#(i want the DR1 kids to survive)

[rubixkun]

Oh another question if you're still answering them.

Why did you chose the current group for the fankids?

Makoto x Kyoko, and Aoi adopting those make sense as the THH survivors.

But what made you want to bring in fuyupeko's kid and Jun'ichi. It's really interesting and love their dynamic, what made it all come together.

Also can't wait for more.

Ohohoho this is gonna be a long answer so buckle up.

I started working on Natsumi after Hope Arc because "holy shit sdr2 cast is alive" and that opened up so much potential. Kuzupeko is my second favorite pairing so of COURSE I had to design a kid.

Since I had Kazuki already, I decided to put the two together and see how they'd bounce off one another. Then I made a story of the two meeting as kids.

Mei came soon after, and every Dangan needs a trio, so...it just kind of happened that Natsumi was part of the trio.

Jun'ichi came in late. His idea came from "What if the DR1 cast all survived" and he was planned as a LeoSaya kid. I liked his idea and design that I wanted to squeeze him into the actual Kazukibou. The more I developed him for Kazukibou, the more I really enjoyed him, so I decided to have him as a permanent member.

Usually my decisions come to "I like this idea. let's do it."

Also I'm always open to questions!! I love getting them!!

[eggs-can-draw]

My byakuya fam view is taken from canon and my own brain so I’m it’s going to spew jt at you

Also this won’t make sense unless you know a bit about his past so I pray you do

Byakuyas mom has blonde hair and soft pick eyes. She’s got pretty sharpe features but they are kinda round so she has a soft resting face and her hair is slightly curled at the ends.

Byakuyas dad has black hair and royal blue eyes, he’s got sharpe more square features and doesn’t have facial hair his hair is straight and he has it slicked back

Byakuya obviously has blonde hair but he has baby blue eyes and his facial feture are like his moms sharper and rounded, his hair curls at the ends and has volume and you can see the curl because his little side burns curl on his face.

Byakuyas mom was part of an elite family but not to the standard that the togami family would deem worthy to have the current heir(Byakuyas dad) have a kid. So basicly she was elite but not elite enough for byakuyas dad.

Now the togami family at a point threw kinda a ball type thing to try and expand there connections, and byakuyas moms friend was invited (she was of a higher status then her) and didn’t want to go alone so she gave another invite she had to byakuyas mom.

Now at this point byakuyas dad already had a ton of kids bc that’s like what he was supposed to do but at this party he feel like genuinely infatuated with byakuyas mom and they dance and talk and things like that then like one thing leads to another and they have byakuya

No this is “bad” for a few reasons

1) byakuyas dad already had his kids and the youngest at this point was like 16/17 witch was no bueno for this situation

2) byakuyas mom was no considered fit to have a togami child/ she wasn’t of status despite being elite and basically still considered not a commoner but not much better witch was considered shameful

Now dispite byakuya dad taking a liking to byakuyas mother and vise versa that doesn’t mean their relationship was healthy

Byakuyas dad was ashamed of her and didn’t see her worthy to be with him, he hated that he felt the way he did and tried to suppress it and he was an angry man and basicly blamed the situation on her and treated her horribly

Byakuyas mom believed that he was a good man underneath everything even though he really wasn’t, she wanted to belive that she didn’t have a kid with a monster of a man

Now after byakuyas born byakuya mom really only survives until byakuyas around 5/6, she gets sick while recovering by and can’t fight it off because it keeps her amune system down though she isn’t bed bound until the last really year of her life

Because of her condition she is kept in one of the togami estates in France along with byakuya, byakuyas father learning what to do in this situation from past togami head desides that is to “risky” to really let byakuya near his sibling a lot because of the fear that his “bad blood” corrupting them, even still most of the togami kids don’t really live in the same house for a few years

Byakuyas dad personally keeps an eye on him when he can because he thinks that he’s make sure byakuya does more than exspected to make up for his “bad blood” but also because of the liking he had taken to byakuyas mother

Growing up with the years he had his mother byakuyas first language was French and he learned things like violin and piano, dispite byakuyas dad being insistent that learning from her makes him soft

Byakuya as a kid was still a spit fire, stubborn and determined but he was much softer, he loved nothing more than to play piano wit his mother, read, and walk in the garden when he wasn’t being bombared with tutors teaching him things no young kid should know(high level learning, byakuya was gifted)

Okay that’s all for now I’ll add more later I have though abt this for so long

Me reading this (non-colorized, 2023)

Before we get into my thoughts on this, let it be known I did Togami’s FTEs* when I played dr1 the first time - and then continued to Hang out with him later game because it was him or Yasuhiro and you know damn well I’m not hanging out with fucking Yasuhiro (I took one look at Togami and went “oh you look like a bastard I think I’m gonna like you”) I also brushed myself up with the wiki just to be sure

The way that this almost enhances a lot of the things that make Togami *vaguely gestures at him* like that is so so so so so so so incredibly incredible I am holding your hand and swinging you WILDLY. THE PAIN OH MY GOODNESS. AND LIKE. ESPECIALLY THE ISOLATION MIXED WITH THE INSANE AGE GAP BETWEEN HIS SIBLINGS MAKES THE TOGAMI KID HUNGER GAMES RITUAL (patent pending) SO MUCH MORE INTENSE. Hell, Togami being kept in France and away from other family members even brings in the thought that he didn’t even primarily speak the same language as them during TTKHGR(pp) on top of that event likely being the first time he ever actually got to meet members of his family outside his parents.

ALSO ALSO MORE OF A ME THING BUT TOGAMI BEING 5/6 WHEN HIS MOM DIED HURTS SO MUCH. specifically because that’s around how old I kinda decided Shuichi is when sdr2 takes place (aka the fourth time and counting Togami has almost gotten himself killed)and I’m starting to think you’re a psychic (or maybe it’s just intuition?)

Also I just love love love that you took little things and gave them more context to his backstory I eat that kinda stuff up I love it I love it I love it aaaaaaaaauauahaguahahuaagh

Also just. Oooof. Tiny baby togami. Little guye. Ridiculous family standards and gifted bullshit at the same time? I grew up gt and and that alone was a lot on me I can’t even begin to comprehend the insane level of pressure on the guy every fucking day.

Edit *hi I referenced his ftes here I forgor to mention

[randomidiocyncrazies]

Future Foundation: Danganronpa -IF-

lmao i’m wading back into the Danganronpa fandom after literal years, and i just crave fic of the DR1 kids interacting with Future Foundation after the events of Danganronpa IF? I kinda assume they get picked up by the FF shortly after getting out? iirc Kizakura was in a squad on the front lines trying to rescue them. idk if ppl would know to mount a rescue at HPA w/o the killing game actually happening, but since Jin Kirigiri still gets executed I think a rescue attempt makes sense.

(this follows Mukuro’s characterization from Danganronpa IF, in which she’s a lot more sympathetic than her portrayal in DR3. spoilers for Danganronpa, Danganronpa IF, and Danganronpa 3)

So since FF was camped out near Hope's Peak, Mukuro would have to run before she gets apprehended by the FF—like sure, she’s prepared to accept her punishment for causing The Tragedy, but she also wants to take Junko down with her own hands...  and the FF radical faction will definitely execute her w/o a trial on the spot if they get a hold of her, especially since she’s dressed up as Junko. 

Even if FF agents believe she’s not actually Junko, since Yukizome’s still brainwashed, the manipulation of Munakata (and by extension Sakakura, not that he needs much encouragement) to take extreme violent action will be a major obstacle here. As much as I want drama between the class 74 trio and class 78 regarding Mukuro’s possible fate, I think reasons for Mukuro’s capture instead of immediate death are pretty weak? I’d wager that even the moderate faction in FF thinks she should be killed immediately, being the former right-hand woman to the mastermind thus too dangerous to keep alive. (Again: SHE’S DRESSED UP AS JUNKO WHEN THEY LEAVE THE SCHOOL.) In order to take Junko down in what was implied to be a mutually assured destruction maneuver, Mukuro probably separates from class 78 immediately after leaving the school grounds and stalks keeps an eye on them from a distance, Naegi especially, between working out a plan to confront Junko.

(like, i guess class 78/the moderates could argue that as Junko’s right-hand woman, Mukuro has insight into the mastermind’s plans that nobody else has? but I’m not sure if the radical faction is willing to listen, esp since there’s no way to ensure she’s not feeding them false info... maybe a combination of Kimura’s truth serum and the reassurance from the moderates that she’ll be executed as soon as they got the necessary info out of her would stay the radical faction’s hand for now???  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

I can see Yukizome letting Mukuro go if FF has custody of her, assuming she thinks Mukuro is still loyal to Ultimate Despair and foiling the class 78 killing game is part of a long con, with the added benefit of pushing Munakata further along an extremist stance and further destabilizing FF leadership. if she thinks Mukuro had truly defected to the side of hope, i think she’d 1) try to kill Mukuro, or more likely 2) commit suicide/grievous self-harm and frame Mukuro for it, thus ensuring Munakata & Sakakura would devote their resources to wipe out Mukuro and anyone associated with her. Also, independent of what Yukizome planned, Sakakura would want the job of personally ending Mukuro, but he’d be fine with waiting until her interrogation is complete as long as that’s what Munakata wants.)

OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT, the potential interaction between Mukuro & Yukizome was too good to pass up, considering Mukuro was the one who helped brainwashed Yukizome into Despair in the first place... if there’s a way for Yukizometo be saved and cured of brainwashing, it’d probably have to come from Mukuro, since there’s no reason to suspect Yukizome otherwise (which means she wouldn’t get found out/cured). does Munakata change his tune re: rehabilitation once Yukizome was proven to be a Remnant? or does he break from the knowledge that he never once suspected the woman he loves is an agent of Despair (the real Yukizome essentially ‘died’ ~a year ago, the thing wearing her body is, for all purposes, a stranger)? For Sakakura, he has to contend with the fact that he didn’t notice anything wrong with one of his (very few) best friends, and he’d see it as his fault that the real Chisa is ‘gone’, b/c he let Junko go (nevermind that Junko would’ve killed/brainwashed him and/or Munakata instead if he refused to comply)

like, Yukizome had only been brainwashed for a little more than a year (2 years at most) by this point, so she had less time to manipulate Munakata and Tengen, and Munakata seemed fairly reasonable in Despair Arc... so maybe it won’t be that hard to convince him to give the Neo World Program a try, as an attempt to cure her. (on the other hand, think of all the drama if Munakata snapped and decides that Yukizome must die since she’s an agent of Despair, regardless of how she got that way, and Sakakura is visibly conflicted about this order because there’s hope for rehabilitation, but ultimately moves in for the kill as per Munakata’s orders... the class 74 trio makes me sad haha)

(either way Mukuro does not make it out of this version of events alive, if she’s apprehended by FF—best scenario she takes out Junko and goes down with her, but she’s more likely executed by FF for crimes against humanity after her interrogation, or killed by individuals bearing a grudge. i guess there’s a version of this where FF believes she had atoned sufficiently to warrant life-long imprisonment instead of execution, so she has a chance of survival, but it’s a very very very long shot imo. Best way to make sure Mukuro remains in play is to have her leave class 78 before they encounter FF.)

Now for the other DR1 kids...

the IF timeline had Makoto regain his memories and tell the others, but Kirigiri’s memories were tampered with even more extensively than the rest, though at least Mukuro had told her what her talent is—Kizakura has to deal with the realization that Kyouko 1) is still angry at her father because their reconciliation had been wiped from her memory and 2) she has no idea who Kizakura is. I think Kirigiri would join the FF and work in Kizakura’s branch at his insistence so he can keep and eye on her for Jin, eventually winding up in the special investigations unit under Sakakura (lmao). 

