#byakuya rambles

But the thing is, Byakuya himself doesn't fully seem to grasp this. At least, not the fact that he isn't the best in everything. And that's because up to HPA and the killing game, he simply was the best at everything. Everything that mattered in his world at least.

Before going to HPA, all that mattered was his business skills. He was training to take over the company, and that was what he was good at. He didn't make any mistakes because this was what he was meant to be good at.

As such, it only made sense he would be good at everything, right? Because he was good at everything he did in his life at that point. He had never been in a situation where skills mattered that he didn't have- that was simply not the way his life worked.

That is why we see him like we do in Chapter 4. It's why we get his ionic 'How can you know what I don't know?' line because up to that point, he did know everything. He knew everything that mattered in his world. And that was the only worls hew interacted with.

That's all for this ramble though hehe. As usual, if you want me to ramble more about Byakuya, just send me an ask! Will do it without those too, but that way I can ramble about something specific! :D

Now, with the smart students I mean Kyoko, Celeste, and Byakuya. I think we can all agree on that. Obviously Makoto is smart too, but the whole thing is just his hope vs Junko's despair, so I'm not counting that.

But as for these 3? Well, Kyoko's the most obvious. Junko wiped her memories, made her forget she was a detective along with a lot more. This made it harder for her to solve the murders, which in turn gave the killers a higher chance to succeed than the zero chance they would've had otherwise.

Memory problems also made Kyoko more vunerable. Sure, the others didn't know about them, but Kyoko doesn't look the most... physically strong, that much is true. Somebody might've targeted her because of that and her lack of menmory certainly wouldn't help.

Then for Celeste it's the motives. The first one not so much, at least not more than for almost everybody else, but it's a different story when we look at the second and third one. Secrets and money.

Celeste sure does have a secret she wants to hide- her real name. The only reason she most likely didn't kill then was because things weren't alligned well. But from what we know how she reacted to her real name... Yeah, she would've done anything to make sure it stayed hidden.

As for the third motive... Well, that speaks for itself. But to add onto that- most of the people in the killing game were already decently rich. They would've had no reason to kill. It was as if Junko knew that Celeste specifically wouldn't be able to withhold herself from taking it. She probably did know tbh.

And then there's Byakuya. The dude I have thoughts about like no other. For him it was the way the killing game was. Fifteen people where only one could come on top. The losers would be (as good as) dead.

That description doesn't just fit the killing game, but the Legacy Crown Championship Byakuya went through to become heir as well. There's absolutely no way that's a coincidence.

Yes, Byakuya's siblings just got exhiled, but Byakuya said that it was akin to death.

It's almost the exact same. It's the reason why I made this post talking about how I would think Byakuya would act differently outside of the killing game. Because he's implimenting the same strategies as before. The ones that made him win.

And all of these things amount to the same thing- they were targeted and made with one reason only: despair.

I have heard some people talk about how Byakuya wasn't the real antagonist of THH, but Celeste, Junko, or even Kyoko was, and I think that couldn't be more wrong.

Because I think some people are forgetting what an antagonist is. The antagonist is not the villain, they are somebody who opposes the protagonist. In many cases they are the villain, yes, but they don't need to be.

And that's the case with Byakuya. Because at his very core, he is the opposite of Makoto. Where Makoto is positive, he is negative. When Makoto talks about working together, he shuts the idea down and calls him naive.

At every point, he thinks the opposite of what Makoto thinks. He challenges Makoto's ideals, and no other character does that. Celeste barely had any interaction with him and Kyoko helps him. Junko, meanwhile, doesn't appear until the very end and is the villain.

But Byakuya? He is rich where Makoto is average. He had to fight for everything while Makoto simply had nothing to fight for. He has fourteen older siblings he doesn't know while Makoto has one younger sister he's close with.

They're opposites in many ways. And that is what makes Byakuya the antagonist. Yes, he comes around a bit in the end and starts believing in what Makoto says, though not fully, but that doesn't erase all of his past actions.

