Mahiru Koizumi (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
photonement) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
funpark2014-10-15 09:19 am
photonement) wrote in funpark2014-10-15 09:19 am
Non-Chore CR Meme
(A Cheat Sheet for CR Charts)
♥ Step one: post with your characters.
♠ Step two: respond to other people's characters with your characters.
♦ Step three: they tell you in detail what their character thinks of your character. TL;DR is encouraged; that's how this works.
♣ Optional step four: discuss it with them if you want! Make a big chain of tl;dr if you're up to it.
♥ Step five: other people do the same thing to you! Maybe you even harvest your tl;dr to use in a CR chart later.
♠ Step six: keep checking back in so that no one is ever late!
Mahiru Koizumi
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Okay so Mahiru has always found Gundam extremely weird and annoying on that front but he was decent enough in trial one for her to see some vague evidence that he wasn't evil, just super duper weird. So she comes to in the park and tracks him down, even making a resolution to help him feed the animals with Oz, because it's a good, cute idea, and he's decent - not because he's familiar. I can't overstate how weird it was for Mahiru that her classmates thought they should stan for each other to the death over their new parkmates. Kuzuryuu and Peko were one thing, especially given the solanax theory and after Peko's true nature came to light. But Gundam??? Ibuki??? She was more disappointed in those two.If they were gonna do wacky antics though then all was well.
Of course Gundam was always flipping out around her because she was dead. seriously so many threads she'll eventually look back like oh WOW so that's why he said that crazy shit. but even later in the game she still had no idea that's what Gundam and Peko were discussing increasingly flagrantly. so she was kind of annoyed that he did this to her because it just seemed like he had some private weird reason, when it was actually quite a normal reason. This only amplified when he was so mad about Kuzuryuu dying but she could see he really didn't flip out much about her own death, and she was just like why??? why does he matter more than me?? did I forget you guys living together or some shit??? hey what's up here
Oddly enough once Otori's murder happened she was super concerned about the letter she wrote and that would have been this big thing but he survived to endgame so now she can just chill about that. she still has a lot of questions for him, mostly she's down to hang out now that they're both alive
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The second confession is that five years ago there absolutely would have been a romance angle and overcoming this narrative tendency was really difficult as a writer. The truth is, when Hinata gives her so much attention that she finally tells him she likes him, even though I don't think she's coming from a sincere romantic place I do feel like Koizumi is in a bad place where she herself saw things that way. Averting this narrative inertia required careful rationing of jokes about a "jilted lover" and "Mommy's secret girlfriend".
So from the very beginning when Otori was praising her work so much and willing to discuss things with her in more depth, Koizumi really had no idea that he did this with many other people. She is very starved for this kind of praise after complete social isolation in middle school, hence why a person like Hiyoko can command her loyalty so easily. Otori might have obviously been greedy and rich in a moderately repulsive manner, but he was also intelligent and articulate and polite enough to let her riff about his flaws, enough that she enjoyed his acquaintanceship. (Also helped that he never needed her assistance in basic tasks... Man, she would have gone off on him so hard in the bunker if he had asked her how a fucking can opener worked, which is pretty hypocritical considering that when Suoh asked her she ended up finding it kind of adorable)
A lot of Koizumi's more low-key ladypain is easy to miss in canon, perhaps most notably that she personally blames herself for Togami's death. As dubious as she was of his forceful nature and paranoid policies, he was revealed to obviously be a good person. (She still thought it was stupid - not contemptworthy, but the wrong decision - that Togami sacrificed himself for Komaeda. This led to her belief that simple martyrdom has to have a net benefit, and shouldn't be based on "I'd rather me die than you I'm trash".)
At the start of the park game, she likes her classmates, sure... mostly Ibuki. She was distant from Tanaka, Peko was distant from her, and Kuzuryuu was a clusterfuck. Honestly, against the wall she never would have chosen any of them over a park member; I mean, Tanaka over Levi would have been obvious, but Peko over Kenny the medic, no. Koizumi considered every DR2 character her personal friend (Hanamura and Togami included; Kuzuryuu and kind of Komaeda not included) but she tried to consider every dreamland character her personal friend, which was really hard because there were over 40 other people, some of whom were openly hostile and others she just plain never got time to meet. To an extent, Koizumi was relieved at the time that Otori admitted they couldn't be friends - but she thought that he felt the same way as her about their casual acquaintanceship having value.