(on a happier note, at least the DR1 kids and FF know it’s possible to regain their memories—maybe a variation of the Neo World Program could help with that too? kinda slow going since they don’t have Matsuda’s knowledge tho)

Assuming all the DR1 kids join up with the Future Foundation (FF would actively try to recruit them, both because they’re symbols of hope but also because they want to keep an eye on them to find out more about the mastermind): 

Naegi: since he’s the one who regained his memory and convinced Mukuro to switch sides, he’d be a person of interest for sure. the conflict between him and the radical faction is on some level still about their methods and ideologies about hope, but there’s also the fact that they find him incredibly suspicious (esp with Yukizome’s subtle encouragement). Why is he the only one who regained his memories? How did he convince Mukuro, the second-in-command, to betray Junko? How do they know he’s not Junko’s spy, etc etc. most likely in FF custody as an intern, assigned to 14th division (public relations) after he’s been thoroughly vetted

Ishimaru: enthusiastic to join, because helping to restore peace and order is 100% his thing! likely to be assigned to 2nd division (day-to-day operations of FF, peacekeeping, facilities etc) imo. the one to deal with Mondo for facility plans. his goal is to get into the 1st division (overall direction and leadership of FF)

Fukawa: extremely reluctant, and it didn’t take long for FF to discover Syo, which complicates matters. she’s technically in FF custody as an intern because of Syo’s unpredictability and the danger she presents. as Fukawa she would’ve been placed in the 10th division (education and culture revival), but as Syo she’s most likely involved as a field agent for 14th or tester for the 9th (weapons R&D)

Sayaka: initially only joins up because FF promised to help her look for her idol friends and keep them safe, tho she later sees her position as an important one to bring hope and happiness to people (which was part of her goal to be an idol). assigned to the 14th division and involved in certain projects from the 10th as well

Leon: i think he’s a little reluctant in the beginning. probably requests to be assigned to the 14th with Sayaka—because the division more or less serves as the public face of FF for the general populace (path to achieving stardom/popularity), and he wants to protect Sayaka (tho i can see it being awkward when she confesses to plotting his murder in the killing game), plus his athleticism could come in handy for field missions imo. if his relationship with Sayaka is too strained following her confession, I can also see him in a division that interacts with the general populace like the 13th (front-line aid and relief)

Yamada: the relative security and prestige of being in FF appeals to him. assigned to the 10th division due to his extensive knowledge in different entertainment media. clashes with Mitarai on individual opinions, but they have similar worldviews and are in sync with each other when push comes to shove

Asahina: given her personality i think she’d be eager to help rebuilding the world. probably joins the 13th division like in canon, and worries about Sakura (who’s in the 6th and encounters supporters of Despair often).

Chihiro: would be willing to join, especially once they know how much their expertise could help the world, and especially if approached by Gekkougahara to help class 78 regain their memories via another take on the Neo World Program. there’s also the mystery of why Monokuma’s system looks like their work... 7th division (tech & software security and development) is perfect for them

Kirigiri: as mentioned above, i think began her career under Kizakura in 3rd division (HR and recruitment) but joins 6th division (policing, investigative force) in the special investigations unit afterwards. she’d be interested to join FF and conduct her own investigations pretty much right off the bat imo. 

Mondo: reluctant, but willing to join if FF can locate the Crazy Diamonds/keep them safe. assigned to the 6th for his brawling skills and willingness to engage in violence, but later requests to be placed in 12th division (infrastructure restoration) because he’s tired of destroying shit, and it’s a huge problem for him when he had to go up against female Remnants/despair junkies during his time with the 6th. the one who primarily deals with Ishimaru when 12th and 2nd division interact for plans to expand FF facilities

Sakura: assuming Monokuma already approached her to be the mole before the DR1 kids escaped in IF, she’d want to tell the FF what she knows about the mastermind and make up for accepting the offer back then. probably joins 6th division (specifically, the policing unit) under Sakakura (y’know how Sakakura loathes Naegi for being the one to defeat Junko in canon? he’s probably envious of Sakura for ultimately being able to defy her while he couldn’t. but because Junko is still alive as a target to be taken down here, i think don’t he's quite as resentful of Sakura, tho still incredibly petty. also i just think the Sakakura-Sakura connection of being physical powerhouses who were blackmailed by the big bad really neat! both also had/have difficulty with romantic love—Sakura thought it was embarrassing for her as a fighter to have tender feelings before her LI convinced her otherwise, while Sakakura is dealing with homophobia and the fact that the guy he’s in love with is already involved with his other best friend, who he cares a lot about as well)

Togami: I can see him joining in order to use FF resources to rebuild the Togami conglomerate after he finds out it had been taken over + destroyed by the impostor, so from Togami’s PoV it’s a business arrangement. most likely joins 14th (like Sayaka he knows how to work a crowd) but i can see him in 3rd as well, though probably not when they need to make nice with potential recruits

Hagakure: he’d stay as long as it looks like FF is the safest place to be... assigned to 14th, same as canon?

Celes: being a member of FF comes with its own prestige, but even then it takes a lot of negotiation to convince her to stay. I think she’d be intrigued by the 5th division (intelligence and espionage), which puts her in contact with brainwashed!Branch leader Yukizome... 

[livewireprojects]

So I was working on a pic for day 16 but I was working on it after work so didn’t have much time before 5pm to get pics.(I need a scanner one of these days) At some point I just looked at how dark it was getting in the room I take pics in & gave up. I also don’t know what to do for day 17, I want to guess something like Future Foundation or characters being in the simulation from DR2 due to the name of the project but I dunno. I might do something but the theme future is coming up so I’ll likely save it for that.

I’m rambling & kind of feel bad for my posts for day 15 So day 16 was alternate universes & I really enjoy AUs though a large amount of the ones I like are crossover plots. Most of the pics aren’t crossover based & are largely just based on past RPs. I made a bunch of pics & didn’t want to spam with posts for each so I tried to put as many as I could together.

The first three pics are based on a thing I call Monster Community AU thing, pretty much characters are secretly some kind of creature(witch, alien, merpeople, harpies, etc) living among humans but sometimes do things in secret areas other monsters hanging out at like a community of monsters.

The two scenes here are from different mermaid RPs, both from my Monster Community AU stuff again. Both pics involve RP plots that were DR1 happened, DR2 characters were trying to survive the aftermath of the world going mad(pretty much surviving in the destroyed city until finding somewhere or something) & some other stuff I’m going to leave out due to rambling. Just know this is technically a simplified version of the series post-DR1(if that makes sense? probably not) that was used because I keep doing shit in RPs.

The one to the left is from a plot were the survivors find a cave they end up staying the night in only to decided to check further & find themselves in a place other monsters are living in. For some reason Makoto is a grey eyeless big mouth monster, I think I was obsessed with a design I saw on Tumblr but can't find anymore. Byakuya is an octopus merperson because for some reason I imagine he'd be on if he was a merman. The second one is vampire Byakuya is living in a mansion his family had by the sea on a cliff area that leads to the beach. He ends up learning Makoto is a merperson(whose parents tried to keep him from learning about other creatures for safety) & expecting their kids. Makoto is a species of merperson that make nests in the sand when they have kids so Makoto had to stay in the water until the babies could swim by themselves. Byakuya will probably have some special pools setup in the house for the twins since they'll be to young to go into human form after the being old enough to swim.(It'll only be a couple months) At the moment Makoto is in a cave inside the cliff that leads to the ocean, some how the inside of Byakuya's mansion has a secret stairway leading down here. Makoto can't leave the water because his nest is here & his merperson instincts don't want him to leave until the babies hatch & are old enough to swim. Due to Makoto's parents hiding his & Komaru's mermaid/creature side Makoto didn't think much on the fact he was a merperson until he got pregnant & his instincts demanded he make a nest... That's also how Byakuya learned his family had a secret area of the mansion & proceeded lug a futon mattress/blanket down there to be close to Makoto. I didn't think much about it at the time but I guess something lead to his parents getting protective & scared if someone knew they were merpeople, then again there's a Japanese myth about eating mermaids/some kind of fish people would cause immortality. I almost forgot this but Byakuya hung up a net & decorations so the babies when down in the cave don’t swim into the sea.

This one is based on an RP were Byakuya is a werewolf while Makoto is a harpy. DR1 happened, Byakuya & Makoto had a relationship but went their separate ways to find their families(see if there’s hope of them still being out there) while working on getting their lives together.(Since with the despair event they likely need to recover/figure out what to do now)

Byakuya at some point is house sitting for Hinata & Komaeda(originally it was his vacation cabin in the woods but something changed forget why) when he ends up having to help a harpy who lost their nest because a tree landed on it. He took the harpy in because they didn’t have anywhere to go & the crash broke one of their wings. He was to tired to think much about figuring out who the harpy was after patching them up because he was tired.

Byakuya ends up learning in the morning that the harpy is Makoto & pregnant. Byakuya reassured Makoto knew he was safe now & he(Byakuya) isn’t going anywhere. Byakuya later learned Makoto found his family but someone attacked & ditched him in the woods while injuring his eye. After that Byakuya helps Makoto recover & they eventually move to his vacation house when Hinata & Komaeda come home. Byakuya has a nursery for their eventual kids & Makoto ended up staying in the nursery sitting on the egg Ichigo was in when he had the twins. Len kept barking when he found her until she finally hatched.

Here’s Makoto perched on Hinata’s couch singing a bird tune as Byakuya listens, sometimes the blond will sometimes whistle which makes Makoto squeal in delight because it sounds like Byakuya trying to mimic a bird. Makoto is meant to be a House Martin harpy because the bird is cute & has fuzzy feet. Makoto’s hood/cape is just his hoodie tied to his neck, he can slightly still see out of the injured eye but without something to protect it things seem to bright during the day through that eye.

This was the pic that lead to not posting anything the other day, as you can tell I made more pics right after managing to finish it. This pic is once again based on an RP(well two of them), for some reason I really liked doing this plot. The AU is pretty much everyone lives in a world of animal centaurs(in Kazuichi's case he's a shark merperson) & for some reason this is before modern technology exists. Everyone lives in caves that have been carved into homes with some having multiple rooms, they have furniture made from leftover stone, wood, some other stuff & clothes made out of normal animal skin like they're in Brother Bear or something. Given the state the world is currently at they seal off the entrances to their caves in the winter after making sure to have enough food to last it.(There's some that have the ability to hibernate luckily) I have absolutely no idea why I enjoy this so much. So Byakuya is a wolf(lol blond wolf fur) & Makoto is a pygmy goat(I made him a little bigger because again awkward size) but for the first RP I kept switching the species(from pudu deer to pygmy goat) because I was obsessed with those animals at the time. It ended with S having Gundam call Makoto a goat/deer hybrid so he's a deer goat in the first RP.(I didn't switch it often but kept talking about confusion) In the second RP Makoto stayed a pygmy goat for the entire RP. Len is a wolf centaur & Ichigo is a goat centaur, Byakuya & Makoto had other kids but they're preexisting characters(Komaru & Chiaki for some reason) & I'm mostly focusing on these characters.(I don't actually know what I was getting at) The twins are a couple days old, since Ichigo is a pygmy goat she's already active. Byakuya is laying down so she won't get hurt, Ichigo & Makoto's goat side makes them enjoy climbing things so the little baby is climbing on daddy. Len's eyes & ears haven't opened just yet so he's kept safe in a portable cradle thing since he's to small to play with his little sister right now.(Makoto will retuck him in in a moment) Makoto has a poncho thing because he has trouble keeping warm which luckily his kids didn't inherit. Also Byakuya is pretty strong so he can take his daughter & his mate trying to climb on him especially when Makoto is pregnant. It's ok & doesn't bother him in fact it's kind of cute especially since sometimes after that Ichigo will do a little jitter dance that baby goats some times do.(He'd also whether they climb on him or a stool thing than try to climb the side of their home or something bigger due to worrying about the two hurting themselves.

Byakuya & Makoto have slightly long hair because it's hard for them to cut their hair with a dagger Byakuya worked on for hair cutting. Byakuya is hoping to eventually trade something for a mirror some traveling trader visits, maybe see if someone in the pack can help with cutting hair not that it matter much.

Go check out @naegamimonth​

[bootlegsymphony]

[Shitpost] Maybe Komaeda is the Ultimate Hope..

This is meant to be 100% serious but it’s not going to be thoughtful or articulate or whatevs. I wouldn’t want Komaeda consuming my puny brain 24/7 but couldn’t quite help it. I’ll apologize in advance in case any inconvenience were caused:(

So Makoto is crowned as the Ultimate Hope by the end of DR1, and Komaeda is some petty Ultimate Hope wannabe who’s just a pathetic ultimate loser right?

Now all things considered, especially with Komaeda’s twisted and toxic worldview, Makoto was the one who’s born with the “Ultimate Hope” talent. His uncompromising kindness/compassion and infallible optimism didn’t quite come off as if he earned from hardships, but to some extent inherent/hereditary qualities of his.

One likely doesn’t acquire the opportunity of becoming perfectly optimistic/hopeful if they’re born with, say, “inadequate” genetics/congenital diseases/unfortunate familial circumstances, etc. etc., hence not everyone is granted a chance to ever develop into the “Ultimate Hope”a la Makoto. Plus, simply telling those who suffered from abuse/trauma/mental illnesses etc. to “just have hope” presumably doesn’t do shit, for instance a majority of the DR2 kids. (Which is partly the reason Makoto’s original plan to rehabilitate the DR2 cast was set up for a major failure?)

Komaeda on the other hand was born into, and pretty much destined for despair. Surely his cosmic superpower sounds amazing but factually the fortunate payoffs he received were never enough to counterbalance the sufferings and tribulations he went through. He’s life was fuckingawfulTM that he had to distort himself into some indecipherable mess to maintain his fleeting existence.

But what’s so admirable about Komaeda?