Byakuya really is just the antagonist of THH. Just because he doesn't act as crazy as Nsgito or Kokichi does not make that any less true.

Now, this is a question I couldn't be more excited to answer, because I, uh, talk about Byakuya's dad quite z bit. Though, I do have quite some thoughts on his mom too.

I will be keeping things as close to canon as possible, as in, it has to make sense within canon. I'll be doing that with every ask unless somebody asks me to get more headcannony or it's about my fics.

But let's get started! I wanna talk about his mom first, mostly because I have a lot of thoughts about his dad hehe.

First off, I don't see his mom as a good person. Nor do I see Kijo- his dad- as particularily good too. But there's a clear difference between the two and that was that his mom had a choice. She didn't need to have Byakuya- for her to have Kijo's child, she would've needed to be rich already- but she did.

She signed up for having a child with Kijo. She chose that. Just so she could have a chance at profiting of his riches.

She probably pushed Byakuya hard so he would succeed. Maybe for himself, or maybe for her.

And if he failed?

Well, his whole life would be ruined while she would remain unscathed. Safe. She would continue on as normal.

Honestly, I don’t think any of the women that had children with Kijo were good people. If they were, they wouldn’t have had a child with him. They wouldn’t have practically signed their child away with a chance they could win, and a bigger chance they wouldn’t.

Especially not when they’re the youngest. Because she most likely would've had to know about that. Yet she still did it. Maybe it was because she just saw it as an extra chance for her child, but was that worth ripping away a whole childhood?

Then for Kijo. I don't think he was really a bad parent, nor do I think he was a good one. All things considered, he most likely was barely a father. A mentor most likely, but not a real parent.

Their relationship was most likely very businesslike, with almost no actual parenting happening. But that doesn't mean I think Kijo was cold to him.

After all, we know just how big of an ego Byakuya has. And I am fully convinced that Kijo fed into that. It's honestly what makes sense- Byakuya won, he was his heir. Byakuya was perfect and he would tell him so.

That said, that was most likely the only father-son aspect of their relationship. Kijo did most likely teach Byakuya about the business after he became heir, but that was all. He most likely was busy working a lot of the time. Sure, I have no doubt that they did some work together too, but that isn't really bonding time.

Hope that answered your question! :D Honestly have a bunch of thoughts about Kijo, especially in my AU's, but tried to keep this as canon as possible!

Short answer: I hate it. I hate every single thing about it because none of it makes sense.

But obviously, you don't come here for short answers. So, a long answer is what you'll get. And for this post I'll focus mostly on the backstory part we got. I could talk about the rest of DR:T another time, but it's simply too much to put in one post.

But everything we got to know about his backstory in there doesn't make sense. It literally contradicts his FTE's.

There never were 108 children, just 15. The 108 actually came from Imposter's FTE's, which was showing to us that they weren't the real Byakuya and was lying. Byakuya doesn't have 108 siblings. He has 14.

The funny thing, what Imposter says lines up with what we got in DR:T. Almost as if the writers did so little research that they read the wrong Byakuya's FTE's

The whole ranking system also takes away from Byakuya being the youngest. That was his whole thing- he was the strongest despite being the youngest.

And then there's the fact that Byakuya's siblings die... the exact thing Byakuya clarified didn't happen.

They literally had the chance to give us the Byakuya backstory we deserve, but instead they gave us a mess. Simple because they wanted to make it more interesting. Like, no.

There are many ways to make his backstory into an interesting story without deaths! I've literally done it myself. It's very different from the events we see in DR:T, but keeps in line with the facts we do know. It really wasn't that hard.

Then there's also currently this fic getting written, which seems to follow the DR:T more closely while actually keeping true to canon.

DR:T had so much potential and ruined it. It wanted to be entertaining so badly that it gave us a bad story that didn't make any sense.