Okay, and then Kuzuryuu "died". Now considering all the DR2 characters her friends did not actually mean she could trust they would never commit murder, as was immediately made SUPER FUCKING OBVIOUS BY PEKO GOING FULL YAKUZA. She did not have the luxury like Otori did of knowing his Ouran characters for several months. Koizumi's main problem was that she saw Kuzuryuu dying as proof that he was a good person with his classmates' best interest in mind albeit possibly at the costs of others. In reality, Kuzuryuu's good heart and inno status were totally unrelated. However, Koizumi believed that neither Tanaka nor Ibuki were bad-hearted enough to be mafia and obviously mafia Peko didn't make sense in light of full yakuza Peko. Thus, Koizumi needed to believe all her living classmates were inno to continue believing in a bad-hearted mafia, rather than a good-hearted mafia with whom she should be cooperating.
And this is where Otori comes in; he was convenient proof that it might not be completely stupid or even self-sacrificing to feel that way. At the time she was grateful to him and was well on her way to convinced of his innocence. High school cult was the next best thing to Being Alone With Aya. High school cult never happened, of course, because--
Ibuki came out, proof that Mahiru had betrayed everyone to the bad-hearted mafia; and then Koizumi survived, proof that there really was a good-hearted mafia. There was no compromise between "I was a bad obstructive villager who hampered the good mafia" and "I was a stupid trustful villager who betrayed my secrets to the mafia". As Koizumi sincerely believed the dream story at first, she was stuck in "good mafia" mode, which is not a particularly happy place to be! She was stuck with Malik, Levi, Kuzuryuu, and Sakaki, friends with exactly none of them; her relationship with Dipper was also strained because each had been told explicitly by their "murderers" that their death was the other buddy's fault. Then Edea showed up, the first person she looked forward to seeing again, this is already very long so I'll try to put those feelings in my reply to Edea.
Thus, Otori was the second person in the graveyard who she looked forward to seeing again... but he blamed her for his death. Outwardly Otori placed himself firmly in the "bad mafia" camp, a place Koizumi didn't want to go... but in the bad mafia camp, her actions in causing his death had actually been beneficial because he was a no-role single. So whether mafia was strictly good or strictly bad, Koizumi could not justify his initial anger at her, and the letter incident itself had been Aya's fault anyway.
She just was so angry. Everyone but Edea in the graveyard was inno. Koizumi could no longer justify Kuzuryuu's class=yakuza approach, but since Kuzuryuu was inno and everything was so amnesia-awkward between them, she never actually had any outlet at all to yell at him about this. Now there was Otori and he had done basically the same thing, right down to her worst fear that Kuzuryuu was only acting polite because the game forced him to do so and he needed to curry favor. This ran the gamut from technically true decontextualized uncharitable interpretations to outright off-base "you should have taken responsibility for me" stuff that Otori was really never under any obligation to have done.
After that Koizumi kind of felt better, or at least realized that she had been projecting Kuzuryuu onto Otori. She awkwardly attempted to return to their previous acquaintanceship but they couldn't actually bond over hating on Suoh because Otori secretly retained his feelings of friendship towards Suoh. Man, she didn't know him at all. She didn't even know his friends. Did you know Koizumi has literally no fucking idea the whole time that Hitachiin is a twin? On her side she never thought she was being so presumptuous about Otori, just that she took his admission of hosts=yakuza loyalty and ran with it.
For the rest of the game their conversations were most dynamic in that she felt like they had enough of a connection for her to yell at him appropriately unlike say Malik. Over time it became increasingly obvious that she was not even a little bit special to him at all and he didn't care about whether she liked him or not and she just gave up on engaging with him at any deep level. Their anticlimactic goodbye thread is the best example of this and the whole CR in a nutshell; she makes attempts to be intelligent and friendly but realizes in short order that Otori will only return the former, not the latter.
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I'm sorry, I've enjoyed playing with you! She didn't do anything wrong, he's just an asshole to people.
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This was still really fun CR though! I would watch an entire movie about Koizumi-Otori business ventures God help me.
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Of course Mahiru was always ready to scold him for being crude, but however age inappropriate his South Park dialogue was, he was rarely directly berating a person while she was alive. (Later he had strong words for Nui and Clash but by then she was watching from the bunker, making her disapproval milder.) Dipper's own "death", caused by her, was proof that the trauma train would happily run over small children as well. So even though she might have disapproved of his costumes and crossdressing in standard nonsumptuous circumstances, people were getting "murdered", they had bigger things to worry about, and if he was going to have coping mechanisms, she wasn't going to bother him. It also made her happy that he was one of the only people who was particularly friendly with Aya.
After a couple days he "died" so they got to spend more time together. She was really afraid that he was going to be severely burned and his relative safety in the shower was such a relief. Go, Mysterion. Protect your city. Children shouldn't have to be at physical risk but she seriously trusts him to do that shit if he's so confident with that rifle, he's better at it than the likes of Levi.