Despite appearing as utterly withdrawn and distant to deal with what he’s made to become, he was never just all that. He had every reason and incentive to die an inevitable, insignificant death; he was terminally ill, suicidal, sacrificial, and even went as far to declare in Ch.1 “you’re all welcomed to kill me anytime”. Yet in the end he challenged that and managed to orchestrate some of the most memorable and consequential self-annihilation among all deaths in the franchise, and ultimately survived it. He had every reason and incentive to give up on ever seeking or receiving love; he was difficult, unlovable, fundamentally lacking in self-worth to find himself ever worthy of love, and anyone who dared to love him would become a sudden attraction of doom. Yet he never truly ceased to reach out and show love, even if the elemental mutual ground of “love” seemed irreconcilable. He insisted on confessing his truths at the high risk of never being understood in order to be connected and understood; he could have built an emotional shelter and seclude himself, but he never truly did. He just, never stopped trying no matter how practically improbable it is. And ultimately, his love seemed to debatably come into fruition at the end of Hope Arc.

In some way I would argue that Komaeda is a testament to the undying, unrelenting Hope, even if he was inherently not meant for it. We don’t need to erect a bronze statue for him but a mysterious voice whispered to me that he’s worthy of that “Ultimate Hope” title. It’s kinda ironic huh, since his worldview strictly dictates that people are either born with worth/talent or they don’t, and his existence more or less outright contradicts it.

[anonymouslyangsty]

Okay so I adore Kazuichi Soda, but GOD do I feel like his character is wasted somewhat in game??? I really wish he had more of an ark

(Warning, I’m going to ramble like a himbo about my Sodapop son below. It’s...way to long and has spoilers)

So, Kaz’s whole character backstory is that he was a nerdy, shy kid who got pushed around by his ‘friends’. He got in trouble for helping a friend cheat on a test, but he wasn’t upset when said friend threw him under the bus. He only got upset when that friend stopped talking to him after, which in turn encouraged him to distrust others and change his behavior and appearance to appear tough.

What I get from this is that Kaz puts on a fragile act to look tough, has a hard time trusting others, and has rather low self esteem. He acts like a punk, but the second someone attacks him, verbally or otherwise, he crumbles and cowers. 

That all being said, I don’t feel that these traits are properly handled or addressed in the game

Firstly, the whole Sonia obsession. I think it makes sense from a few perspectives. In one option, Soda could see Sonia, being a princess, as above ‘normal’ people, thus making her an object of his affections. Option B is that he doesn’t REALLY obsess with Sonia that hard, but because he wants to look cool, he pretends to like her so he can fit in with what he thinks dudes are like. 

Whatever option we go with, it’s clear that Soda has a very shallow ‘love’ for Sonia, only really liking her for her title and appearance. Whenever she expresses the darker sides of her personality (love of the occult and serial killers), Kaz always tries to divert attention from or ignore it. He doesn’t love her as a person, but as a figure. 

The shallowness of his love is coupled with her total devotion to her. Kaz makes the exact same mistake he did with his friend: he trusts Sonia irrationally, incapable of seeing any fault in her whatsoever. So, whenever she’s put into question, he jumps at her aid, trusting her regardless of any evidence. 

This also means that he’s incapable of seeing how uninterested she is in him. She never bluntly says it, but it’s clear that Sonia, at the very least, vaguely dislikes Kaz. She straight up hopes that he’s the killer in chapter 4.

But again, just like with his friend, Kaz brushes it off as nothing. Sonia could do anything to him but, as long as he has her ‘companionship’ (or the illusion of it), he’s fine. This is clearly a terribly unhealthy mentality for a relationship, as Sonia gets idolized to an uncomfortable degree and Soda leaves himself open to any level of abuse as long as he thinks he’s accepted.

Kaz is repeating the same mistake from his backstory, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The bad part is the fact that it’s never addressed.

Sonia never tells Soda to stop, nor does anyone ever highlight the fact that Soda doesn’t really love her. He is constantly following her, but probably couldn’t say 10 things about her personality. If that WAS addressed, it could be used to show Soda that he isn’t going to make connections to people by keeping up his “cool, thirsty bro” persona, but instead by being genuine and kind, which is more align with his true personality. Honestly, I was expecting this to happen after chapter 4 but nope.

Another option, darker this time, is that Soda could find himself betrayed again. It would makes sense thematically; Kaz repeats the same mistake of blind trust, and is thus betrayed again. Maybe Sonia tries to kill someone, betraying the ideal pedestal Kaz places her on. Maybe she frames HIM for murder in an attempt to save Gundham.

Slight tangent here, but I really like the idea of a worst case scenario where Soda’s failure to learn from the past gets him killed (TLDR for the tangent, as if this whole thing doesn’t need a TLDR: Sonia and Kaz pull a DR1 first murder, but Kaz legit acts in self defense).

 Let’s say that, instead of the funhouse, chapter 4 gives motivation videos regarding everyone’s home. Of course, Sonia’s is about how her kingdom is falling into shambles. Extremely stressed, she locks herself in her room for several days. She eventually decides that, to save her kingdom, she has to sacrifice everything, even her morality. She decides to kill.

So, Sonia goes after the easiest target: Soda. Because of his blind faith in her, Soda wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever she asked. So Sonia asks him to meet her in some secluded area, perhaps the abandoned warehouse from chapter 1, sometime late at night.

Soda agrees to this blindly because he can’t EVER believe that Miss Sonia would ever do wrong. However, when he arrives, she attacks him, perhaps stabbing him in the shoulder. I know this is probably slightly underestimating Sonia, as she is trained in weaponry and could probably kill Kaz in one blow, but let’s say she’s so distressed that she doesn’t fatally would him.

Of course, there’s a struggle because, as much as Kaz obsesses over her, he’s not going to let Sonia murder him. She eventually backs him into a corner but, before she can kill him, he knocks her out with a wrench or something (he’s already established to carry one around because it comforts him, so it makes sense that he’d have it)

So now Kaz is alone, bleeding in an abandoned building with an unconscious woman at his feet. That would be a good point to wake everyone up and say what happens, but here’s where Kaz’s personality comes to bite him again. He still has faith in Sonia despite everything, unable to see her faults despite her having literally tried to kill him

So, his first priority is covering up HER crime. He hides the evidence of the attack as best as he can (which probably isn’t well given his panic and his wound). Then, he takes Sonia and carries her back to her room. He probably ties her up so she doesn’t her anyone else or herself when she wakes up. 

The next morning, Sonia isn’t at breakfast. Given that she’d locked herself in her room for several days, it wouldn’t be suspicious. Not wanting her to stay tied up, Soda offers to take breakfast to her. Once there, he wants to talk to her and calm her down, before letting her go and never telling anyone what happened.

However, you can’t just knock someone over the head and think they’re fine. That kind of kills people, and Soda soon learns that. When he gets into Sonia’s room, he finds her still tied up, dead.

Kaz is a coward, but is shown to be kind at heard. So, while I don’t think he’d be brave enough to confess, I don’t think he’d be willing to kill everyone else. Perhaps he’d try to kill himself before the trial to spare himself from execution. However, Nagito stops him. Nagito convinces Soda to cling onto the hope that he ISN’T the killer, and instead someone came to Sonia afterwards and killed her. It’s farfetched, but given his mental state, Kaz would buy it.

This all creates something I’ve always wanted in DR: an innocent blackened. Soda acted in self defense and had no intention to kill. In the trial, he wouldn’t be hiding info in an attempt to trick everyone, but in misplaced hope that he ISN’T the killer. 

Not only that, but this outcome really highlights the error of Soda’s mentality. Because he so blindly trusted Sonia, he was easily tricked by her. Because his self esteem is so bad, he doesn’t even get mad when she tries to kill him, instead hiding HER crime. Perhaps, if he’d gotten upset and ratted her out, she could’ve gotten some kind of medical attention and been saved. Instead, Kaz bent over backwards for her, leading to their deaths.

That was a long tangent, but the point is, I want Kaz’s failure to learn from past mistakes to be addressed, either by him growing past it or being punished for it. Nether happens though. The Sonia obsession continues throughout the ENTIRE game, with it never being addressed as a problem. It’s really strange thematically and character wise, as addressing it could’ve given both characters good development.

Moving on from Sonia somewhat, I HATE Kaz’s character ark, as he doesn’t evolve, but devolves. The source of Kaz’s problems is lis low self esteem. If he cared about himself more, he wouldn’t have accepted poor treatment from his friends in exchange for their companionship. He wouldn’t have changed his appearance and personality because he thought he was unlikable and boring.

Despite that however, in the end, the lesson he learns is to trust people again. That’s not a BAD lesson, but it doesn’t solve the problem. His self esteem is still nearly nothing; by once again falling into the idea that he has to trust his friends nonmatter what, he’s setting himself up to be used again (I’m not saying anyone in the DR2 cast WOULD do that, but the possibility remains.)

By trusting again without gaining self esteem, Kaz somewhat goes pack to step one. His ark really shoud have been about trusting and loving HIMSELF before he trusts and loves others. Kaz needs to realize that he doesn’t need to put on a tough act to make friends, as anyone who requires a tough act to like him isn’t his friend at all. He needs to realize that he deserves good treatment, and someone being your friend doesn’t justify cruel behavior towards you. 

But! He never learns that!!! He just goes right back to trusting without considering his self worth. That...really isn’t healthy and I wish it was addressed in his ark.

Another thing: why doesn’t Kaz have any dead friends? The entire surviving DR2 cast has someone who they were close to that died, Akane and Nekomaru, Fuyu and Peko, Hajime and Chiaki, Sonia and Gundham. It’s strange that everyone BUT Kaz has a close relationship with someone who dies in game.

Why not make Kaz friends with Mikan? I feel like they have a bit in canon, with both being anxious and prone to being bullied. I feel like a friendship between those two could be used to show Kaz’s more genuine personality. It’d be a chance to show that he isn’t CONSTANTLY thirsty over girls, that he can talk to Mikan without a hint of lust. Instead, they could just be friends, finding comfort in the fact that there’s someone else who’s just as terrified as they are.

Also, this relationship could be used to both mess with Kaz AND make another parallel to DR1. Make Mikan frame Kaz for the killing, just like Celeste with Hiro. This would not only be super interesting, but also a MASSIVE blow to Kaz’s ability to trust, which is already terrible. Also again, I just feel like Kaz’s anxiety is used for comic relief too often. I want this boy to straight up have a panic attack in trial. Destroy him with fear. 

So uh, yeah. I feel like Kaz’s depth is sacrificed for the sake of comic relief. He could’ve been so much more, but he isn’t and it’s a shame. Also, if you read this whole thing, then you must be just as obsessed with Kaz as I am. So, send me some good Kaz fics! It is SO HARD to find a fic that focuses on Kaz instead of Nagito. Do it.

[nebulastarss]

Antagonist Loop Au time, because why not. I've done my fair share of talking about the loops, lets talk a bit more about The Aftermath.

The ages are dr1: 22-23

Dr2: 23-24

Drv3: 12-13

Reminders: every single person is still alive in this au, including Junko. The rest of the world doesn't know that dr3 happened, as all people present chose to never speak of it again. Only dr1 and dr2 know about the drv3 children. The children's pasts are written in italics.

The first thing they do is try to get these children healthy. I kept forgetting to look up what five years of being trapped in a virtual reality pod, away from any and all sun light, would do to a person but it's probably not very good.

Uh.

This is Danganronpa, they've never been very realistic anyway.

The adults stick everyone in a bed and monitor their health. There's a fair bit of old wounds on some of them, like Kokichi, so they suspect that Junko preyed on abused, neglected, or/and abandoned children. Makes sense considering they also have Monaca in their collective care.

(the rest of the WoH are under Komaru and Toko's care, as they try to help Towa city after the massacre led by the WoH)

Junko confirms this with a smile and Fuyuhiko nearly stomps on her kneecaps.

(this entire au can be summed up with: goddamn it Junko.)

The children eventually heal, they're being watched over by 32 extremely talented adults after all, and their pasts don't return to them. They remember a bit about their real pasts, thankfully their fake ones were heavily inspired by them.

(Maki was an orphan who got kidnaped and experimented on and Gonta was abandoned by his parents in the woods for example)

Once they're all healthy and relatively ok, the news gets out that none of their relatives survived (most of them were from Towa city and... Well...) The children don't really care as every single one of their birth parents were horrid.

(Angie was a rich kid, she had so many babysitters constantly taking care of her that she's still not sure who her parents were. Shuichi was also a rich kid, his parents were famous actors who's fame skyrocketed when they were arrested for child abuse and neglect after he was locked in an attic for two days with no food or water, his only and best friend had reported him missing)

The kids have all bonded with the adults and once one (Gonta) slips up and calls an adult (Mahiru) mom, they just... Become the parents these kids needed. Some (Shuichi, Kokichi, etc) can't say mother/mom/mum/ma or father/dad/pop/papa/pa for a very long time due to their trauma, but the adults are ok with that.

Shuichi and Kokichi go to the Protagonists, Shuichi with Naegi (game protag), Byakuya (AU protag), and Kyoko, while Kokichi is with Hajime (game protag), and Nagito (au protag). Tsumugi started following around Junko and studying how different she is and not-as-despair-obssessed she is and they heal together.

