Doubt endgame approaches, too, slowly.

Until then...

...The dash is quiet.

I wonder what I should do now? Congratulate everyone for finding the masterminds, maybe...sure. Good job, everyone! Except you, Keita. You screwed everything over and betrayed Hirashi Abe's trust. I can't forgive that.

I guess the rest of it I can leave for endgame time, yeah? Linking to my DA5 hopeful, or...something. Later, when I'm ready to actually play the sorry schmuck.

In the meantime I'm going to take advantage of the radio silence to talk about my favorite thing. The Doubt ensemble. 

...I mean, the SHSL musicians of Doubt Academy. If all of them happened to be in the same room at the same time. A room that, as of DA4, would include: 

Two strings players (Sasaki Yuzuki, Nanoka Era);

Two woodwinds players (Yoshiki Shouda, Rune Andersen);

and two percussion players (Hirashi Abe, Hitoshi Nakamura).

Yeah? Also: two experts in music technology (Ume Mori, Kikuyo Shirabe) and two vocalists (Suleiman Ahmed and Kyo Otonomiya, who I'm counting as a vocalist mostly because I don't know how to separate his skill with pure instrumental stuff from his skill as a musician in general). But even in an instrumentalists-only, live ensemble, the Doubtverse has a pretty neat musical aesthetic, yeah?

I always thought that was really neat, at least. I'm looking forward to see what kind of characters join the ensemble in DA5, actually.

…There’s a second part to this train of thought. I’ll post it in a minute. All I want to say in advance is that it’s exactly what it looks like it is, and

I

Actually, no.

...I have my reasons, I swear.

(I've got it back! My music studio! My workspace! Now I'm trying to work through all the pent-up recording energy, and my backlog. There are a lot of things I'm not ready to publish yet, but I do have one thing that I finished writing...uh, this month. I started it a few days before Kaoru Kitayama died, but it was hibernating. Hibernating, yeah.)

Second of all: with that in mind, 

I come here to post one thing, one thing, and then retreat to my lair, 

and

Mayumi Hanezuka.

The first Dangan Ronpa OC I ever knew existed. The reason I'm not currently still involved in canons roleplaying. The reason I felt like maybe I, too, should make a character one day, once I was good enough at writing. The reason I got to the point of learning about Doubt Academy at all. 

Mayumi Hanezuka is dead. 

What is this. This bullshit. 

I want to make something clear.

Over this past weekend, I have caught up to the dash. To a lot of things. Five days or so worth of things.

Sasaki is still alive. Cerys is still alive. Yoshihiro is back. No one died in the trials. Two people were injured, and no deaths! And all my classes got cancelled today so everyone could go climb a giant hill. (And, on an unrelated note, Hoshiko and Valentina talking to each other is adorable. That’s undeniable.)

It’s a good day to be me.

But it’s been nearly a week, and I’m still upset Hirashi’s dead. 

(It's not timestamped, but you can tell it was during the prologue because the Aya+Rover thread had happened already, but the Rover+P.K. thread hadn't.)

I think I was going to keep a running tally of every character I was upset about, but I didn't. It's been in my Drafts, untouched, ever since.

I want you to look at how many people on this list have died. Just look.

...Nearly all of them.

Rover died, and Rover dying was almost too upsetting to pay attention to the case, but then the case was fucking the coolest and I had to. Hibiki, Rover, what the hell did you two do?!

Haruka died, and the case was almost too exciting to realize that Haruka was dead, but now Naohiro and Sasaki are hair-braiding and crying on each other a little bit and I am, also, crying on myself.

Chiyoko died and her killer lied and Yoshihiro paid the price, and I'm still not over that. 

The following bullet point left purposely blank to create room in which to mourn Yoshihiro Shirayuki:

- several lightyears of space -

Okay.

(...It still seems unfair that Rubble lost Chiyoko and Yoshihiro in the same week. They were too good, too earnest for this sinful world. I hope the afterlife is full of 2D villains to conquer and poor dental health to fight.)

Also, who said it was okay to kill Aya?*

I have to wonder if anyone's double-dying in the afterlife, by the way. Especially the two new additions? I really do.

That wasn't in order. Never mind that.

TL;DR: How dare you?! 

Also, I really want to see all the murder planning docs. For basically every case that's happened so far. Hot damn.

...Also, how dare you?!

Previously on Astral Black:

- insert Dimitri burning and everyone crying - 

- insert Pianon being very concerned for Masami and Laia and Sora and Sun-mi and Valentina and... -

TL;DR: Are you...

...Are you guys okay?

One: I wanted to do something for Doubt Days, but my DAW's been on the fritz for several days and now I'm leaving for university. Who knows when I'll have my workstation back up and available again? The things I want to do will be done and published whenever that is, but probably not in this week, because transporting a MIDI keyboard and everything else at the same time is hard (and also, uni).

Sorry. :-(

.........

...I've survived these body discoveries. We've survived these body discoveries (most of us). We can do this, barely, but we've made it.