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Aya just flew into her life head first and stole her heart. She's a good photographer and didn't dismiss Mahiru's work as boring or her aesthetic as "commoner not yakuza". Furthermore Aya was happy to hang out with her even in more casual contexts. On a superficial level Mahiru enjoyed her crow cosplayer antics.
She found Aya's geta particularly adorable. Fun fact: Hiyoko also wears geta, thanks to her upbringing as a hypertraditional nihon buyo artist. Considering that Mahiru is able to help Hiyoko tie her obi, I like to think that Mrs. Koizumi was around for some traditional type celebrations back in Mahiru's early years, such as her first shichi-go-san; Mahiru also demonstrates a general appreciation for traditional toys like bamboo copter. So though Mahiru is fairly modern in her day-to-day life and her types of anxieties, she likes traditional things. This also ties into her eventual suspectibility to soapies.
Anyway, Mahiru saw how tired Aya was after writing forty copies of the newspaper but everyone kept giving Aya crap for her journalism that was admittedly rather irresponsible. At the same time there were so many people that gave Mahiru props for her own pictures, which was new for her because like I said, she's not used to people thinking her cute smile photography is cool, and she felt rather helpless in the space of the game (hence her vulnerability to the buddy cops' reckless request). So she resolved to offer her assistance and Aya accepted her which made Mahiru very happy. They just got to have fun formatting this stuff and Mahiru felt like she was helping Aya and incorporating her own work into a more meaningful, proliferated context.
Mahiru has codependent tendencies given her desperation for attention and approval, but her agreement with Aya on basically everything comes from a fairly healthy place. Mahiru believes that murder is inherently wrong even as revenge, and only supports the death penalty in the context of mutual killing games because the innocent majority needs to survive. Aya managed to make neutrality look affable instead of apathetic. Inno or mafia, everyone gets an obituary. Mahiru wanted to be devoted to the overarching mystery, not the murders.
Mahiru's relationships with her classmates were strained by the circumstances; they wanted to function as a group that would attack others, innocent or not, to protect themselves (in other contexts I describe this pattern of behavior as "yakuza"). But Aya never wanted Mahiru to go into that emotional place for her. She just wanted her copies and her curry. This is why Mahiru's favorite place in the world to be was "alone with Aya". Without being completely removed from the unfortunate situation, Mahiru could be in a place with someone who valued her services as much as her self. I hesitate to label Aya's function in this regard as a "best friend"; she was more like a partner to Mahiru, because their relationship would typically be productive instead of recreational even outside of photography work.
Once Mahiru "died", she missed Aya the most. She was just so comfortable with her and would have proposed soapies even "while they were both alive" if there had been a good reason back then. Absolutely nobody else in the bunker could provide her that kind of emotional solace except arguably Sakaki later on. However, it became obvious that Aya was inno and Mahiru was hella relieved even though she didn't actually spill any government secrets like she did with Ibuki. Furthermore Aya wasn't going to go full yan stan as Mahiru feared Hiyoko might. I'm not gonna lie Mahiru had a brief yan moment herself when she was disappointed that Maya died and didn't bring Aya with her. Overall though Aya surviving and not getting hurt just made Mahiru so happy, like she said.
Seeing Aya again was the greatest though literally the best thing that ever happened to Mahiru in her whole entire life. Better than Mom coming home for New Year's. Way better than her birthday. (Mahiru wants people to throw a surprise birthday party for her but they never have.) Aya was happy too and she got her Kodak moment and Mahiru's so happy. In her penultimate social link she just hands her camera to the protagonist like "Yo. I keep taking all these pictures of other people but I don't have any of me. I want there to be one of me. Take a picture with my camera." So then Aya came up with basically the same idea on her own and she's just so so so happy that Aya anticipated this impulse, that they could communicate without speaking.
Dangan Ronpa characters are just so lonely that in the space of a couple days of hardcore friendship they'll be pretty ready to spend their lives together if the circumstances allow. Mahiru hasn't really thought much about whether Aya is her friend or her coworker or (god forbid, given her severe internalized homophobia) a potential girlfriend, because as it is, the circumstances don't allow, barring a "long-term photojournalism assignment in Gensokyo" PSL.
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btw what's with the severe internalized homophobia though? just curious.
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Anyway technically internalized homophobia is my interpretation given that Danganronpa doesn't have a whole lot of open discussion about LGBT issues WHICH PROBABLY SAYS A LOT IN ITSELF TBQH... but she does have a very strong opinion that there are womanly spheres and manly spheres for example. In fanon this is misandrist but in canon it's more like she knows boys are supposed to be stronger and is angry that in practice they're just lazier. Those attitudes tend to be linked to heteronormativity... early up in my Kyoya comment you can see my interpretation of the route where she ends up in a dating relationship with the protagonist, I.e. she figures being close to a boy means that they should date.