(Mukuro gets called Aunt once and freezes because never once in her life did she ever expect THAT to happen)

Leon and Kaito were Bros from the second Kaito got healthy enough, so you know who he went to. Kiibo, excited to be a human, still knows a lot about robotics, and ends up with Chihiro while Miu is with Souda. Together, the quartet nearly blows up the island while trying to [OBLIGATORY DR2 AND DR3 SPOILER WARNING CUZ ONE OF MY FRIENDS HASN'T SEEN IT YET] make bodies for AI Chihiro, AI Chiaki, Monomi, and AI Junko. Possibly World Destroyer too idk.

( I just realized, I never mentioned this but, Chiaki is alive here. Izuru cared just enough that her saved her life and might've snuck her onboard the ship where class 78 only found her after the program started thanks to his luck. Maybe. Also, Ryota's on the island too)

She really wants to play games with AI Chiaki. And Junko kinda wants to help save AI Junko but SHHH. AI Chihiro just thinks it'll be fun, and wants to join his siblings with helping out on the island. Yeah, WD is also getting a body because AI Chiaki is forcing him too.)

[SPOILER OVER]

Oof just got so off topic.

Anyway, the children heal, the world is healing faster and without the ever looming dread thanks to Hinata's video, as he never makes it here due to everyone pretending that dr3 didn't happen.

Makoto opens a new Hope's Peak Academy where Ultimate Talents are really just a reward for being really good at a thing and don't place you on a pedestal. Everyone from the first two games is a staff member, and the V3 kids are one of the first students. The school offers online classes and education to those who couldn't get it during the tragedy, and the elementary is a well known and accepted part of the school.

That's all I can think of rn. (I've been slowly writing this for months, it's been wasting away in my drafts as I edit it like... Once a week)

[magioftheseas]

Unpopular opinion thing, Kyoko should have stayed dead in dr3, even if I do like her. (Everywhere I go people disagree with that so I’m assuming this is unpopular lol)

Either commit or don’t even bother. A fake death scare like that was just fucking stupid, especially since we got one earlier with Aoi. And at least Aoi’s was comic relief. While I wouldn’t like any of the dr1 characters dead at all, I do think Kirigiri staying dead would’ve been better for dr3′s story as it was since it had like...an impact and it getting undone was...really, really dumb and forced in.

I wouldn’t say that for the sdr2 kids because since the end of sdr2, there was an expectation for them to survive due to the theme hinging on their survival. You can’t have a future if you’re dead, but dr3′s theme, as vague and strangely conveyed as said theme was (I think aside from the sdr2 stuff it stole, it was supposed to be about how suffering/despair makes us human and was an aspect of humanity that needed to be accepted???), like Kirigiri’s survival wasn’t...thematically necessary at all. It’s solely for the audience’s sake and while, yes, I did want her to survive, that kind of pandering felt shallow to the point of offensive haha. I still think khen is pretty alright, but I can’t deny it has that problem in general...

So, yeah, I think Kiri staying dead would’ve alleviated it at least a little.

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.7

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in trial 6, Tsumugi was very clearly just cosplaying Junko despite no-one properly figuring this out for ages, Danganronpa trivia was really not necessary to prove everyone’s memories are fake, Tsumugi kept insisting that Shuichi called this trial because of her backstory when really it has nothing to do with that and everything to do with Kaito, Maki was very distressed to learn even more how she was just being controlled and manipulated like always, Tsumugi was a literal fucking shapeshifter, everyone was more upset than they should have been over Hope’s Peak being fictional for something they’d only known about for two days, but at least that meant that the outside world was…

Well… about that.

Monokuma:  “Puhuhu… Forget about the world. It wants nothing to do with you.”

Oh boy. It sure doesn’t, even though it should. Here we fucking go.

…Does anyone have any idea what “kumafarre”, the word plastered all over the trial background from this point on, is meant to mean? Because that’s always stumped me. It has to mean something for them to have put it there. Kuma is bear, obviously, but “farre” can’t be Japanese, so… ???

“first!”

Pfft, of course that’d be the first message to show up. But it also proves that everyone in the audience can see their messages showing up here, so they should know that the characters can see what they’re saying.

“Bring on the spoilers!”

How does this even make sense? You can’t have spoilers for a reality show that’s happening live. The only possible spoiler is who the blackened is during a trial, but we’re way past that now.

“Kyoko is my waifu.”

“Sakura is my muscle waifu.”

“Chiaki #1 waifu”

Ugghh waifu culture. And also, I told you everyone was a bunch of genwunners in this audience! No-one mentions anything like this for any character outside of DR1 or 2. And yeah, obviously seasons past 3 don’t exist in the out-universe, but the out-universe writers could totally have just thrown in some random names we’ve never heard and expect us to assume that they’re talking about unknown characters from other seasons. Fifty other goddamn seasons they could be choosing from! But nope, it’s all gotta be mostly season one with some two, that’s all that counts.

“My husbando Shuichi!!!”

And of course Shuichi gets that shitty treatment too, even though he’s a real goddamn person who never asked to be famous and nobody is entitled to anything from him.

“Wow, Himiko is still alive…”

Seriously, that’s the first thing someone wants to say when their messages are getting displayed in a place where Himiko can see it? Lovely.

“Viewers get to participate now!”

“I feel like I’m participating, too!”

At least these couple of people are currently being fairly reasonable – they’re just excited to be a part of it in some way!

…The first two characters Tsumugi cosplays after this moment are Kyoko and then Sakura, and then Chiaki pretty soon after that. She’s pandering to those people whose messages she saw, isn’t she.

“Sakura”:  “Of course, those you see here are only a fraction of our total viewers.”

I. Should. Sincerely. Hope. So. Because that’s the only thing that makes this even remotely believable – the idea that the majority of the fanbase are somewhat more decent human beings than this (you know, aside from the watching real people kill each other thing) and we’re just seeing the vocal asshole minority right now.

…That’s really not what the narrative is going to be going for with this, though. If they actually wanted us to think that this audience we see is just the asshole minority and everyone else is more decent, this topic should get addressed in more than just this one throwaway line, and it is not. So probably the only actual reason this line is here is to establish that the number of viewers is way higher than suggested by just these commenters, and not that the attitude of the rest of them is significantly different.

“I believe in Keebs.”

This is a little early hint to the Keebo deal, since a lot of the audience should be thinking about him the most.

“You can do it, Shuichi!”

I like this person! This person is the most decent and realistic person we’ve heard from so far! Yeah, cheer on Shuichi just like I’ve been doing throughout this commentary! They care about him and want him to succeed! It is of course more twisted in this person’s case because he’s not actually fictional, and becomes even more so now that Shuichi can actually hear them and any pretense that he’s just fictional can’t be maintained, but at least this is otherwise a realistic and relatable response to this.

Shuichi:  “W-Wait, why would a peaceful world need a killing game like th—”

“Taka”:  “It’s *because* the world is so peaceful that this killing game is necessary!”

“Celeste”:  “It is so very peaceful… And so, it is so very boring.”

“Kyoko”:  “With so much peace, people have become bored. They need stimulation…”

That’s… kinda bullshit. First Shuichi’s assumption that only a world full of strife could possibly create a reason for a killing game, but then also the idea that peace would make people bored. Humans don’t start wars for entertainment, you know. World peace should be the least boring thing for humanity, because without having to spend so much effort on survival and equality, everyone would have more energy left to make all kinds of technology and art, including entertainment which should not have to involve killing real people to be entertaining!

To be fair, Tsumugi is probably exaggerating somewhat, given that she’s part of Team Danganronpa and is trying to sell the idea that her product is so necessary for the world. But it would seem that we are in a world where one way or another it’s become socially accepted to watch real people kill each other for entertainment… which doesn’t seem like a peaceful utopia at all, really.

“Chiaki”:  “Every person in the outside world watching this is a huge Danganronpa fan.”

We get a demonstrative image of people all over the world apparently excitedly watching Danganronpa, most of whom are vague and faceless. If it were just them then it could be possible to imagine that Tsumugi is lying and this is just a hypothetical image of what she’s talking about rather than the truth. But… Makoto’s also there. The kid that we, the out-universe audience, very definitely saw at the beginning of the chapter in a context that had no connection to Tsumugi and no reason to be a lie. Which gives this image a lot of credibility.

(And if this is the truth, again, it really doesn’t look like it’s a shady hidden thing only accessed on the darkest corners of the internet.)

I will say one thing in this world’s favour. I’m not remotely trying to defend the part where they watch real people kill each other, but Danganronpa really must be hugely popular among absolutely everyone for this to have somehow ended up not extremely illegal. Which means, given the fact that the audience are basically telling themselves it’s fiction and treating it as such, this is also a world in which it’s socially accepted, not just in niche geek subcultures but in mainstream culture, to get really excited by and invested in fiction. If you took all the awful murderiness out of it and made sure it was all actual fiction, man I’d love to live in that kind of world. As it is, in our world, only children are really socially expected to get super-excited about fictional stories all the time, like it’s something people are meant to grow out of as adults. Among adults, only very few extremely mainstream fictions get even close to that kind of widely-accepted level of importance in people’s lives. Which is disappointing to me.

“Chiaki”:  “This killing game is for everyone… So it’s everyone’s killing school semester.”

That’s the Japanese subtitle of this game, which actually turns out to be very meaningful! The general sense of it she’s talking about here would have applied to every season up until now, but there’s also the more specific sense that this season in particular has audience participation, which is apparently the first time it’s happened, making it even more “everyone’s” than before.

And the localisers just decided to nope on that subtitle and change it to the meaningless “Killing Harmony”, which is honestly a shame. Maybe the Japanese subtitle is a bit too long and too much of a mouthful for western standards, but they could have at least changed it to something which kept that relevance.

“Killing Harmony! I just got it! LOL”

Haha, no, that doooeees not work in the localisation.

“I’ve waited three years for this.”

“I thought the franchise was done.”

Huh, this is some juicy info. It’s taken three years since season 52, long enough that some people thought there wasn’t going to be another one? (And a lot of the rest of the chatter at this point is people applauding, perhaps being happy that they got another season.) That… suggests that Danganronpa might have been already on its last legs even before what happens in this trial comes and puts the lid on it all, which maybe makes things a little more believable. That’d also potentially explain why this is the first time they tried the Keebo gimmick, if they were trying to keep things fresh after worrying people would be getting bored of the same old thing.

Also, even if it’s usually less than three years between games, you’ve still got to imagine it’d be at least one year or so, which means it’s been over half a century since the Danganronpa franchise began. A lot of people who worked on it while it was still pure fiction wouldn’t even be alive anymore at this point.

Plus, geez, how long did they keep Rantaro in limbo between games? Was he allowed to live a relatively normal life for the time being while knowing that if they ever did get around to a season 53, he’d be forced into it, meaning he lived dreading that day and desperately hoping it’d never come? Ouch, poor Rantaro. Or possibly they do in fact have real cold sleep technology in this universe and they just stuffed him in one of those for three years.

“Shuichi, look this way! <3”

That’s… rather entitled but also kind of believable as something someone might do, since it seems like a lot of the audience have forgotten that these characters don’t just exist to perform for them.

“Get to the punishment already!”

Aaaand here’s someone who’s barely a believable person. Do the audience really just watch this to see people be horribly executed, rather than for all the character drama that happens in between those parts?

The opening theme music for this game starts playing… and apparently this is being played in-universe, based on the fact that Maki reacts to it.

Maki:  “What is this…?”

“Fuyuhiko”:  “Can’t you tell? It’s the title of the current Danganronpa you guys are doing.”

God, that has to be incredibly disturbing and wrong, being told that you’re hearing the theme music for you and your friends’ suffering and death… and it’s just this chill jazz tune, of all things. This probably hammered home more than anything else the awful sense that all of their struggles have just been entertainment.

“Chihiro”:  “Danganronpa’s gone on so long because the whole world enjoys and supports it.”

No mention of the fact that apparently some people thought there wouldn’t even be a season 53? Of course not, Tsumugi wouldn’t want to admit that the franchise might be on its last legs.

“Makoto”:  “What season do you think we’re on? You should be able to tell from the logo.”

So she claims. But you know what I thought when I first heard her say this? Since I already figured it was probably season 53 from Junko the 53rd, I thought the clue in the logo was the negative space between the V and the 3.

It’s actually kinda shaped like a 5 if you look at it that way! But nope, that’d make way more sense that what it’s actually supposed to be.

(I bet Shuichi figured it out from the Junko hint and not the logo, too.)

“V is the Roman numeral for 5.”

*deep breath*

That is not how Roman numerals work!!! In Arabic numerals, “5” can mean five, or fifty, or five hundred, etc, depending on its position within the number. But Roman numerals do not work like that! “V” only ever means five, and its position in the number does not change that. V3 cannot possibly mean fifty-three. It’s combining two number systems that work completely differently and do not make any sense being combined, but if one were to try and make a number out of it, it’d simply mean “five-three”, separately. Or maybe you’d add them together, so it’d mean eight.

