anyway
yeah lmfao he was just really close with him and just didn't want to believe that he'd keep lying to him... it was very rough
it was only after that when he actually shared the quota info and hanako said he knew which teams still didn't had met it but couldn't tell him why that he was kind of like well fuck that probably happened
but didn't push it further when he said he couldn't tell him
after that point when they'd had their team meeting and he'd been like ok there's no benefit to any team killing more than once, that's just going to cause more trouble for everyone, and there's no evidence that killing even raises your rank
he was pretty sure he wouldn't do it again anyway, and he didn't for the next two weeks! he eventually got solid confirmation of it from the gy but it was just kind of like
well that was terrible and it's really fucking with him that hanako has never told him any of this when he has made it SO CLEAR TO HIM THAT HE CAN AND HE WILL STILL ACCEPT HIM but also it's over and there's no reason i should have to worry about that again
cue the w6 trial lmao which was just so bad in every way... i'll get back to the weeks in between here i'm just on this temporary hanako tangent
and then he got confirmation of that the next day where surprise hanako had confessed to someone who wasn't him and he was just like lol cool
he was in such a bad fucking place that day and i'm like thank god hanako DID come and tell them after that because christ i think that was the lowest he ever got emotionally
he really appreciated ryuki so much though
anyway back to the other part of the w3 trial, which was adlet being a crazy asshole
that was a punch in the gut because he'd really liked him a whole lot before and he'd felt really bad about what happened with hans
and at the start of the week he was kind of like 
about how ready to move on he said he was but he was also like well...... this seems like an unhealthy way of dealing with grief but i don't wanna tell him to NOT keep moving forward so i guess i'll just encourage this....
about how ready to move on he said he was but he was also like well...... this seems like an unhealthy way of dealing with grief but i don't wanna tell him to NOT keep moving forward so i guess i'll just encourage this....
anyway if he'd targeted either reigen or himself, since he'd lied about the cologne, he would have thought that was fair enough honestly
but killing a sweet kid like whisper that brutally just to use her as a prop in the manpain show was unforgivable and then fucking needling hanako and taking sigrun hostage just made it even worse!!
so he was like ok well sorry about last week and about your clearly terrible mental health but fuck off forever actually
anyway i think w3 was the worst week in terms of just the sheer number of terrible things that happened
w4 was for memshare which for him was fine actually he doesn't really have secrets, the only memory he didn't love getting out was the really gay one i wrote but it wasn't because of the gay part, it was just because it also contained state secrets lol
i had sisi's cyoa that week with nimona, ponta, and kogi and it was really fun! the funny thing is that he's such a well adjusted character that he had like no trouble getting through the personalized trauma traps that kicked the others' asses
he was just like yeah you're probably right that was my fault and i'm sorry, but i'll do better and make sure it wasn't for nothing
so he was like. virtually unscathed when they met up at the last area while he had to carry ponta on his shoulders because his legs were shredded so bad and nimona was bleeding everywhere
and then in the home stretch nimona trauma transformed into a monster and attacked the rest of them and that's where like all of his bad injuries came from lmao
she almost ate him at one point so when he had all those piercing injuries across his middle that was just. from her fangs biting into him and damaging some organs. it was great!! (though he actually did get to use this funny joke item to make her drop him lmao... basically just slapped a note that said "stop that" on her snout)
anyway he reeeeeeally didn't want her to feel guilty about that so he was forcing himself to act super upbeat when they got back
and for the most part just didn't tell anyone what those wounds were actually from
and then a few hours later it was the infamously unfortunate mouse dorm curfew where he got stuck on a different floor from hanako and all of the bleeding injured people were on the floor with the ballpit instead of the one with cushions
and then reigen and sigrun died!!! wow!!!!!!!
leaving him and temenos as the only 30+ non-immortals... not that reigen was 30+ but we all know about his old man vibes so he still counts
actually i guess robin's exactly 30 at that canon point i keep forgetting timeskip ages
but anyway that sucked!!