On the other hand, there's Hiyoko. I said this weird part about Mahiru having modern anxieties and this includes an idea that nudity in general should be 100% private, while Hiyoko feels that in same-sex settings nudity is okay. Hence soapies. And then there is Sato, this girl Mahiru knew in high school... I could actually write a whole separate essay comparing Aya to Sato because they have a somewhat similar warped carefree attitude that Mahiru agrees with coming from a more affable place of neutrality. There's only one flashback but Sato's like "hi Mahiru-chan sup sup you here to confess your undying love to me?" Which would make the most sense if Mahiru did love Sato, I mean that's not why Mahiru was there though because this is Danganronpa so she actually had to talk to Sato about a murder which took priority. Furthermore Mikan and Ibuki were the other two girls who were Mahiru's personal friends; Mikan is actually in a relationship with a woman I AM SAD MAHIRU WAS NOT ALIVE FOR THE REACTION... and you've seen Clash/Ibuki in action so you know how gay Ibuki is.
So when you put all of this stuff together it makes the most sense for Mahiru to be a huge gay, and yet the only time she really overtly expresses the idea of dating is with the dude protag. Combined by her aforementioned gender-conscious aspects, I think she thinks she *should* only date boys, whereas the desire to date girls is self-indulgent and wrong. (this feeling persists regardless of the alternate interpretation where she has actual bi feelings for the protag) Even in the context of being alone with girls as the most meaningful experiences in her life, that's sort of justified to herself as how only girls can be friends to each other, but guys and girls can't just be friends.
BASICALLY my point is that if someone pointed out she was kinda yuri for Aya, Mahiru would deny it a lot, and at this point in time she would not feel comfortable asking for a date herself (she might say it's a date in a joking way) and that sort of "girl with girlfriend?? What no"thought process is on top of the eight days now go back to Gensokyo situation.
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yeah the thing with Gensokyo is there are like. 3 named male characters in it, ever, and one is a cloud and one is a turtle and the last and only humanoid one is a shopkeeper. a shopkeeper surrounded by witches and shrine maidens and monstergirls who fight each other. so though obviously there must be other males in society most everyone who is anyone is a girl so being yuri probably isn't a big deal especially if you're a youkai and not human in the first place.
ah but I'll link you to a dojin that's really reminiscent of the mahiru+aya relationship and dude i'll even set up a psl starter sometime !!
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What do you want me to do, Sakaki, demonstrate?
Only if you want to.
I JUST WANTED TO REMIND YOU THAT THIS WAS BASICALLY THE FIRST DIALOG-EXCHANGE THESE TWO EVER HAD.
I had completely forgotten and now I ship it. Cue a spin the bottle memeBecause as much as I'd like to imagine domestic early-game shenanigans with Koizumi nagging him for sleeping in and shoving over some cold cereal, during the game itself my interpretation was that she had in fact never spoken to him the entire time he "was alive". And that day was a tough one for her, she was going through a lot of emotions with Kuzuryu "dying" and Peko revealing her nature, but she was also very determined to not forget that Sakaki "died", to avenge him also. She wanted to solve the true mystery and she hated herself so much for getting carried away with Levi. THEN SHE DIED...
By the time they got to talking in the GRAVEYARD though, he was on the exact same wavelength as her: forget about these mysteries, it's time to get along with people. And things weren't going super smoothly with the other earliest deaths - standoffish Levi + Ishtar, awkward guilt about Dipper + Kuzuryu. So when Sakaki was immediately non-awkward and super familiar, she responded in kind! And this guided their interactions for the rest of the game - she could always trust in him to come up with a peaceful solution - so what if it was zany. He didn't actively promote murder even in revenge and that's more than can be said for some of these soldierier characters!! She did get the impression his YGO life was wackier than hers (pre-island) so when he got more opportunities to explore she deliberately took up the passive partier torch
There's a distinct superficial quality to their relationship - as their last thread showed, they were both pretty determined to persist in presenting their happy faces. But that moment also showed a potential future where they were brave enough to express sincere concern for each other. Overall Koizumi thought Sakaki was pretttttty much the bomb. (...yeah I went there.) She would latch onto him hard in a CRAU though that'd result in more tsundere manliness yelling
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Haha, they really were a good team though! Yuya definitely wasn't meaning to be superficial, he just kind of... had an incredibly shounen dad who taught him you should always laugh when you want to cry... so he thinks it's actually better to let her deal with it that way. He surely thinks Koizumi is pretty tough since she can do it so well, but given the chance he'd definitely want to help. And more on this later since you hit me up on mine, bahaha.
anyway yesss I approve, good ship good CRAU.
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