In Roman numerals, fifty is denoted with an “L”. To actually get fifty-three in any vaguely sensible way by combining Roman and Arabic numerals, it’d be L3. Or, heck, why don’t we write the whole thing in Roman numerals? Then it’s LIII. Which just so happens to look and sound very similar to the English word “lie”. If the Japanese writers of this game wanted to do a clever little number/letter trick, why didn’t they go for that? It would have been great! Or they could call it L3 but make the negative space between the L and the 3 look kind of like an I somehow, so that “LI3” almost looks like “lie” as well. Missed freaking opportunity there, guys. Instead it’s just very apparent that nobody in Spike Chunsoft (or Team Danganronpa, for that matter) has any idea how Roman numerals work.

“Danganronpa 25 was the best.”

Shout-outs to this person. They’re the only person we ever see here who mentions any series other than 1, 2 or the one they’re currently watching. Props to them for knowing what their favourite season is and sticking to their guns in a sea of people who disregard every new season that comes along as soon as it’s not current any more in favour of obsessing over the first ones like they’re the only ones that matter. Season 25 probably was genuinely one of the best ones if it has a dedicated fan like this. You go, random person. I feel you.

“This is my first Danganronpa.”

Huh, so despite how much Tsumugi is trying to make us think everyone is obsessed with it, there have to still be at least a few people who don’t get what all the hype is about, if this person only just decided to check it out for this season.

(Clearly there hasn’t been a large enough proportion of these uninterested people who are upset about the whole killing-real-people thing to be able to put a stop to it before now, though. Even if it’s not their thing, if the rest of the world’s okay with it then it must be fine, right???)

“I love Shuichi <3”

Yes, thanks, we’re getting that impression. This is probably the same person from before, who still feels the need to mention this while everyone else is talking about this being season 53.

Monokuma:  “The seasons just kept coming, and with it came more killing games… Until it transcended games and anime to become this, the Ultimate Real Fiction…”

They gloss over this quite quickly, but it is important to note that yes, the earlier seasons really were just fiction in this universe like they were in ours. They’re not trying to retcon that the Hope’s Peak killing games were actually only happening for entertainment thanks to Flashback Lights and fabricated backstory. DR1 and 2 were completely fictional in this universe, which means that nothing happening here matters to or compromises that storyline at all.

After all, it does make sense that Danganronpa would need to have worldwide popularity already before society collectively decided that doing this with real people (but definitely not really real people, right) would be totally okay. It’s unclear exactly when the transition to “real fiction” happened, although Shuichi and Maki’s comments on the files in his lab kind of made me assume that there were more real ones than fictional ones. So… I was just shouting out season 25, but that one probably involved real people being killed, too.

“Leon”:  “What, did the letter in there throw you off? Well, I guess that happens. But isn’t it just rad how it looks like a letter, but it’s really a number!?”

I am way too amused at how they made it be specifically Leon, mister 11037 himself, who mentions this point. Nice one, guys. Nice.

“Sonia”:  “Since this is the 53rd season, one would expect to see a multitude of characters…”

Tsumugi:  “But you only have memories from the first two, so you wouldn’t recognize any others.”

They shouldn’t even recognise the ones from season two, like I’ve been saying! But she’s been cosplaying them anyway. So it’s probably a lot less about keeping them recognisable for the students here and more just about pandering to those genwunners and twoers outside.

(Obviously there’s a very good out-universe reason for this, but, you know.)

Tsumugi:  “So yes, I’m the mastermind! But the *real* mastermind forcing you to do this is… the people of the outside world!”

Way to deflect your responsibility, Tsumugi! Yes, everyone outside is also partially responsible by demanding this and giving it an audience, but you’re still the one who made it all happen and got everyone killed!

The audience starts chattering about how they’re the mastermind, but it’s in a way that sounds happy about it, like they’re just excited to be part of the story. They don’t seem to register the fact that, hey, maybe being literally actually responsible for the suffering and death of the characters they’ve been watching and caring about isn’t actually a good thing.

“Mmm… Shuichi’s nose <3”

Meanwhile Shuichi’s “fan” here still has a one-track mind and is getting increasingly creepy. I refuse to believe that this is the same person who was cheering Shuichi on earlier, since that person actually cared about him and didn’t only shallowly see him as eye-candy.

“put Maki back on kthx”

Also apparently Maki has “fans” too. But hers probably aren’t the good kind either.

“Mikan”:  “The ones managing this killing game aren’t psychos like the Remnants of Despair…”

“Ibuki”:  “They’re literal managers! Literally!”

Just because they’re managers, that doesn’t stop them from being shitty, evil people on par with the Remnants of Despair in terms of awfulness. They are quite evidently both.

Tsumugi:  “So I want to hear your best guess. What company is running this show?”

…

Shuichi:  “…Team Danganronpa?”

I love how Shuichi’s tone of voice makes it clear that he’s just pulling this name out of thin air. How is he supposed to know? Conveniently, Team Danganronpa were apparently just really uncreative when it came to naming themselves. (I guess this is realistic enough, though – our world does have The Pokémon Company, which makes Pokémon.)

We – and therefore presumably the students and the in-universe audience – get shown the opening movie that was right at the beginning when you start a new file, the one that summarised seasons 1, 2 and 3 and then implied this one would be a continuation of it. Which still doesn’t actually make any in-universe sense, since all the evidence other than this clearly points towards Hope’s Peak having not being part of this game’s backstory until Tsumugi improvised it in chapter 5. Maybe this was a promo video Team Danganronpa then hastily slapped together after that point to try and act like they totally had this planned all along?

The only difference from before (because it would have been a huuuuge spoiler to see this last time) is that we also see the supposed logos of every Danganronpa season up to 53. 4 through 10 are clearly the out-universe writers having a field day referencing other works of fiction, but then 11 through 52 are all exactly the same logo with only the number being different. Yeah, that’s not how it actually was, is it. The out-universe writers just didn’t want to take the time to make that many unique logos for a split-second each of screentime. (And, fair enough.)

We then get shown a collage of what appears to be basically all of the illustrations in this game. Which you’d think shouldn’t actually exist in-universe, because the audience’s camera is supposed to be Keebo’s eyes, and he wasn’t there for half of this stuff! So this strongly suggests that despite what Tsumugi’s going to claim about that later, the audience could also watch the game through the Nanokumas’ footage instead and potentially saw all the same scenes that we saw that way.

…Makoto is on there, though. He definitely should not be. The out-universe writers didn’t catch that, I guess.

Shuichi:  “Shut up… Shut up!”

Yeeeaaah, I don’t blame Shuichi for this. Tsumugi and Monokuma and the audience have been blabbering on for quite a while now, barely letting him and his friends get a word in edgeways while treating them like objects for their amusement. That has to be awful.

And even aside from Shuichi’s feelings about it, the way the audience has been suddenly babbling excitedly about Danganronpa in general to the point of almost completely ignoring the characters who are in this actual story they’re supposed to be invested in is pretty shallow of them. That’s already a sign of how unrealistically awful an audience they’re going to keep showing themselves to be.

Shuichi:  “No matter how many false memories we’ve been implanted with, *we* aren’t fictional!”

This line is here as a setup for the big reveal, of course, but even so… he’s right. Just because literally all of their memories from before this killing game are fake, it doesn’t change that they’ve been real people from the moment they got all of those memories.

Shuichi:  (Who… are we…?) “We… are real! We’re living, breathing human beings!”

“Nekomaru”:  “No! You’re just like MEEEEEE!!!”

I made Shuichi answer this incorrectly at first because I really feel like he would want to assert this… and he’s still not wrong! They are very definitely living and breathing right now, nobody can deny that!

“Makoto”:  “You’re just fictional characters created solely for this killing game.”

“Teruteru”:  “Nothin’ we can do about it, I’m afraid. Danganronpa’s that kinda property.”

I’m sure it’s much less some intellectual property dispute and more the idea that everyone might have slightly more issue with actual real people from the outside world being killed in this. It’s totally fine if they were created solely for the killing game, though, because then they’re not real and only exist to die here, right?

And honestly… that does make all the deaths in this game come across as just slightly less awful and tragic, in that context. Not because they aren’t still extremely real people who very much did not deserve to suffer and die, but, since they were created to die, anyone managing to survive and escape despite that feels like even more of a victory than in the previous games. It’s less Monokuma killing a bunch of people who were never meant to die, and more Shuichi managing to save at least a small handful of people who were never meant to live.

“Gundham”:  “Your immaterial existence is a fabrication, independent of your actual flesh and blood.”

To translate the Gundham-ese: their “souls” were created separately from their bodies. Kind of like how they were discussing when going into the Virtual World how odd it is that the two can be separated like that.

Tsumugi:  “Yep, you’re all fictional.”

“Ibuki”:  “You guys out there beyond the fourth wall already knew that, right!?”

I like how this works as simultaneously talking to the people beyond both fourth walls at once, while not actually breaking the real one. (Though the people beyond the in-universe fourth wall are only telling themselves these guys are fictional and aren’t actually right.)

Tsumugi:  “You all didn’t look like this when you first came to the Ultimate Academy… Those were your true selves. Now you’re all just fictional characters. That’s the truth.”

Shuichi:  (That’s the truth? Then… our real identities…)

Don’t get caught up in her manipulation, Shuichi! You are not any less “real” just because different people used to inhabit your bodies!

Tsumugi goes on to talk about when they first arrived at the school as their pregame selves before they got their outfits and memories. And again, we saw this. It is quite ridiculous to assume we saw an entire lengthy section in the prologue which just straight-up didn’t happen. The game has lied to us, but only with very small lies of omission (re: Kaede’s inner monologue). If the game was willing to lie to us about entire sections we played through, we couldn’t trust anything. We couldn’t even trust if this trial we’re playing is really happening right now, or if anything we saw really happened, which would render this entire story meaningless.

“Byakuya”:  “But boring, everyday characters have no right to be in Danganronpa…”

Honestly, why, though? Sure, the talents are supposed to be a Danganronpa thing, but you could totally do a killing game with ordinary people. It might make for an interesting change, especially after 53 seasons.

“Peko”:  “Which means your Ultimate talents are all just fiction.”

They may have come from fake memories, but they have those talents now. Nobody can deny that Shuichi’s been a pretty great detective.

Maki:  “Our talents as well…?”

Maki Roll, you never killed anyone, and you’ll never have to! This is great news for you!

…I bet if Kaito were still here, he’d immediately turn to her with a big grin and tell her that. Encouraging and being happy for the sidekick with a bright side to this would be way more important than however he might be feeling about this revelation in respect to his own talent.

Maki doesn’t react here with anything other than shock and disbelief, though, so I don’t know if this quite sinks in for her yet. It’s probably very hard for her to accept that she suddenly doesn’t deserve to feel guilty about anything. After all, this won’t diminish the effect Maki’s memories have on her and that she’s going to have to live with feeling like she’s killed countless people for the rest of her life. But knowing that nobody real actually died because of her has got to help a lot. I’m sure that’ll sink in eventually, once she’s had more time to think about it without the trial getting in the way.

“Chiaki”:  “I mean, they suited you to a certain extent, but mostly in a placebo effect sorta way. Kinda like a form of autosuggestion… You know, like if you do it, it’ll all work out.”

We’ve seen Flashback Lights do plenty of things that aren’t just straight-up remembering stuff: brainwashing everyone to be filled with meaningless “hope” and a sense of the completely wrong meanings of the words “hope” and “despair” in chapter 5? Brainwashing Shuichi into suddenly being a creepy pervert for that optional scene in chapter 3? Kaito’s phobia of ghosts leading him to feel anxious and nauseous upon simply thinking about a certain irrational stimulus? So, given that, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine they can do this kind of thing too. Heck, most of the talents in this game are things that only require knowledge, and perhaps a certain kind of personality, something Flashback Lights can very evidently do. Some also require muscle memory, which is a bit more of a stretch, but it’s still memory.

The hardest one to buy for me is probably Angie’s talent. There’s some muscle memory and some knowledge involved, but a lot of what makes someone good at art is more intangible and hard to define and might be difficult to encapsulate in a Flashback Light. However, Angie was unique in that she explicitly did not remember creating her art, because Atua was supposedly possessing her, and she had to be alone for that to happen. That’s how she made the waxworks. So it’s possible that what was actually happening was some kind of hypnotic trigger making her pass out when she thinks she’s about to create something, and then the gamemakers put pre-created waxworks in her lab. Remember how Angie made four waxworks without having intended to? Almost as if the gamemakers weren’t sure who she’d choose for the ritual and just made all four in advance. …And, okay, admittedly it’s very unclear how anyone could have got inside the school to put the waxworks there, which is the same question as how a hypothetical clone-with-a-Flashback-Light would have got in for the resurrection thing if that was going to be possible. But there’s something there. (Can you tell I hadn’t thought of this idea until after the commentary for chapter 3 had gone up and so I’m awkwardly fitting it in here instead.)

And ultimately, if the characters being “fictional” is the point of this story the out-universe writers decided to tell, then that always had to include fictional talents as well, since Danganronpa insists on having all its characters be Ultimates. So Flashback Lights have to be able to do this, even if it’s a little bit of a stretch to believe, because it’s just necessary for the premise to work.

