definition of a 6/10 (still the best id give any danganronpa) i love like a 10/10 and i know better than anyone how frustrating that is. teenage vomit franchise that for once understands its sticking it's own finger down its throat (continues to do so which i truly understand if it gets to be too much for some) and becomes the last place i would expect closure on a v complicated, decade-long question of what the series meant to me. my feelings aren't in danganronpa as the milked ip the fans ruined (despite what even ppl who like the ending might tell you, v3 believes its the other way around), or the murder mystery contraptions, or even its storytelling in any straightforward sense, but danganronpa as an ancient symbol of a language i had, to express myself and connect to others who were similar. calling it "fandom" feels gross for many reasons but mostly that it's too impersonal and implying i "belonged" to some whole, when to me it was more like my "use" of danganronpa became a signpost of how i was dealing with a bunch of identity crises. deflecting from who i really was through a bunch of gaudy interchangeable masks, dissolving my self into overexaggerated fictional teens that had more easily understandable backstories and consumable traits, lying and lying and being led by lies in turn, all subjugated to a binary world of hope and despair that would only mean anything within itself, never actually revealing any greater truth for me. it just was what it was.
this game, despite and because of its superficiality and its ugly blunt caricaturishness--forcing you to watch turds swirl in a bowl--finally understood that it can't actually give you the complex answers you need to whatever anxieties have been built up around itself. all that can be done is to let go and end things together, to be left with this: sadness and fear and anger and happiness and love have been and always will be the most precious jewels within anyone. whether living a fiction, believing a lie, i still live and believe! emotions from back then, or today, they can't be denied as not mattering, because i'd then be denying i was, am, alive. like of course this doesn't mean i'm not partially mad that there wasn't anything better than this franchise of trash fashioned into this trojan horse to say something so simple, no doubt someone will say there's something that did it "better", but it being the trash i have shaped memories and experiences with means it just is what it is. "you play my heart better than i play the piano"
this game, despite and because of its superficiality and its ugly blunt caricaturishness--forcing you to watch turds swirl in a bowl--finally understood that it can't actually give you the complex answers you need to whatever anxieties have been built up around itself. all that can be done is to let go and end things together, to be left with this: sadness and fear and anger and happiness and love have been and always will be the most precious jewels within anyone. whether living a fiction, believing a lie, i still live and believe! emotions from back then, or today, they can't be denied as not mattering, because i'd then be denying i was, am, alive. like of course this doesn't mean i'm not partially mad that there wasn't anything better than this franchise of trash fashioned into this trojan horse to say something so simple, no doubt someone will say there's something that did it "better", but it being the trash i have shaped memories and experiences with means it just is what it is. "you play my heart better than i play the piano"