and that trial was so fucking bad lol
just. The Heart Incident and everyone dying over dead letters during break and then ace being a killer, IT WAS ROUGH
all the jailbirds who were still alive holding up their friendship bracelets during ace's execution as we realized that no one else was going to tag into the thread because everyone else was dead now
anyway it's 1 am so i guess i will get into The Danny Situation tomorrow... gazes
me seeing one of my threads linked and scrambling to put everyone in the mod filter
thank u becksy
i clicked on that 5 time
this is how to get me to unlock within four months (looks away from only unlocking homo pcs because britt prodded me this weekend)
cracks knuckles... ok
so yeah losing reigen and ace in the same weekend fucking sucked, like, he didn't hang out with ace one on one as much as some of the others did, but he was the first person he met there that he liked and trusted, and he was just grateful to him for starting the whole jailbreak thing with him
anyway a little bit after the trial lisa dmed me to ask where datz was and i was like uhhh i have no fucking clue because all of his favorite places were murder scenes this week, i guess maybe he's picking up potting soil at the tarkea garden section for his memorial flowers???
and the tarkea garden section ended up just becoming the place where all the danny talks happened because people didn't really go there and they were surrounded by ficuses lmfao
but yeah so this was that thread after the trial where danny confessed to him because reigen had used his cyoa item to hypnotize him into confessing to him specifically after the trial (not actually how it happened but w/e)
it was funny because they had not talked a lot before that and danny had hated him a lot more than he was aware of actually but. THIS HAPPENED and he was just like. most tired sigh in the world. ok. we'll deal with this.
because he figured reigen sent him to him specifically because he wouldn't freak out and would want to help him, which was correct
and he felt really bad because at the time he didn't know about the ac killer role (which is a whole other can of worms) and danny made it sound like he was just really desperate to win and the worst part was that
this was the week the group had shared the one kill per team info and everyone who learned about it there was tasked with passing it onto their team
and tiger was just nimona and danny at that point so that had been nimona's job to tell him and she was having a rough as hell week so she never got around to it
so as far as he could tell what actually happened was that he'd killed one of nimona's favorite people because he didn't have the info that everyone else did and that it was therefore technically kind of nimona's fault in a roundabout way, or at least he was afraid she'd take it that way so he was just like
ohhhhhh my god at that
anyway his original plan was that he'd tell temenos so he wouldn't keep trying to dig for the truth and he trusted that he wouldn't tell anyone and would want to help
which like-- thank god they'd had that discussion about revealing the quota thing the week before, and the fact that they'd been love arrowed late that week also really helped, because they really weren't close at all before that
but that discussion had made him trust that he'd be willing to discuss things with him to figure out what was in everyone's best interests and that he was careful with information
and the love arrows had just made him fonder of him as a residual effect lmao
because HE REALLY NEEDED TO NOT BE THE ONLY PERSON WHO KNEW THIS, datz is so fucking bad at lying and keeping secrets and he is very aware of this
but yeah his initial plan was to tell tem, and danny could tell the truth to his friends himself when he was ready for it but he wouldn't snitch on him to anyone
me finding out about the danny thing after starting this pc with tem and dming sisi to be like UHHHHHH SORRY I HAVEN'T REPLIED AGAIN YET BUT I AM ACQUIRING SOME... INFORMATION....
but tem thought nimona would kill danny if she found out at that point, which like, probably fair when it was such a fresh and open wound, and datz still felt really bad about the part with her not giving him the info so they were like ok maybe we should have him not tell her yet actually
this was the first strategy meeting with the three of them where the plan was for him to like lie low for a while and let things cool down a little before he told her (also lmao them getting that memory and both being like uhhhh?? to each other later)
and they were like ok well memshare should be over tomorrow so next week will be easier to deal with!
and then monday was fucking thoughtshare instead which was VERY MUCH NOT BETTER
strategy meeting for that where like
lmao 
so he and danny both just spent all their tokens on wonderballs trying to find things they could curse themselves with to obscure their thoughts all week lmfao which was the dumbest and funniest plan
but anyway, AGAIN, THE IDEA HAD BEEN THAT HE WOULD LIE LOW AND ONLY SOCIALIZE JUST ENOUGH FOR IT NOT TO BE SUSPICIOUS
to give nimona some distance before saying anything to her, and give him some time to think up the words he wanted to say before a thought bubble spilled it in a much more unfortunate way
so then seeing him building a fucking treehouse with her the next fucking day he was like what the fuck what is wrong with you
and was just. hiding in the tree behind them watching and leering lmfao
so all week datz and tem were helping keep this secret while also being like ok it is actually kind of fucked up that you're just happily hanging out with them without them knowing you murdered their friend a few days ago???