It’s a lot like how we had to buy that the Exisal randomly had a voice changer that could perfectly mimic any student’s voice, simply because that was vital for the fifth trial’s premise and that story wouldn’t work if it didn’t. We can’t just use the fact that it was somewhat unrealistic of the Exisal to have a voice changer as any kind of evidence to propose that it actually didn’t.

Another example: I once saw a blind LP of the first Danganronpa game where it got to the memory wipe reveal and Junko handwaved how memory-wipe technology worked. And the LPer was all “Um, no, how is memory wiping even possible? I think it’s pretty important to establish this, actually!”, like he was using the fact that he didn’t understand how to question whether it had even happened at all. But that was missing the point; explaining the technology really wasn’t all that important. The existence of memory-wiping technology was just a necessary part of that story that had to be accepted, because if memory wipes weren’t possible then that story couldn’t have happened. This story is the same, except with Flashback Lights and the multitude of things that they need to be able to do to make this story work. At least in this case, Flashback Lights and some of the things they can do are well-established already, which is better setup than the memory-wipe technology had in DR1.

Tsumugi:  “Can you really say you’re not fictional now?”

Yes! Yes, they can and should say that!

“Hajime”:  “Even if your body is real, your identities, personalities, talents and past are all fiction.”

Past, sure. Identities… maybe? At least if we’re just talking about legal identity? But their talents are quite evidently still talents now, as I’ve just been saying, and their personalities are also something they’re expressing right here and now. Even if they were deliberately crafted and created to be that way, it doesn’t mean those personalities aren’t now real. You can only call a personality “fake” if that person is knowingly putting on a façade and pretending to be someone they’re not. So the only fictional personality we ever saw was Kokichi’s supposed love for this killing game. …Oh, and Tsumugi’s, of course.

Also, hi, Hajime. It’s fitting that she’d choose him for this. If we’re supposed to believe that Izuru got shoved full of every single talent imaginable by them doing weird brain stuff to him, it’s perfectly reasonable to also believe Flashback Lights could do something similar on a lesser scale. And Izuru’s entire existence was created from that process, but that didn’t make him any less “real” of a person than Hajime was. If anything, it made him more real at that point, because he’d overwritten Hajime completely (at least until the simulation). It’s honestly a very similar thing. Maybe Hajime’s story partially inspired the idea for this game.

Shuichi:  “…”

Unfortunately… this seems to be working on Shuichi.

…You want to know what Tsumugi ought to think of as the real reason she killed Kaito? Not to have his death inspire Shuichi to become even stronger. That would still be happening anyway if Kaito were still by his side encouraging him; all that was needed for that final push was for Kaito to admit that Shuichi’s even more of a hero than him and tell him that. The real reason for his death should have been because Kaito would completely annihilate what Tsumugi is trying to do here.

Because the only thing that matters is what you want to believe! Tsumugi is trying to argue that their pasts being fabricated means that they don’t count as “real” people, but who even cares about that? They believe they’re real, and have always believed that, and still want to believe that, so why should anything else matter? Someone like Kaito who puts such value in belief and has such strong, unbreakable convictions about being true to himself wouldn’t be listening to any of this crap. He’d be shaken to learn his memories are all fake and that his grandparents and fellow astronaut trainees don’t exist, sure, but it wouldn’t even scratch his belief in who he is. He’s Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars! Who cares if he’s only this way because someone else wanted him to be, it’s still who he wants to be, so it’s who he’s going to keep being, dammit! And, of course, upon seeing that his sidekicks are having trouble with this idea and are starting to doubt if they’re really real, he’d give them just the pep talk they’d need to keep believing in themselves and their own existences.

Kaito is exactly the kind of person who would be able to blow this whole trial out of the water, and nerfing him enough to prevent him from doing that required nothing less than him not being alive any more.

(Meanwhile, if Kokichi were still alive at this point, he’d be his usual infuriating self. “Oh, you guys are only just figuring this out now?”)

Also, if Kaito were still alive in this trial and ultimately ended up surviving and escaping while having learned that his memories are fake and he was never actually an astronaut trainee… you know that would not stop him from striding up to JAXA’s front door and being all “Let me take the astronaut exam, sure you already know I’m too young but you’ve also seen I’ve got exactly what it takes”.

---

[Next post]

[originaldanganronpascenarios]

DR1 kids w/ their s/o running for their lives from a bunch of monokumas. when they get cornered, s/o saves them both by yelling "THE FLOOR IS LAVA!!!!", causing the monokumas to scramble to get out of the Lava

It was quite hard to write since I have small trouble with THH cast but I hope you enjoy it!

THH cast and their S/O running for their lives from a bunch of monokumas. When they get cornered S/O saves them both by yelling "THE FLOOR IS LAVA!!!!"

Kiyotaka Ishimaru

He tried to come up with solution but it just wasn't as easy as he thought it whould be.

When you had an idea you quickly shouted "The floor is lava!" the monokumas quickly ran away since there was nothing to stand on nearby.

You didn't thought it whould actually work and both you and Kiyotaka were just looking at each other with shocked expressions.

But then he was so glad it worked "S/O I never thought you whould come up with such solution!" the two of you managed to sneak to more safe place.

Thanks to you thinking out of the box Kiyotaka and you were using similar solutions to trick monokumas. He was even more glad to have you around...

Chihiro Fujisaki

He looked at you obviously scared and started crying "What do we do now S/O" he said while monokumas were slowly coming closer.

You suddenly yelled "The floor is lava!" and surprisingly it worked??? All monokumas ran to find something to stand on while you grabbed his hand and ran away.

When you managed to get to safe place he was quite excited and was very thankful and impressed. He didn't think that their program whould react like this!

Toko Fukawa

She started panicking with each step those monsters took she couldn't turn into Genocider and she felt helpless.

But it didn't mean that you gave up you and Toko held each other close and that's when idea came to your mind.

You told Toko to get ready becouse you will distract monokumas. She was confused but you shouted "The floor is lava!" Toko looked at you like you were an idiot to believe this whould work.

That's when she saw monokumas run away and stand or something to not touch "lava". She couldn't belive this worked but now you were able to make a run for it and get away.

When you found a place where you could rest she said "Wow I-I didn't expected for s-such childish and ridiculous idea to w-work but if not for you we whould be dead by now S/O".

Sakura Oogami

She knew that she couldn't possibly hold back this amount of monokumas even with your help.

The last thing you wanted was to give up. So even the most ridiculous ideas have to do. Then the next thing you know is you shouting "The floor is lava!" your girlfriend was caught off guard but your idea seems to work so you managed to get away.

When it was safe to say no monokuma is chasing you she really appreciated what you did "S/O you did great job back there who whould have thought that this is how monokumas whould react!" also she checked if you were fine and didn't injure yourself by any chance.

Leon Kuwata

He had no problem with running fast but just he didn't had map of a godamn place and it led you to dead end.

You could feel how much despair he felt when he saw the wall that stopped you from your escape. The words like 'we can't end like this' and 'this is bullshit' or 'I don't want us to die!' we're something he kept saying under his breath as he looked for solution.

But sometimes the most ridiculous ways might be the solutions "The floor is lava" was what you yelled very loud so every monokuma could hear it.

So the robots played that game and it bought both you and Leon enough time to get away. He was extremely impressed and thankful "S/O... You were incredible! I can't believe it worked but I'm so glad it did and you thought about something like that!".

Aoi Aisahina

Aoi tried to do something and she didn't gave up no matter what. But nothing so far worked and you started to have most ridiculous ideas.

You had to try it so when Aoi tried to push monokumas away and threw random objects at it you yelled "The floor is lava!" she was surprised at first but the monokumas got distracted and you two managed to escape.

And where you were finally safe she was very excited "That was fast thinking there S/O! Great job! God If not for you we whould be dead by now!" then she hugged you.

Mondo Oowada

He tried to protect you no matter what but now there was nothing he could do... There was too much monokumas and he couldn't possibly destroy them all.

So when you were cornered he felt very bad that he couldn't do anything but push monokumas away.

That's when you had that ridiculous idea but it's better to try it than die. As soon as you shouted "The floor is lava" every monokuma played this game wich allowed both you and Mondo to escape.

When you took a break from running he looked down "Sorry" when you asked what he was sorry for he replied with "For not being able to protect you dammit" he couldn't be possibly serious right now... I mean he fucking did great job protecting you all this time since you weren't injured even the slightest.

Makoto Naegi

When Makoto saw how many monokumas were surrounding you he tried to not give up but he was just so terrified but hey so were you.

You were close to each other as monokumas were getting closer with every seconds and that's when out of panic you shouted "The floor is lava!" multiple times.

He was surprised but he noticed that it worked so he grabbed you by your hand and you ran away.

Since you were running for such a long time you stopped for a minute to catch your breath. Makoto took your hands in his and told you "That was amazing S/O! You saved us!" he also apologized that he wasn't much help back there.

But you told him that he actually did good job as well since he noticed first that it worked and managed to react fast enough!

Mukuro Ikusaba

She was destroying monokumas with ease but there was just too many for her to keep it up so she had no other choice but to back down.

You couldn't believe Mukuro was giving up... So now you have to try something quick. Suddenly words "The floor is lava" came out of your mouth and after seeing reaction from several monokumas you repeated it but louder.

Your girlfriend was not so surprised that it worked since Junko probably thought of something like that. But she felt ashamed she didn't think of it herself...

So when you were finally about to catch a breath without monokumas trying to kill you she said "I'm sorry that I didn't thought that my sister whould think of something like this" you actually didn't give two shits that she didn't thought of it at the time you didn't too! More than that Mukuro protected you for so long it doesn't matter to you.

After this you decided to be more sneaky and don't draw any attention.

Celestia Ludenberg

All the time she was acting like she wasn't scared at all but when there was no escape you could see how frightened she was. Her hands were shaking as the two of you took steps back.

You couldn't let it end like this so even the most ridiculous idea needs to be tried out. So that's the time where you yelled "The floor is lava!" Celeste was surprised at first but then she noticed how monokumas reacted so the two of you managed to get away!

She smiled at you and didn't say anything. To be honest she found this quite funny.

Yasuhiro Hagakure

He was freaking out and tried to do something and he ended up throwing everything at monokumas even though there was almost no objects around.

When there was nothing left you managed to come up with something so you said "The floor is lava!".

Yasuhiro was impressed that it worked and as you were running away he also noticed that the monokumas stopped chasing you.

After you finally were safe he waa relieved "S/O I have no idea what whould I do without you!".

Kyoko Kirigiri

She remained calm for most of the time but when she saw there is no escape you could see that she began to be nervous instead.

She thought of quickest solution but you decided to take an action so you shouted "The floor is lava" causing monokumas to leave you alone.

It was obvious she was impressed by your idea but now you have to run while you can!

After this she smiled "Good job S/O who whould have thought that monokumas were programed this way when these are killing machines" the two of you remembered this and thanks to that you used ridiculous solutions like this to survive and it worked.

Byakuya Togami

So far you two managed to outsmart monokumas but well this time you ended up catching attention so now you were surrounded...

This doesn't mean that you gave up! Both you and Byakuya tried to do something.

That's when it hit you that they might react to something ridiculous you were embarrassed to shout it in front of him and at situation like this but you did it "The floor is lava!" escaped your mouth.

Surprisingly it worked and both you and Byakuya were pretty surprised at that point. But it didn't stop you from running away.

Byakuya didn't say anything about it but he thought that you did well and it was easy to tell that he was impressed.

Hifumi Yamada

After running for so long you and Hifumi were fucked. Why? Because there was a dead end and you had many monokumas right in front of you.

He was scared and so were you. So at the times like this even the most ridiculous ideas may work.

So there you stood and said "The floor is lava" loud enough so every monokuma heard it. Hifumi noticed that it worked so you managed to get away in time.

After this both of you were surprised that It did work but who cares you are alive! "Mr/Ms (last name) that was amazing!" and thanks to that not only two of you survived you had a solution if something similar happened!

Sayaka Maizono

Sayaka was shaking like crazy and was holding your hand seeing this huge numbers of monokumas overwhelmed her and she didn't knew what to do.

You could hear her saying 'I don't want to die' repeatedly and so you decided to do something.

It seemed ridiculous at first but you decided to do it since you had nothing else to do anyways!

"The floor is lava" was next thing you said it was loud enough so every monokuma heard it. So the two of you took the opportunity and ran away.

You could tell Sayaka was happy she didn't say anything about the situation however.

~Mod Chiaki

[mediioxumate]

🐭 - Are you shy about explaining your headcanons to people? // 🦊 - Do you come up with plots and replies when you’re not on tumblr? // 🐯 - Do you think you have similar characteristics to your muse? 🐴 - Could you imagine having to share living space with your muse? [ the last two for the DR muses! ]

animal munday questions! || @vaciiviity || accepting!

