#njmtsks

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I find that jj gives you maybe too much freedom to choose who to hang out with sometimes. you'll just randomly see kai carrying a bunch of books, and you'd think that's just neji being neji. but if you happen to hang out with neji a few weekends prior, you'll know it's because enishi caught on to him making a mini library of his own. and in neji's character story, which happens during the newcomers' performance arc, apparently mitsuki already reprimanded neji before about making kai his errand boy lol. but you could easily miss all of that if you were just hanging out with one person!! fascinating, but also frustrating lol

#mine musings #liveblogging jj #not to mention!! so many random events!!! #and by random i mean they really are at the mercy of rng!!! #well these are all hangouts but i feel like i only happened upon this sequence of events by chance #which i guess doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things #but it's cool that they do connect yknow? makes me wonder what else i might have missed #njmtsks

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lmao the replay value in this game is insane sometimes. ishida/towada were being silly with this dialogue

yeah I bet you're right, neji

#mine musings #liveblogging jj #njmtsks

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I am on playthrough two out of seven. there's a 70% chance that by the end of all this, I will be posting a njmtsks fic

#mine musings #liveblogging jj #yes you read that right. does this tag even exist on AO3? nope #writing this for an audience of one (1) (me) #but it's really just like. an exploration of my thesis that njks are the same people in different fonts. plus #the njmts dynamic is underexplored in the game #i have like a plot outline and everything but i do want to actually finish all the routes first but TRUST ME it makes sense #i can do it justice i promise #who am i even convincing when the tag doesn't even exist lmao. gotta feed myself.................... #njmtsks

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this scene had a beautiful CG but this is the line that actually gut punched me. mitsuki's whole arc is about vulnerability and trust, metaphorically shown through the way he always sets boundaries by dressing in private, displayed in the way he is taking down his own emotional walls of his own accord for this one person but is hurt through the process, and emphasized by how kisa herself is bound to her secret and cannot return that trust back to him.

it is unfair and yet he always makes the effort to go back to the status quo. "no I was in the wrong, just give me a moment to collect myself, I will maintain this relationship even if that means accepting that I can't be relied on with some things and moving past the hurt this causes me. we will steer this relationship back to safer boundaries. I will be okay. please wait for me."

their relationship is written in such a tender, intimate way too and it's just. it hurts, but it's lovely

and I'm not really on his route so I'm doing his events a bit late, so there's this extra hurt of all of this happening in my playthrough while neji gives quartz the meanest casting he's ever done and he puts a lot of responsibility on mitsuki as the al jeanne? AND it's winter, a terrible season for singers? my boy is stressed

#mine musings #liveblogging jj #i'm sorry again to all my followers for the jj spam but may i introduce you to my new blorbo #njmtsks

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I could be vibing with any song from the jj playlist until faded color comes up and then there are tears in my eyes. mitsukisa you will always be precious to me

#mine musings #liveblogging jj #yes i ripped all the songs from the jj albums #wishing for the day those songs become region free and available on platforms but. alas #i could not wait for that to happen bc i really want to listen to compass line shuffle now lol #anyway. literally the only reason i haven't done mitsu's post-christmas route yet is because i'm afraid i'll stop doing any routes after hi #but the way his pre-christmas hangouts weaved into the story and especially the winter performance... what can i say #i was just so touched. moved even #njmtsks

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#mine musings #liveblogging jj #njmtsks #expanding on the njmtsks thoughts. hear me out. it's like #unapologetic critic demanding honesty from people #meet eccentric artist hiding the Self behind stories #starving for creativity or else he'll kill himself #meet actor who runs from having thoughts about the Self by pretending to be other persons. putting on Other Selves #similarly. guy who doesn't want to be bothered or to Care™ and wants to distance himself from others #meet the director who WILL (annoyingly. gratefully) push your buttons to make you step up and be involved #meet actor who WILL lower your guard down and get you to Care™ before you even realize it #like i don't talk about it as much but the njmts dynamic is soooooo (shakes fist) #“please don't use me as a ruler to measure other people” chefs kiss. they should have more moments like that #ice princess softens up for the first time and the director goes ooooh. interesting!! #mitsu: stop making kai your errand boy. stop making me your measuring stick. this is why i don't go to your office (nags incessantly) #neji: and yet you're here anyway lmao #director creates an id playground for the actors and mitsu goes. well have YOU faced your persona shadow yet? yeah didn't think so. bitch #anyway. there's no one neji will entrust quartz more to than mitsu #i don't have to explain the njks and mtsks side of things obvs 'cause that's in the game #anyway yeah. something something honesty and vulnerability hitting three of them KO

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like. there's something to be said about kisa as a player surrogate and kisa as an actor and how she does have her own personality and is her own character but the role she plays within and outside of the game's story requires her to be malleable, and maybe it's that malleability that gives her both depth and shallowness. idk, idk, she's just fascinating. she could be so much more than what we got and she is so much more than what we got, for all the same reasons

#mine musings #liveblogging jj #i'm like. this 🤏 close to just writing a fic out of this bc i already feel guilty for posting a lot about jj when the tag is so quiet #sorry about that. i am trying not to type the game title in full to make up for it #something something about kisa being in the 'transparent' quartz class and how #by genre conventions she /must/ embody that transparency to a significant degree #and yet! #njmtsks

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I have a whole essay in my head on how kisa and neji are the same people with the same problems but in different fonts... but I have to wait until I actually do neji's route (which will be... a while) in case the game throws something at me that debunks this

but like. to me. they are the same though. kisa just has more People Skills and doesn't get the benefit of being seen through an outsider's perspective (unreliable narrator kisa my beloved, forced to be a self-insertable otome protagonist) (neji would also be an unreliable narrator if we're in his pov. but we aren't)