so by friday when the horoscopes came out they were like YEAH THIS GEMINI HOROSCOPE'S RIGHT ON THE MONEY ACTUALLY, FUCKING TELL HER IF YOU'RE GOING TO KEEP HANGING OUT WITH HER
in retrospect they probably should have encouraged him to talk to nico first but they also felt like he owed the truth to nimona the most since she'd been hurt the worst and was his teammate and he was planning to MOVE INTO A TREEHOUSE WITH HER
anyway they let him keep getting away with it until after the trial just so he wouldn't piss off a bunch of people right before they had to vote to kill someone
then sunday came and the dead texts happened where ace was telling nimona to stay out of the treehouse, which she mentioned at the penthouse meeting that night, and datz and tem were just like at each other in the background
at each other in the background
and grabbed danny right afterward to be like ok buddy you have got to tell her tonight before someone else does or this is going to bite you in the ass SO fucking hard
and he finally did and she obviously didn't kill him so it was like, okay, this is getting resolved now, he's finally telling his friends the truth and once they have some time to process this it will probably be fine
the delay in publishing dates on the newspaper was just so fucking unfortunate lmfao
the music review berating him for hiding it when he'd actually already confessed the night before...
anyway they figured he was out of the woods at that point so they didn't worry too much about it w6... and then he turned up dead on friday!! on the same day as the more forgiving follow-up in the paper lmao truly amazing timing
me and sisi seeing the death announcement
classic
so datz felt like shit about that after promising to protect him, which was just SUCH A THEME OF THIS GAME
and then finding out afterward that it was fucking hanako was simultaneously a huge gut punch because that was son on son violence and kind of a relief because at least it wasn't about reigen's murder, it was just. about hanako thinking danny sucked lmao
having only just disembarked from the danny murder secret ride as soon as hanako confessed to the team he was just like okay you are going to go tell nimona the truth TONIGHT. we cannot do this shit to her a second time.
and he did, reluctantly 
thank god
anyway aside from the danny drama w5 was... relatively low key...
and my favorite thing was this where datz jumped on a stage and interrupted a play to give a little anti-government speech
seeing all the random citizens who DIDN'T evacuate before the moon crash the final week he was just like 
I TRIED WARNING YOU
I TRIED WARNING YOU
at first i just joked about doing that in chat and then i was like actually no i'm doing it it's the most ic thing i could do
the three times i felt most ic were the jailbreak, the time he accidentally set a furniture store on fire and then parachuted off the roof with a bedsheet, and this
w6 the big thing was quynn's saya no uta cyoa that he went on with jolyne and rita which. lol.
this one was so drastically different then the first cyoa he went on because like, that one had started off with them just suddenly appearing in an unfamiliar place in different clothes than usual but like, there was basically no sense of looming danger in the first section of it, they were just hanging out in a town and shopping
they woke up in the dark strapped to exam tables where everything felt and smelled like weird oily fleshy stuff, super disoriented and starving and thirsty
turned on the light to see that wow everything WAS weird fleshy stuff!!!
it was just so fucking much all at once that like, no one was thinking straight for a long time
they were all just in those little crappy hospital gowns with their asses out too
our stupid hospital gowns...
anyway rita freaked out REALLY bad right off the bat which was a major Oof because she almost always keeps it together and in the rare instances where she doesn't she's usually okay enough to just be tsundere about it but this was Bad so datz had to go give her his arm to hang onto so he could lead her out of the first room while she kept her eyes closed
OUR HOSPITAL GOWNS...
we encountered one normal looking kid who was hiding under a desk and then everyone else we encountered were these gross floppy meat monsters with really distorted voices and it was just A Lot
and the kid indicated that they'd kill us if they found us so we were immediately like ok these are our enemies and we need to attack them before they find us so we can get out of here
OUR DEATH ANNOUNCEMENT DESPAIR
so that is what we did!!! and i nat 20'd when he was trying to knock the first out guy with The Office Chair which resulted in him just murdering the guy horribly by accident
two others came up to get us because the first one had his phone out and they heard him get murdered lmao
but the first one just seemed like. really scared and pathetic actually and datz and jolyne were both like uhhh hm this doesn't feel great and tried to just like, threaten him into letting them leave safely instead of hurting him (and they finally all got pants from a supply closet thank GOD)
and then the second one was like. SO CLEARLY REIGEN FROM THE MANNERISMS AND THE WAY HE SALTED JOLYNE even though he looked like a meat monster that at that point datz was like ok hang on
and they actually like took 10 seconds to breathe and think about this while meat reigen called the cops at which point they were like ok this is just one of those insane thursday trips, we just need to power through this and not worry about why things are like this... which they had not even really had time to realize earlier
so anyway they tried to fight meat reigen to get downstairs but they accidentally murdered him too with another nat 20!!