🐭 - Are you shy about explaining your headcanons to people?

oh my god extremely shy, until i get comfie with you and honestly even then i get really nervous about sharing/explaining my headcanons

🦊 - Do you come up with plots and replies when you’re not on tumblr?

pretty much constantly ngl, i’ll message partners about plot ideas and/or jot down reply notes on my phone or something 

the dr muses, ender says, as if that is not So Many asjkdhfasd: next two under the cut since they are long winded!

🐯 - Do you think you have similar characteristics to your muse?

oh boy here we go. for dr1 we have makoto and leon, i’m definitely much more similar to makoto haha, i’m very soft hearted and want to trust/help people whenever i can! i’m honestly not particularly similar to leon? we have the same lip piercing, and i dyed my hair orange for a few years lol

dr2: ibuki, kazuichi, chiaki. ibuki is like everything 14 year old me Wanted to be, and we share Loving Girls in common, but that’s most of it. for kaz, anxiety and dying hair to cover up anxiety? absolute mood. son boy. then for chiaki, as u may gather from the plethora of video game muses, i play a lot of games! but i am in no way exactly good at games, but i do play a lot to manage anxiety! and also just want everyone to get along

drv3: kaito and kaede! kaito is much louder and more confident than i’ll ever be, but wanting to believe and people and lift them up is a huge mood. also just Loving Space and the color purple and the cuffed pants. love it. as for kaede, i used to be a big orchestra kid! i am like super easily and heavily impacted by music! and again with the soft hearted muses. 

🐴 - Could you imagine having to share living space with your muse?

for the purposes of this question, i’m gonna separate by game and say we have a whole apartment situation going on.

dr1: this feels doable, leon might be a little loud but i’ve survived loud roommates before. 

dr2: now THIS is much more chaotic. in a fun way probably? or at least fun for like a month.

drv3: okay this sounds pretty ideal ngl. good balance. i love my kids.

[genocider-syo-is-still-my-queen]

Danganronpa 1: Pregame au

Basically: What if the DR1 cast were fans of the Danganronpa series, and auditioned themselves? What would their old lives have been like? 

Warnings: Child abuse, sexual harassment, suicide and other sensitive topics.

Makoto - just an average boy... there's nothing special about him, not at all... in fact, no one would even notice he was gone if he ended up being dying in Danganronpa. So why not go for it? There's no hope for him doing anything impressive in the real world, so maybe he can make an impact in Danganronpa. Even if it's only small. (basically still average but less optimism)

Sayaka - She'd always watched Danganronpa (her parents were busy working and just left the TV on to keep her busy) , and wished she could be like them, like the wonderful detectives that solve everything! She was a quiet girl, and kept to herself, but reckoned she could make it if they just gave her a shot. Being the protagonist and being able to get through any trial (figuratively and literally) would be a dream come true! But waiting outside the audition room, she got a little nervous and fidgety. But she had always found that singing to herself could calm her down. So she did that a little, and managed to forget all her fears. A couple of staff were staring though... was it really that bad?

Leon - never knew what he wanted to do with life. His grades were alright, but he didn't really have any jobs that related to that (especially not a lawyer). He could run relatively fast, but didn't want to spend masses of time training. He could play some guitar, but didn't want to start a band or do anything with that. All around, people were pressuring him to make decisions "You need to do this, you're so good at it!" but he didn't have any real passions... So he choose the easy way out. Danganronpa would make the decision for him.

Chihiro - never really cared what others thought of him. Sometimes he liked wearing cute dresses, sometimes he wanted to wear more masculine clothing. But he'd never doubted that he was happy with himself. Even if other people looked in mixed disgust, he brushed it all aside cause he knew he was awesome. And hey, he did have some friends! But one of these friends wasn't doing too well, and was going to join Danganronpa as an escape. Chihiro tried to convice them it was a bad idea, but they wouldn't back down. So Chihiro decided that they would audition too, so they could try to protect them a little. (it's up to interpretation who the friend is)

Mondo - always overshadowed by his older brother. He was generally a quiet kid, but had some problems with his temper when he got mad. He didn’t like it, but he often got into trouble, and no one really liked him... And he was going to be expelled if he kept this up. And his parents always seemed so disappointed, even if they never said anything...  So he decided to audition for Danganronpa. 

Ishimaru - was always a bit of a loner. He found social interaction hard, as he didn't always grasp when people were joking or not. And apparently, he often sounded like he was being sarcastic, even though that was never his intention. His father died when he was young, and his mother moved with his grandfather. The grandfather would often jokingly talk about how Ishimaru needed to do better in class (even though he was averaging 96%). Grandpa Ishi didn't do this with any malicious intentions, but the boy took it to heart, and tried studying harder and harder. 

Eventually, the stress got too much, and he needed to take a real break. Around this time, there were commercials saying "apply now for Danganronpa: THH!" (they always gave initials but never what they stood for, build the suspense you know?). And Mamma Ishi said "Look at that, you're just the right age!" She was joking of course, she would never want her son to go through something like that.  But Ishimaru was never the best as recognising what people really meant...

Hifumi - was  a special case. He had been part of the online Danganronpa community for years (he was possibly too young when he got into it, but hey, the internet you know?). He was also a pretty popular fanfic writer, and had written several successful fangans. Team Danganronpa noticed this, and knew he was just about the right age now. So they contacted him directly, and made him an offer: he should join Danganronpa... as himself! Without any brainwashing to give a new personality or talent. Of course, if he ever told anyone the truth about the killing game, he'd be killed instantly. And in exchange, all of his works would legally belong to Team Danganronpa (who could capitalise off of them however they saw fit. This lead to the first magical girl spinoff, based on one of his earlier works. Also they made a couple of animated mini-series based on his fangans. They made tons) 

Hifumi accepted.

Celestia - never had anything. She never had a family, she never had a home, she barely had an education. All she wanted was to have a better life. And after all she’d been through, she deserved to have it all! But there was no way to get it realistically. So she auditioned for Danganronpa. If only for a short while, she’d have the happiness she’d been craving, and the lifestyle to go with it. 

Sakura Oogami had always been tall for her age. And she was often insecure about it. She also enjoyed sports, which lead to her becoming a little muscly as well - which she had always thought was unsightly for a girl. At 12 years old she was 5'10, and she soon found out why. She had a rare genetic mutation, that prevented her body from stopping her growth. But of course, this had some side effects - she wasn't going to live until 18. Sakura was understandably unhappy, but decided to do something with her life until she inevitably died. She decided to keep up the training, and started to love her muscles. She tried her best to be a good example, and do good deeds... 

But then she had an idea. In her youth, she had never really had tall muscly female role models. Or if they existed - they were one dimensional 'girls who learnt to fight because they have 4 brothers' (what strong female characters). There were also the tall girls in romcoms who guys were intimidated by. Girls needed more than that... so she would be the role model! At 16, and 6'3, Sakura auditioned for Danganronpa, not caring if she survived the game or not. All she wanted... was for people to look at her and say "Wow, I wish I could be like her"

Kyoko - tried her best. After a divorce in her youth, she didn't see her father much (as her mother's family was much better off, and fought hard for custody). But she loved both her parents a lot, and always wanted to impress them. Her father seemed pleased whatever she did, and her mother always told her she was proud. Her mother's family were very involved in her life, and seemed to question everything her mother did. It was only because they wanted the best for her of course! Remember what we said about Jin? And you went and married him anyway! Look how that turned out! 

 As she grew older - maybe 10 years old? - Kyoko saw her extended family in a harsher light. If they never had anything nice to say, why say it? She tried to stand up for her mother, but was laughed away, and her mother was criticised for not teaching her respect for her elders. But she was spending more weekends with her father now, and her parents seemed to be getting on better than before. Not good enough that they'd try again (yet), but it was better than nothing. And for the first time in years, Kyoko was able to spend time with both parents.

Unfortunately when she was 15, Kyoko's dad was given a new job... in a different country. And he promised he would visit, those times seemed few and far between. And during one of these times... her mother killed herself. And it seemed that she had been the one shielding Kyoko all these years. Without her, all the family's expectations were placed on Kyoko, pressuring her to do things she didn't enjoy. And it had been months since she'd last heard from her father... maybe he'd forgotten about her (her family wouldn't let his letters go through) 

 So she signed up for Danganronpa to get away. But as fate would have it, her father visited the day she was taken away for the game. He desperately pleaded to be let in. Heck, he'd even go through the game to save his daughter! And in a way, his wish was granted. Kyoko was intended to die in chapter 5, but with a connection to an extra like this? She could survive... plus, they had been looking for a headmaster.

Byakuya - was unsatisfied with his life. His father gave him gifts, but no love. All the toys he could want! But he was too busy to celebrate Christmas together. A great TV! But never a nice meal out. Whatever he wanted, except time together. His mother had died young, and Byakuya grew up lonely. But he understood, his father was a busy man after all. His father had plenty of expectations, and Byakuya tried to live up to them. His father never smiled at him, but he was always told "You're doing well boy." and that was enough. It was his father's way of showing affection... wasn't it? 

 He got though life, and he did a good job of it too. He was all set up to go to the most prestigious college, and go on to take over the company... but when he though about that future... he didn't enjoy the thought of it. He only saw himself growing up exactly like his father... and he hated the thought. Now Byakuya was going through that rebellious phase. And he wanted to do something new. Something his father would never approve of... Danganronpa. He was going to reinvent his image. When people thought Togami, they wouldn't think about the finance company, they'd remember the double murderer. And maybe his father could find someone else to take over.

Aoi - wasn't happy with her body. As long as she could remember, people had made comments about how attractive she was, and how they couldn't believe how young she was, she was so mature for her age (in personality, of course)! She loved donuts, but always got comments about she shouldn't eat so much, she'd get fat. She always felt judged for her interests. "You like Danganronpa? Name the favourite colour of the first person killed in the third chapter of Danganronpa 12: Failure and Puhuhu." (which is pretty hard, cause the murder was incredibly complicated and 5 people ended up dying, but not in the order they were found (one of who killed another after their own death)). But at least on the internet, there were people who didn't treat her like that. Until she worked up the courage to post a selfie of her cosplay. 

 She ended up auditioning for Danganronpa, if only to say "Do I know Danganronpa? I was in it fucker." one day. But she had one request if she got in - she didn't want to wear a mini-skirt.

Hagakure - was a bum. A complete and utter waste to society. He had been held back too many times. He didn't want it to be like this, but he could just never retain information the way other people could. He tried every studying technique, every book that said "NEVER STRUGGLE IN SCHOOL AGAIN IN 5 EASY STEPS!" but it didn't work. He tried his best, but he could never do it. And he hated it. He wanted to get a good job, to make his mama proud, but he could never do it, because he was just too stupid! He was a little too old to enrol in his school (and he made the staff look bad at official inspections), so he was officially hired as a janitor and was allowed to attend classes. (But hey, seeing as he was a student, they could technically pay him less than minimum wage. They wouldn't pay the student council now, would they?) 

 Hagakure wanted more. He couldn't do another year of trying and failing. He couldn't take the looks his younger, better classmates gave him. He couldn't. And there was no age limit for Danganronpa... you only needed to be in high school - which he was. It was worth a shot, if only to rid the world of his utter uselessness.

Toko - couldn't go on. Her mother and father hated her. Everyone hated her. She couldn't do anything right. She took the first chance to audition, and in the process she ended up spilling her entire life story. "Ah, I'm so sorry, I bet you're not at all interested in someone like me, I'll just leave now and save you the pain." But Team Danganronpa were interested (and hey, this saved them writing their own backstory! Just change that father to another mother (they're not lesbians, it's just very convoluted) and you're ready to go!). 

 Toko often found herself with blank spaces in her memory. The first was when she was locked in a cupboard for an entire day, but it didn't feel that long. She assumed she just passed out from not eating enough. But that wasn't quite true. Due to her trauma, she'd developed a severe case of DID (which went undiagnosed for years). This second personality was not a serial killer, was not a psychopath, was not objectively evil, and was not [insert negative DID stereotype here] 

 Team Danganronpa took one look at the potential of a 'split personality' character and simultaneously thought "It's free real estate"

Mukuro and Junko - They were twins of course, and had been kicked out onto the streets. It was them against the world. But they always stayed together. They were all the other had. While Mukuro became saddened by the world, Junko became angry. But they couldn't give up. Mukuro tried to make friends, to find a small jobs she could do - even if i meant she could only buy McDonalds for the two of them every day or so. Junko didn't try as much. Sure, she did some things when she could, but she wasn't going to give more back to the world than she had to. She was mostly dependant on Mukuro still. 

Mukuro wanted to create a new life. She found a job where the store manager was willing to turn a blind eye and let them stay in a small backroom. But Junko wasn't so happy. Whilst the manager was willing to let them stay for seemingly nothing, he was awfully pushy towards her. She smiled back, doing as little as she could without making him angry. She didn't want to be kicked out again. 

But she ran out of patience when the manager made a request that was too much. "That room's awfully cramped for the two of you. Why don't you spend the night at my place tonight? You can even sleep on a proper bed for once." Junko knew what he wanted. And like hell she was going to let him have it. She told Mukuro they needed to go, now. She didn't say the reason, but Mukuro knew she must have a reason. 

