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!
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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 !!