#mine musings #liveblogging jj #something something turning Other Persons into stories/performances while running away from being Persons themselves #theater as a totally Normal way to cope with grief and abandonment and excuse to not examine the self #why think about gender and humanizing other people as they apply in your personal life when you can just think in Theater Metaphors #i did get up to neji's third hangout event and know vague spoilers about 1/17 but again. waiting until i get to his route #njmtsks

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I think mitsuki is my favorite character so far

#mine musings #liveblogging jj #i mean i already knew he would be but going through his route is cementing it for me #njmtsks

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I was thinking the other day that man, kokuto neji is such a character and I haven't liked a writer character like this since... shang qinghua?

which naturally led me to this thought: jj fic with svsss-style au where neji transmigrates/gets isekai'd into the world of havenna. as domina, of course.

it's extra fucked up imo because at least when sqh transmigrated in his book, he made up all of those characters and they mostly stayed in the realm of fantasy. like, sure, lbh was kinda based on himself in some ways and mbj was his ideal fantasy, but they still mostly stayed fictional, you know? sqq (sy) had to fix his plots because the characters sqh wrote strayed too far from their original plotlines

but theater makes a fictional world a bit too real and personal, especially when you use real people as inspirations for your writing. with neji, he'd be looking at rukiora and see three different people (mitsuki acting as rukiora; rukiora who was written based on a younger version of neji; rukiora who is her own person in this weirdly real world of havenna). neji would see fugio and to him that is both sou acting as fugio and the fugio who grew up with poison flowers. miguel is both fumi and the guy who ran away from his neshiromi fields. the only constant would probably be chicchi. she is too much like kisa in that... well. neji didn't really have a backstory for chicchi. chicchi is a blank canvas just like kisa is as an actor.

anyway. yeah, very sv-style character arc where neji, much like shen yuan in sv, is forced to humanize the villain. except this villain was his creation and is also tied to a bunch of personal issues for neji that he Doesn't Want To Think About and also he doesn't? really understand the character he wrote tbh?

isn't art supposed to process your emotions for you!! why must he process these himself!!

can you imagine neji, who always casts himself as a seer of some sort (fortune teller, ushinoko) or someone who generally has some control over his future or his "creation" (who is mary if not just another side of neji anyway; she's takihime redux, and takihime is also. neji). imagine this dude being transported inside the play he wrote but he doesn't understand it and he has no control over it and everyone's acting both in character and out of character. he both knows and doesn't know these people. they're fictional but also... real? does he treat them as real people? is domina real? he wanted his actors to imbue parts of themselves into his characters. are these people really just characters from a script? are they his quartz classmates? is he allowed to even hope that that's the case?

it's both THE improv exercise of his dreams and also. a nightmare

#mine musings #liveblogging jj #jack jeanne #i do kinda want to write this eventually. like separate from a njmtsks fic #oh god. not me wanting to write a fic about a story within another story. oh rama havenna... #we can even throw in the whole prayer theme. like yes the priest preaches in a godless town and he carries a bible but hear me out #what if the god he's preaching about is himehiko instead #like. prayers and confession as offerings to a theater god. said theater god put you in your own play to “help” you fix it bc you #as the scriptwriter don't even understand anything about your own play #i kinda envision this as a neji & kai fic #though neji mostly struggles with rukiora and chicchi and the way domina prevents him from reacting authentically #neji knows everyone's backstories and inspiration but them BAM he has to face chicchi and he doesn't know anything about her #bc he was banking on kisa making chicchi her own character and being the 'transparent vessel' that helps everyone improve #and also he just had zero notes about chicchi lmao #neji every night at pontartia: is she being ooc right now or is this how chicchi was supposed to be all this time #like remember that time when he said to sou that he only realized what mukai's character was about after kisa got her act together #it's happening agaaainnnnn with chicchi #meanwhile rukiora hates him soooo much and neji is sad that he can't even confess about this to the priest bc it would be ooc for domina #mikki hates him!! except that's not mikki. but she looks and sounds and acts like mikki!! and also like a younger version of neji!! #he'll look to jire and he's all sad and mopey and neji is like. suzu having nuance is GREAT but also suzu not being cheery feels so bad man #where's my moodmaker? hachipochi missing hours :( #he tries to talk to sou but that's not sou that's fugio and also. fugio only cares about chicchi #domina barely even interacts with miguel so neji has to devise ways for domina to talk to him while being in character #but the minute he gets close rukiora is there and miguel would never talk to someone that makes rukiora upset. go away madame!! #neji is left to commiserate with otori/facchio and himehiko is laughing in the background

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I deliberately try to censor some of my jj posting so as not to flood/overwhelm the search and tag (since it has a very, very small fandom). I don't mind people finding my posts though, but I'm just confused how they're finding them lol. specifically the njmtsks posting because... who even cares about njmts and njmtsks. maybe there's more of us out there than I thought??

#mine musings #liveblogging jj #see i even renamed my liveblogging tag like i used to spell out the whole game but now i just use the acronym #again i don't mind people finding my posts. i just didn't want the search/tag to just be full of my own posts lol #but like. how did you find the njmtsks REBLOG. not even the main post. it was the reblog. amazing :o #anyway. to the njmts njks mtsks njmtsks likers HIIIIIIII ARE THERE MORE OF US OUT HERE AFTER ALL? 👋👋👋

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thinking njmtsks thoughts..........