the black eye datz had all weekend was from getting punched by him lmfao
and at one point rita ate "fruit" in a jar... haha....
when they eventually got downstairs they had to fight 6 meat guys with guns while their weapons were just. a couple of letter openers, a stun gun, and a jar. and rita got shot right off the bat and jolyne got fucking shot in the head right next to him and DIED which he didn't even really have time to process because it was still the middle of a shoot out
but he adored jolyne so that was Bad lmao but thankfully she miraculously came back to life a little later. anyway it felt like a miracle that we won that, but my rolls were really good in that part!!
the kid who was with us had figured out after rita's jar incident that all of us had totally fucked up perception and after we destroyed everyone they said they could fix it for us! so they did! and we fell asleep and then woke up and saw that actually this was a normal hospital and not a meat hell at all!
and everyone we murdered had been our friends and we were the meat monsters! yay! which again rita... did not take well...
datz was a lot more okay with it in part because he'd picked up on the reigen thing upstairs already and kind of figured something like that was going on, and also because one of the guys they killed in the shootout was dhurke
and datz had been shouting his whole A DRAGON NEVER YIELDS thing during that so he was like
well if that was really him he obviously would have reacted so this is fake, it's fine
he was the only one who actually went into the room with the security monitor after that and saw who'd been on the top floor they started on, so in addition to reigen he'd also murdered nico, and nimona was apparently already dead up there before they even got there and they just never went into that room lmao, and the pathetic guy who was the sole survivor
was ryuki lmao
so he was just like. welp. and then they left
so when he looked so beaten down after that compared to the previous cyoa it was mostly because rita was so clearly traumatized and he'd just watched jolyne die a few minutes earlier
on top of just being disoriented and exhausted. so that was great!!!
once again he just felt really fucking bad that he hadn't been able to protect them from that, but he also like. he already respected them both a whole lot but also they both fought so hard in that shootout and they were awesome and he was so proud of them so at least there was that
and we got our copy of the office chair he murdered meat nico with so he could use it on the moon
datz... 
already pretty much covered the w6 murder stuff, but yeah, having three bodies when they'd all known only one more person had needed to kill was very distressing, and he'd figured out one was probably will pretty early because he recognized the same distinctive wounds that jolyne and rita had gotten from the cyoa that will had healed and was like fuck!!
he didn't even know his healing had that side effect but like, hardly anyone had actually gotten a look at those wounds before he healed them so,
but he was not about to vote for him so at the last minute he just suggested he and temenos vote for each other since he couldn't vote for himself, which i don't think tem actually did but THAT WAS HIS VOTE, AT LEAST...
gazes at hanako again
anyway,
that was also a very bad week!
but then the dead came back a few days later as planned and everything was less terrible
except for the part where ace told him danny had killed reigen on tiger's orders and then he was just. so fucking mad at tiger lmao
it went badly!! and just made him retroactively angrier about everything because it all felt so unnecessary
but also it was endgame at that point so he just kind of dropped it and stayed privately mad about it forever
this was so fucking funny though, he shared the conversation with reigen and tem and reigen just zeroed in on being called his best friend and was so touched by it
which was oocly the reason i'd shared it tbh
not me logged into the wrong journal like ?!?! WHY CANT I SEE THIS
hfjskg
i was so curious since you told me this what the mannerisms were and im losing it
this still kills me
watch a man just walk up to an eldritch horror sucker punch it in the face and then salt it "hey thats reigen"
lmfao just walking up like "let's talk this out reasonably" and then punching her
yes
oh my other favorite detail from that that i forgot to mention in here was that they took his gun after they killed him and when they went into that big fight at the end datz was like "well given who that meat guy seemed to be i am fully expecting this to not actually be a real gun" and he was correct
hahhaha
he also called the police on these meat monsters
yes
very very funny i love you quynn
it was so good
anyway uhhhhh he also got baby cursed the final week and rather than make him an actual kid i just made him 21 because 1. i thought it was hilarious that he was so old that if you de-aged him a quarter century he was still a legal adult and 2. no one on earth has ever drawn him any younger than that
which brings me to like
how much headcanon i had to make up for his past because he's such a minor character and it's AA so of course there was absolutely nothing
his wanted poster in canon says he was a former member of the military in "a foreign land" which is like ??? where did you come from and why are you here
