#DR4

[whathappenedtodecember]

i did not see the akechigoroification of kris coming. that's on me, my bad. fucking bangs tho

the rpg subversion that's happening in deltarune is so good, you guys. it's just so good.

i can't be 100% certain that this is what's happening, not when we only have two out of seven chapters as we all well know, but call this a reasonable guess, i suppose. i keep thinking about the "harem" narrative that usually surrounds rpg protagonists and the way some people have taken to reading snowgrave as an attempt to 'win over the girl' (from susie to "the player", proxy'd by kris). about small hints like puppet scarf "for those who abandon healing", susie learning healing spells and that one interview toby did that alluded to that amounting to her having a well-rounded healing skill one day, noelle realizing the divide between kris and the player early on in snowgrave.

i made a joke post sometime ago about how ralsei probably used to live in asriel's computer, but now i don't think it's a joke anymore. (starts crying) god, but i mean. if he was created as an rpg character, then there's so much to unpack about that, isn't there? like most if not all dark world denizens, ralsei was probably abandoned as well, which means he was probably a character that asriel wrote and decided to scrap from the game. his insistence on guiding kris and/or the player is familiar behavior of a tutorial character, and with his design that's similar to toriel, maybe people who theorize that undertale, the game, was being developed by dr!azzy aren't so off base after all. and, being written as a traditional rpg tutorial/healer, it will make sense that ralsei will ingratiate himself to who he sees as the protagonist, firmly believing that all party members should be infatuated with and/or obey the party leader. it probably stands to reason that he doesn't necessarily see the divide between kris and the player - vessel for the leader or the leader themself, who cares? he is aware of this, but ultimately both are parts and packages of the same deal that he has to lean on to, otherwise the only frame through which he is capable of seeing himself crumbles into nothing.

but of course this will be subverted!!! God. god. kris knows they're not leader material. they know this!!! they were the baby of the group, they are the younger sibling, they are the kid that wreaks havoc and they are absolutely not here to lead Anyone. that's why in non-snowgrave routes they're comfortable with the player's presence, even if they're a terrible backseater. but this is also probably why they can get a little discomfited by ralsei, because even on the off chance they know that he knows that the player is here, ralsei still insists on putting them on a pedestal.

you know who's leader material though?? you know who can plausibly be at the center of any harem here?? someone who everyone is at least a little bit in love with??

that's right, it's susie!

god and wouldn't that be the grandest thing. susie with her heart of gold. susie who KNOWS, actually, that a lot of shit in the dark world and a lot of shit ralsei is spewing doesn't make a lick of sense, but doesn't call it out unless it's potentially harming her or her friends. susie, who noelle is head over heels for, who kris wants to take to the carnival, who is berdly's rebound crush (why), who ralsei will probably eventually grow to have a reluctant crush on. [this user is patiently waiting for ralsei's move-on-from-the-player-to-susie arc]

but she's not alone in this. it's too early to tell, because we also need to know where the rest of their classmates place in the party and how those roles will be subverted, but it's fair to speculate that ultimately noelle will be the tactician/strategist. reclamation of control and power, as is her theme, as payback for snowgrave. it seems fitting that kris ultimately will be the one/one of the people they need to save from the larger-scale machination that runs in the undercurrent of the game's plot, whether that includes the player or not.

i don't have too much to say other than this. but if i'm on the right track, i just admire toby fox's dedication to constantly take a beloved concept head-on and challenge it to its foundation without demeaning it. something like this cannot be taken as anything but a declaration of love.

to sum up, very vague speculation on deltarune endings/routes:

-> pacifist: fungang collaborates with the player, susie as the healer; ralsei undergoes an arc that makes him realize not everything has to fit in to his initial understanding of the world as an rpg. probable last-minute noelle awakening as a tactician that serves as a needed catalyst at the last leg to victory

-> snowgrave+: kris takes role as 'damsel', ralsei as the tank and their jailer; susie as leader, noelle as tactician, try to break them free. probably a ralsei bossfight as something adjacent to spamton neo etc.

[pdalicedraws]

We were talking about Kris’s forever knife when @thunderplunk said the cutest damn thing I ever heard

[prodigaldaughteralice]

Precious boy deserves all the plushies he wants.

[theropoda]

thinking abt the prophecy that susie saw. one or all of the gang dying feels too simple to be the answer but ive seen some people speculate it as being the dark world either being destroyed or dark world being separated from the light world forever and it makes soooo much fucking sense and meshes so much better with the theme of escapism and imagination. the dark worlds no longer being accessible heralding susie and kris' coming of age, growing up, maturing. because we live in a world that tells us that growing up and becoming an adult means letting go of whimsy and fun and fantasy. and that's what breaks susie because to live without fantasy and escapism entirely is too cruel. how could you?

[starfalcon555]

live gerson fight reaction feat @glitchfang @timegears and @revalentinee

[nocternalrandomness]

"Tonka"

[raphoupix]

Declan Rice ©️ - England v. Belgium - Friendly match

[disxsistuff]

I have a ton of old sketches to post so here i start

[boxboxd]

X Lando on the ChickenShopDate instagram!

[hopeymchope]

Theoryposting: Is 2025-2026 time for some kind of Danganronpa game?

Theory Background

First of all, it's important to remember Spike Chunsoft's assertion in 2021 that the Danganronpa franchise will continue to expand with games in various genres. And this was ultimately just one of multiple times that they've teased future DR games.

Up to now, the longest we've gone without a new Danganronpa game of SOME kind was the 2017-2021 window between Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (aka "New Danganronpa V3") and Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp.

