![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
TL;CR MEME
1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.
1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.
no subject
no subject
words spoken 3 months before disaster. jae it is still very haunting to me that the story she told for that stupid task w0 basically set the tone for their entire cr and i don't know whether i should laugh or cry about how different in tone this tl;cr is going to be from my blues one for you.
- 45 and 9, aka: a duckling following her home
it's just that 9 is a lot more willful than zenitsu is, but even so. 45 does uno nice thing. it apparently turns out to have much more profound effect on the recipient than she expected it to, and she spends the rest of their acquaintance going 'stop thinking of me as something admirable!' but even w0 on the bup she was already being taken slightly aback by how much... faith zenitsu seemed to have in her? saying she was dependable and stuff like that. because she doesn't think she should have made much of an impression on him from their few passing interactions?
she's joking here, but still. the sentiment applies. help. i know i talked on plurk about how ultimately 45 backslid in a lot of ways in crau, she originally entered it a lot more primed to be softer than how she entered blues, where [gestures at her generally harmless but somewhat manipulative nonsense at times re: ok how are we going to make you useful and contribute] and how she wasn't there to coddle anyone.
she tries... very much in canon, to keep all interactions with her framed as strictly business, so that people won't think much of her or go out of their way to care. when she's dealing with other teams and dolls and people out on a job, it's generally in the capacity of 'UMP45, leader of 404,' nothing else aside for at the very ends of missions sometimes because the end of a mission means that it's almost time for her to wipe their memories anyway. so haha, perfect time to be slightly more honest! not like they'll be able to do anything with it, right?
and if they can remember her, and she spends a lot of time with them? out of her team of 4, only 9 is more or less there 'willingly.' for a lot of the early portion of the story 416 is there mostly only because 45 is holding the fact that she has a (COMPLETELY FAKE, FALSE, MADE UP) debt to her over her head foooor reasons that won't be very relevant to this tl;cr, the important part here is how she frames herself as cold, selfish, and underhanded. work with her. you can pay her back that way. you owe her, after all. :)
and here she is coming out of blues with a decent chunk of people genuinely thinking well of her because for the most part in blues, she just... kind of just let herself exist passively in the background. she didn't make as concerted an effort to deflect because like... weird multiversal shenanigans. what's it going to matter? none of them are going to head back to her universe or anything, why not.
anyway so zenitsu expressing faith in 45 that early is basically just her whispering softly 'no, do not, there are so many better options'. please see my long rambling plurk about 45 and her lack of positive opinion about 45. but early crau, she hadn't flipped back too much into canon on the job mode, so she... kind of let it be? didn't encourage it, just set up little not-so-fictional stories about a girl and a cold, enigmatic traveler to gauge his reactions. she was genuinely concerned about him, but also, they were never that close, and it never seemed there was a good time to just... drop by and check in on him without it becoming a Thing.
and then memshare, where he got to see that her little story really went through... minimal editing before it was told to him. a little thing that she claims is only for her own self-satisfaction, because she can't tolerate people who'd enslave and take advantage of others like that existing. whether or not she's lying about that, he comes out of that conversation calling her compassionate and incredible. a few days after that, he calls her brave, as awed as another duckling she took in years ago, and just as unwilling to accept her justifications otherwise. the difference is, again, that 9 is more self-sufficient than zenitsu is, who has such a concerning lack of faith in himself that she really, really doesn't know how to nudge him towards standing on his own two feet instead of doing this very alarming thing of seeing such good things in her.
anyway, zenitsu and minako week was. funny in that it's two things dovetailing, because zenitsu is out here calling her brave and compassionate, and minako is out here calling her kind, and in both cases she wants to make like a skittish cat and just nope out. they are the only ones openly calling her this. and then they both die! which she is upset about, for multiple reasons, but in large part personally because she knew she would let them down. 45 yeeted in none counterproposals for anyone this entire game. if she was kind, or compassionate, she would have saved them, instead of having already taken a step back to let the game play out around her and get a better look at the things on the board. if she was brave, she'd actually speak up more at trial, lack of social capital to actually affect people's opinions be damned. but she can't do that. she doesn't do that. all her decisions are made so that they can complete the mission and go home, and rocking the boat unnecessarily when it doesn't even accomplish anything when louder, more impassioned persons are doing it is just... pointless, especially when her home is in the shadows anyway.
but she's still angry at herself that she couldn't, or didn't, do more for them. it's funny because despite none actual counterproposals on my part, she still saved her ability most weeks with the intent to play decoy for someone else if it ever became necessary, with saving herself by guising into one of the killers or someone else to create confusion as... an afterthought. after all, her logical and emotional sides agree on this: even if deaths were necessary, and even if the killers were more or less forced to do it and argued that there were no good choices, those sure were choices they made. and hey, if everyone's so determined to say that everyone's going to be brought back at the end anyway, then it shouldn't matter who lives and who dies, right? all lives should be equal, it's just a few weeks on a different side of things if they killed their loved ones. they'll be revived, like nothing ever happened (ha ha). just throw a dart and see what ensues. aaaand yet.
(me, to local personas blankly after w4: ...oh no. should i have said she was justice instead of wheel of fortune?)
anyway like i said on plurk, she doesn't hold the deaths or the kills against anyone, necessarily, because if there's anyone who can relate to and understand being forced to become an unwilling killer it's 45, lmao, but, uh, she sure as hell judges the thought process behind them and the reactions and explanations/justifications thereafter. just like she judges herself! because inaction is a choice, too. and surviving because she did nothing, even as people around her die, even if they deserved better from her... even if revenge kills would accomplish nothing other than self-satisfaction, and even if it really was for the better that she handled things like how she normally would, instead of letting herself care like she tried to in the first few weeks of crau...
even if the methods she uses in canon are effective and supported by her own logic and utilitarianism, one of the last things she says to another, idealistic and stupid doll before she erases that doll's memory of her is this: "Goodbye, young autonomous doll. I envy you, really I do. Because you want to save everyone..."
oh, and i guess i forgot to mention that in the breakin before memshare week, she smiled at 9, who'd helped them fight their way out, before stabbing her in the back. haha? haha. it wasn't real, it's fine.
please see tags to anaido about how just because things aren't real it doesn't mean they don't matter--