they do also talk in that same scene about khura'in's illegal immigration problem though so i just ran with that because it made more sense than anything
though he does have a valid passport so apparently he became a citizen at some point
idk anyway all my written memshares that weren't video clips from the game were stuff i just made up lmao
but i feel like this one i made up for meeting dhurke the first time makes more sense than anything else
adds a spoiler warning to one of those quick
i also just came to the same conclusion some others in the fandom did that the other country he's from was probably supposed to be nepal or its wacky AA equivalent based on where khura'in is supposed to be located (near bhutan/nepal), one of his beta designs looking a lot like the nepali military uniform, and his kukri since that's their official weapon
and the actual civil war that happened there would have been at its worst in the early 2000s which is also when the revolution in khura'in started, so probably around the same time he went there
so i'm like, i have no idea if anyone at capcom actually thought that hard about this but that's actually an extremely good reason for why an army guy might fuck off to a peaceful country
i refused to commit to actually naming the country in the game but i was like, very definitely using nepal as my basis for everything in his background
which is why he was also like uhhh idk my high school got converted into a government shelter at one point so my experience probably wasn't typical??? when some of them were talking about high school experiences during argalia's execution because of color guard lmao
because also judging by his age the war started like the same year he entered high school even though it didn't ramp up for a few years
anyway i did not go into this often since i just made it up but did drop it a few times for context
most importantly
this is why summer of '69 happened
because when was doing karaoke with ryuki i was like i have no idea what american songs this guy would know
and was googling what songs in english were popular over there and found this “Summer of ’69” a Nepali Anthem? | Musings from an A...
Close-up: Nepal's love for Summer of '69there was a whole little bbc thing about how popular it is there
and i was like ok this is funny i'll use this
and then as i linked the music video for the song in my tag i actually watched it
ghsdk i had to go back and find my tag that i edited after watching
Bryan Adams - Summer Of '69 (Official Music Video)
that was so funny, summer of 69 really did just become the game's coping song
the apples are at like 1:45
I KNOW
it was better than i could have ever hoped for and i'll have a special place in my heart for that song for the rest of my life now
so anyway his 21 year old self was still in that military but at a point where he kind of hated both sides in the war and was just still there because he was like well wtf else am i gonna do
but he just kind of seemed like a cheerful troublemaker then too so that only came up in his conversation with ace
i described him as the cool kid side of the nihilism meme at that point in his life
THE OTHER IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THIS (it was not important) was that it was emotionshare so i could finally convey the vibe of thinking reigen was hot lmfao
because these days he just has other stuff going on and has been firmly in the uncle role to everyone for so long that he just like. was not thinking about that stuff ever aside from his brief time love arrowed to tem
but i was like, yeah you can be a horny little gay 25 years ago that's fine
it was also during this that he was trying to describe tibetan sand foxes to ace
and drew this masterpiece to illustrate
rita was also present at the same time so when pazu had that animal wonderball i was like
you've got to make me that fox
and that's why my account now has three tibetan fox icons
and ok now i'm at endgame so i'm finally going to do my MAJOR SOJ SPOILERS FOLLOW, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO THE OTHER BOLD LINE I'LL USE TO MARK WHERE THEY END IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THE GAME
sooo his canon point was from the last chapter, the day before dhurke's murder trial, while he's holding onto the founder's orb. he does not personally have that important of a role to play at this point, just holding onto that (which someone else could run to the office to grab if he couldn't bring it himself) and breaking dhurke out during the trial break
so at the beginning of this last week when they were like "whoops time started back up in your worlds again sorry you'll miss a week" he like. was really worried about the possibility that if they lost the trial dhurke would have already been executed and he never would have seen him again, so he just decided to believe really strongly in apollo!!!
and be sure he'd win even though the government was shady as hell and would almost definitely sabotage it somehow!!!!
and he was telling reigen this like i'm sure it'll be fine!! and also said
"Besides, I'm pretty sure I would've like, felt a disturbance in the Force or something if he'd kicked the bucket while I was away from him."
which..... lol............