In terms of global release, those two games were four years and two months apart.

In terms of Japanese-specific release, they were four years and 11 months apart—just barely shy of five years.

(And before that, the gap between Dangnaronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls and Danganronpa V3 was two years and four months in Japan, or three years on the worldwide market. Unbelievably, this was the previous record for gaps between games. That's just how blessed we were with DR content during the 2010s.)

If you want to keep your IP relevant in the minds of your audience, you do have to occasionally seed some new content out there. And at this point, they don't even have spin-off manga or light novels to rely on keeping DR in the minds of consumers; Danganronpa Kirigiri wrapped up in 2020, a year before we got Ultimate Summer Camp.

So it seems to me like 2025-2026 is a logical window in which to release the next side game. It's time for the next diversion that will keep the name "Danganronpa" relevant—presumably without actually making a proper Danganronpa 4. (Personally, I'm imagining that SC wants to leave the possibility of a Kodaka return open for a little while longer before they go down that road themselves without his involvement... which is probably what will have to eventually happen. One day.)

Possible Release Timing

To keep things copacetic between Spike Chunsoft and TooKyo Games, SC probably wouldn't want to release some new game at a time that would step on the toes of The Hundred Line. One has to assume that The Hundred Line will follow the example of Master Detective Archives: Rain Code and release onto other platforms roughly a year after its initial Nintendo Switch and PC releases. With The Hundred Line scheduled for April 2025 and probably landing on other platforms some time in between April and July of 2026, that leaves the back half of either 2025 or 2026 as the safest windows.

2025 is also the 15th anniversary of Danganronpa. I'm just sayin'.

What kind of gaming are we talking about?

I'm honestly not sure I should even hazard a guess. I imagine the eventual answer, if there is one, will likely be NOTHING that I'd predict. But I will at least try to come up with working theories.

Ultimate Summer Camp was really a giant-sized expansion of the post-game "Ultimate Talent Development Camp" mode from DRV3. So the easiest course of action would be to expand some OTHER post-game mode into a bigger, fuller game. That serves as the fuel for most of my theories.

Using "Despair Dungeon" mode as the basis for a more full-featured dungeon-crawling RPG game that has an actual story to it. This seems like the easiest and most logical pathway to me...

Using "School Mode"/"Island Mode" as the basis for a much bigger resource management/allocation game of some kind.

Or maybe using the resource management of "School Mode"/"Island Mode" AND the dialogue-choice-consequence system of "Love Across the Universe: Dangan Salmon Team" as the basis for a DR dating sim?

Outside of just expanding existing concepts like that, though, I think there's still another possibility. Remember that 2022 Spanish interview where Kodaka suggested remaking the original Danganronpa with slightly altered plot details and in full 3D as a way to revitalize the series? One has to assume that a remake—even one with some altered storytelling—would take a lot less involvement from Kodaka than a full-on new game would, so it's at least possible.

Or maybe not.

But of course, this is all just a theory. (A GAME THEORY!) Spike Chunsoft could always opt to keep Danganronpa in the public eye in far lesser, quieter ways. They could continue to rely on DR characters showing up in other games ala Crypt of the Necrodancer, Mystery Chronicle: One-Way Heroics, Riichi Street and the like. And/or they could finally free DRAE from its PlayStation prison and port Ultra Despair Girls to the PC, Nintendo, and Xbox platforms. These are hardly the ideal scenarios. ... But then again, nothing I've posited here is really "ideal."

"Ideal" would be getting an actual DR4 or that long-hoped-for Danganronpa Fighting Game. :P

[whathappenedtodecember]

yeah, i'm pretty sure it's been implied multiple times (including these) that dess disappeared quite a while back. some are subtler than others, though. for example i'm pretty sure asriel only started hanging out with catty and bratty (...and by extension, burgerpants??) after dess disappeared and shattered his original dreemurr-holiday friendgroup.

Today in "the last thing I would ever have expected to be foreshadowing": does this imply that Asriel never returned the sexy dragons book because Dess had it?

If that really is the case, then it would suggest Dess disappeared just over 7 years ago. I guess that could be consistent with how old Noelle looks during the spelling bee, if you take the main cast to be around 12-14.

[whathappenedtodecember]

at what point did kris figure out they can manipulate the options to their advantage ("no no no no" when checking teenz corner but defeat when chosen > peeking into asriel's cyberworld room with eyes closed > "turn the doorknob" instead of opening the door) and when are they going to go all monica ddlc on us

[pdalicedraws]

largely trying to do like fun finished comics with punchlines and stuff but sometimes ya just gotta doodle

[theropoda]

the more i play chapter 4 the more im convinced i cant finish this thing bc it just KEEPS GETTING HARDER AND HARDER oh my god

[starfalcon555]

OH MY GOD HE'S SO CUTE ACTUALLY??????

[whathappenedtodecember]

sorry for butting in but yeah. it's got precedent in undertale too - see also: chairiel and the unused throne

also, related to this, i've been thinking of susie's line in one of the sweepstakes sites. specifically the one where kris said something that freaked her out. "One day, your mom's gonna get sick of you, you little freak. And as soon as that happens... Someone might make you disappear. And she'll finally realize how happy she was without you."

starting to think susie was forcibly removed from her previous dwelling or guardian and is, at present, living alone

I thought its worth mentioning that empty chairs usually symbolize grief. The wait of someone's return. The chair for someone who has left.

So maybe thats why there's a empty chair (with a coat on it, not Susie's.) in the middle of Susie's room