no you wouldn't have because he's already fucking dead........ and like, reigen was saying how snake had said she could take him back to an earlier point in time and they could do the same for him and i was just thinking how like
even if he did that
the earliest he would ever even consider going back would be to before dr. buff died so getting the orb wouldn't have been such a huge ordeal and maybe shit would have gone down differently with inga
but he was already dead then too!!!! and he just has no idea!!!!!! and i was just making myself so fucking sad all game every time he was talking fondly about dhurke and everything i was just like
you have no idea and this is so tragic
its the meanest twist
IT REALLY IS
so it's a fucking blessing that they got this overpowered book that just lets them do whatever and i just had to think of the right phrasing that would be ic while also still accomplishing what he doesn't know he needs to account for lmao
so i came up with "
Dhurke Sadhmahdi will live to see the revolution through to its successful end." and i'm just like. ok. i have finally solved this. this ensures both that he never actually died before this and that the revolution will succeed!!!
and i'm just thinking about how when he actually goes back home it's going to be so fucking funny because he'll probably go back to like-- well honestly he WANTS inga dead so he'll probably just go back to the exact moment he came from
and he's going to be so fucking confused when everything is completely different than it was when he left because it all had to be retconned because dhurke wasn't dead for the past week
and he'll never know why........... i'll have to think through how this works actually and what actually happened with the orb and everything in this timeline
but anyway. BIG RELIEF because i've been quietly hurting myself with this all game lmao
dhurke...... im so glad
and i wonder a lot how he actually feels about amara these days because i feel like he honestly has to be kind of resentful of her, not because he's jealous but because she trusts ga'ran over dhurke and actually believes he might have tried to murder her????
and i feel like he'd just be like how the fuck can you have been married to this guy and still believe this total horseshit she's feeding you about him being a traitorous villain
but dhurke still loves her 
so he just keeps his mouth shut and helps anyway
so he just keeps his mouth shut and helps anyway
anyway this is why despite being basically married to this guy he also knows he never actually WILL be because dhurke is always going to be in love with his wife for some reason and he's his best friend so he'll keep supporting him and won't get in the way of it
so he's just going to date reigen and not worry about What Could Have Been because it couldn't, actually, and they'll both be happier this way without him stuck pining forever
anyway i think that's all the late game spoilers i've got so
SPOILER SECTION END YOU'RE FREE
yay
it truly is so funny
it's very cute and i love them
oh this was about dhurke not me
dhjkfsd
you writing in that memory "yeah we've been living together and raising children together for ten years JUST GUY STUFF"
yeah LMAO it's truly just
so hard to not read it as gay
so i don't
i hate ace attorney
it's fucking gay
it's really funny because i think it's mostly just because they needed someone around to dump all the apollo and nahyuta backstory on phoenix
but by doing that they made him come off as so deeply involved in their childhoods himself
there was this one tumblr post that was like "sometimes you just need a guy to handle all the exposition and you accidentally create a gay man"
MY OLD MAN YAOIIIIII "react to something else" no I love datz but my ship
you're valid
beams
I did this "you had nothing to do with this at all" I did this
I MEAN IT PROBABLY WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT JAILBREAK, SO, YOU KNOW,
I did this,,,
anyway I love datz so much and all your head canon is so good eric
I'M GLAD, i try to keep it reasonable but there is truly so little to work with
this old man yaoi thread was
so cute
i read it this morning and was just like 
but yes agreed... i love datz he was so fun ;_; eric you're so powerful with your aa side characters
hsjkjhkaf thank you i sure do keep doing this for some reason
I so misread this as 'I sure will keep doing this for some reason' and immediately was all
AURA BLACKQUILL CONFIRMED
i mean i probably will let's be honest
i have accounts for knightley and inga and ron delite and ashley graydon and took a bunch of screenshots of roger retinz when i replayed soj just in case i decide to play his shitty ass at some point
i am not yet off of my bullshit
anyway other general character things i thought of that i wanted to add are some character notes from the artbook that i didn't get until after i wrote my app
in my app i was like "his ability to stay positive and keep the atmosphere from getting too heavy is probably part of why the revolution's been able to keep going for 20 years!" and then i was like well maybe that's an exaggeration
and then it literally said exactly that in the notes and i was like well okay then
and other notes were that while he does a lot of ridiculous shit he's also actually pretty shrewd when it comes to like, messing with the royal guard and getting them wrapped around his finger
and that he actually was a talented elite military guy and they deliberately made him a year older than dhurke to emphasize that he really does have a lot of experience with stuff and is capable of being a leader and making tough decisions
so I JUST ENJOYED THAT because that does not come through in the game so much lmfao
but i was kind of playing him with all that in mind
chinhands
i love you datz....