 Long story short - Junko stole a car. And they drove to the audition building. "We're going to join Danganronpa."  "What?" "It's better than what we have there. And we'll get nice food restocked everyday. And a school roof over our heads (unless we're in a resort DR, which would be even nicer)." 

 Junko and Mukuro auditioned separately, and Team Danganronpa let slip they were very interested in having a game with twins. Junko made a few comments too. "Wow, it'd be pretty tragic if one of the twins died, and the other had to live with the other's death until the final chapter." Team DR chuckled a little. "But if you try something like that... 

 "Please kill the one named Junko."

[ixcaliber]

i finally got my hands on dangan ronpa 3 and it’d feel wrong to play it and not liveblog it at least a little

finished the prologue here’s my opinions of/predictions for the characters

kaede akamatsu - shsl pianist & protagonist? i’m not going to pretend i didn’t scroll past some kind of vague hint that the first character you control is a decoy protagonist back when the game first came out so she’s probably doomed or she’s junko or both

it’s been a long time since i played the first two dangan ronpas, i feel like kaede seems to have more of a personality than ummmm makoto? and um nagisa? nope um i forgot their names but the first two dr protagonists. and her shsl talent is a specific talent unlike theirs which brings me to

rantaro amami - shsl amnesiac and my best guess as to who will be the actual protagonist after kaede. for the sole reason of the unknown (or hidden) talent. i have nothing else to base this on. seemed to have heard of the killing games before they had their memories altered and for that reason he’ll probably be around for a good while

shuichi saihara - shsl detective and hat wearer. what’s under that hat? also didn’t we already have a shsl detective? wasn’t that kyoko’s whole thing? would be my second guess for protagonist if it turns out rantaro isn’t it, and if not maybe the murderboy who kills kaede.

so much of my initial impressions are being coloured by this half-read spoiler that it’s going to turn out that like the protagonist switch was something that happened in like... the demo or something. i mean i did think that if they were doing this that they would have done it by the end of the prologue. ???

this is going to end up just like that one time i saw an au image of hall monitor kid as the mastermind and convinced myself that it was a real spoiler for almost the entire way through dr1.

tsumugi shirogane - shsl cosplayer and almost certainly the new genocide jack. maybe this time the serial killer student will do one of the murders

k1-b0 - shsl robot. looks vaguely familiar. you know now that i think about it dr2 really relied on you remembering the events of dr1 to draw parallels and subvert expectations, so actually retaining some memories of the first two would help me in my guesses/predictions. as far as i remember there was a robot in the second game, which i think was like a parallel to chihiro having a computer version of herself in dr1. probably this guy is just a person in a robot suit?

kokichi oma - shsl supreme leader. the new ummmm what was the mafia kid called again? i think it was something like kiriyo, but anyway this guy isn’t as good as the mafia kid whose name i can’t remember. i got halfway through predicting that his status as a supreme leader of an evil organization meant he’d probably die early and uneventfully before i realized that he might be lying. i’d say maybe his talent was being a liar but we kind of already got that with twogami, but dr does like parallels so maybe? solid pick to last till midgame at least

miu iruma - shsl inventor. cool inventor lady. has cool goggles. definitely going to die because i like her and that’s how dangan ronpa works unfortunately. might be a murderer because they could have an execution with like cool robots or something

himiko yumeno - shsl mage. powerful witch girl. love her she probably dies in the same case as miu. probably dies in ‘a magic trick gone wrong’. i don’t know where you’d go with it from a storytelling perspective but i do hope she has actual real magic.

tenko chabashiru - shsl aikido master. i appreciate dangan ronpa’s dedication to having cool sports girls in its games. this sports girl probably gets murdered early. the only real logic i have for this is that aoi survived to the end, akane as far i remember survived to the end. they’re gonna buck the trend, send us the message that nobody is safe not even the cool sports girl.

maki harukawa - shsl child caregiver. i’m clearly supposed to be suspicious of her. she was acting suspicious. she was the only one to walk away after talking to her in the prologue. she’s a child caregiver and all the monokumas are kids this time. she’ll probably be an important confidante of the main character, entirely blameless and survive the entire game.

unless thats what they want me to think...

ryoma hoshi - shsl tennis bastard. hate him. hope he copies teruteru and does the first murder so i can be done with him asap

korekiyo shinguji - shsl anthropologist and mask wearer. all my instincts say komaeda 2 the sequel to komaeda. he’ll likely be entirely benign and make it to the end like mafia kid in 2 and togami in 1. 

kaito momota - shsl astronaut. will definitely murder someone so they can have an astronaut themed execution. though my memory is telling me they kind of already did an astronaut themed execution? astronaut is such an out there talent for a high schooler to have, we can’t have already had an astronaut right???

kirumi tojo - shsl maid assassin. god i wish i could remember mafia kid’s name and its too late in this post to go looking things up at this point. anyway kirumi has a very clear parallel to mafia kid’s assistant, who oh yeah thats right she prevented his execution and got herself killed doing so... god dangan ronpa 2 was fucking wild. kirumi is so dangerous that she’ll likely be a surprising midgame murder victim. 

gonta gokuhara - shsl entomologist (the bug one not the word one) and raised by wolves. my instinct tells me he’ll do a murder by accident (of mice and men style) or be tricked into doing one by... lets say korekiyo. 

angie yonaga - shsl artist and conduit for atua. hey i love her and hope she survives to the end as like the one quirky character allowed to actually survive the game (psychic boy from dr1 and ummmmm i don’t remember if dr2 has a good parallel). 

also of note the monokubs kind of put me in mind of the kids from ultra despair girls and i am Concerned.

[hopeymchope]

Had an odd idea about Makoto's powers. What if his powers only work on behalf of the people around him? And any time he's directly benefitted from them, it's because other people will need him to survive or be in a particular place at a particular time. That's the difference between him and Komaeda -- Naegi's not Ultimate Luck. He's the Ultimate Lucky Charm.

I mean, given that his (and also Komaeda’s) luck can be good OR bad in a given moment, I’m not even sure how to determine which events helped him/others or which ones hurt him/others. You could also view ANYTHING as a part of his luck at that point, so whose to say? Maybe he’s a lucky charm for others. Maybe he’s an unlucky one. Maybe he’s neither. Or both. Or AAAAAHHHH.

But this particular interpretation could make for some good fic fodder. Just imagine how often someone in the class might want to drag him along in the hopes that his presence will somehow alter their own fortunes. “Dude, sit in that cafe, I’m gonna ask this girl out when we pass in front of you and I need ALL your lucky vibes!” etc. :)

Side Note: The thing I often struggle with in regards to Naegi’s character is that Naegi was originally intended to be just a normal guy who won a random drawing, and that was it. That was all ‘Ultimate Lucky Student’ meant. In DR1, Naegi was no more special than Hajime Hinata was. He was just a regular kid who got into the school. His “Lucky Student” title was only referenced for some light jokes, but he didn’t actually have any distinctive ability.

And then DR2 and “Makoto Naegi’s Worst Day Ever” came along and retconned his title of “Ultimate Lucky Student” as being actually indicative of his affect on causality… and even moreso for his predecessor, Komaeda, whose affect on events around him is far more extreme. Naegi went from “the only student with no talent who gets to attend the course with the ultra-talented” to “his ability to get his name drawn was a small indicator of his inherent odds-manipulating talent.” The new definition doesn’t actually erase or alter what happened in DR1, but it does alter our perception of certain events and of how people might view Naegi.

[serahne]

Makoto Naegi? 😁

Sorry for answering slowly, I keep them for when I’m bored at work.

What I like about them :

I think he fits well into dr1, actually. We tend to lump dr1 and sdr2 together, but dr1 didn’t have the same kind of world-building than sdr2, and was very straight-forward. In this context, Naegi is a good relatable ‘average’ protagonist that anyone can identify with. He doesn’t have a crazy character developement, but it was still nice to see him take risks, and be braver as chapters came and went.

What I dislike about them :

Naegi is great as the DR1 protagonist but, as it’s the case for many things that are dragged through a ever-changing serie, he eventually starts… sounding off-key with the rest of the universe ? He keeps being pushed as the hero of a serie that is nothing like the one he was the hero of, and he isn’t even given a real arc either to compensate. Which leads to absurdities, like him becoming the new headmaster of Hope’s Peak.

Favourite moment :

When he decides to take the blame for Mukuro’s murder in chapter 5. I don’t know, I felt like it was a good case of self-sacrifice, the kind that we rarely see for a protagonist. At this moment, I really felt bad for this teenager, who is just accepting to die because he thinks that the person he is sparing doing so will have a better shot at saving everyone else.

Least favourite moment :

This awful moment where the game pretends to give you the possibility to tell Kyoko about Sakura but then… it doesn’t ? Honestly, it’s more the game that pisses me off there, because why even making it look like I have a choice, but Makoto is dumb to not give the info to Kyoko there.

Also, anything in the sequels.

A situation with this character that I want to see explored more :

I just… want to bring him back into the canon of the Hope’s Peak serie ? You don’t even have to make him morally-grey, Makoto is a good boy and that’s not going to change but like… show me his relationship with FF, and the way his decisions affected the rest of his friends too ? Show me some realistic relationships with the sdr2 survivors too… stop turning him into Hope Jesus, but put the pressure of the title on his shoulders if you want. All of it is good.

An interesting AU for this character :

Ryota succeeded in drowning the world in Hope and Happiness thanks to his brainwashing. Makoto now has to fight this ‘perfect’ world ( maybe in a combo with Hajime ? ) and understand that Despair is necessary sometimes, and part of humanity’s free will.

A crossover :

I really want to see Naegi and Cie on a stupid Reality-TV show where they have to survive on an island or something.

OTP (or OT3+ etc…. just… favourite ship) :

Naegi/Kirigiri is still going strong, despite dr3 trying to destroying all my love for it. I don’t like how they are almost-canon, but I like that they are. It’s something, right ?

Other ships :

Not necessarily romantic, but Sayaka. Naegi/Sayaka is reminding me of Soda/Sonia sometimes ( if, like, Sonia did something during the game ), but they were still pretty cute. Other than that, friendship with Togami and Asahina. Not sure how to classify them, but Hinata, Munakata and Junko are three characters I want to see more interractions with him, just to confront their viewpoints ?

BROTP :

The survivors, and Komaru of course. The idea of Toko as sister-in-law would be terryfing for him, but I’d read 50K words of it.

NOTP :

Never felt the Naegami vibe, to be honest. I could have considered it if Naegi didn’t just take whatever Togami threw at him all-the-time, but as it is… I’m not a fan.

An assortment of headcanons !

- He has 0 taste when it comes to fashion, and I’m generous. Thanks god he has Aoi and Komaru to help him do the right choices, because he would make a fool of himself at every FF meeting.

- He wants kid(s), probably more than Kyoko does, to be honest. At some point they try for her to become pregnant, and Makoto is super nervous and anxious, and Kyoko is rolling her eyes and like ‘Calm down, I could be pregnant right now you know ?” and then she chugs her weight in coffee, and Makoto is like. “Hum… I hope not.”

- He is a pushover, and has the hardest time saying ‘no’ to people asking for help. He kinda admires Togami and how he has 0 problem to say ‘fuck off’ to anyone who breathes in his direction. But at the same time, he likes that people love him. Dilemma, dilemma.

[arcane-shadow]

1 4 6 8 9 25 for komaegi and kamunaegi...!

thank you very much! this is a very long one boys, so under the cut:

1. Who makes the first move and how? 

Komaegi:

Komaeda orchestrates it but naegi takes the actual initiative.

It would be after sdr2 and the sdr2 kids had been living on the island a while, getting the occasional visit from the future foundation crew and komaeda keeps giving subtle, vague in that way that komaeda is, hints that he thinks very highly of naegi in a romantic sense and then would be like oh no, the ultimate hope is too good for little old him, and naegi’s pretty dense so it takes him…an embarrassingly long time to get it and then its an emotional moment where naegi confronts komaeda and they have a sweet little kiss.

kamunaegi:

(this is amazing because I have a part of an in progress fic with this exact thing in it but its def too long to put here so have this :p)

Absolutely kamukura and its super awkward. No matter the state of being he’s in, hinata lacks any and all game.

I’d say, probably if its like a kamukura survives after sdr2 thing (kamukura hard to pinpoint), it would be after they have been getting closer after a while and kamukura has some feelings he definitely doesn’t understand fully and goes, “this is a Romantic feeling?? i dont know??” and decides that “Kissing Is a Thing People Do to Determine Their Feelings” and then the next private chance they get just pant one on naegi out of nowhere and embarrasses himself. Naegi thinks its cute and probably says something cheesy.

4. Who can’t keep their hands to themselves? 

Komaegi:

Its komaeda!! once they get into a more established and relaxed relationship he is just constantly touching naegi when they’re together. Mostly lots of leaning on him, as Naegi is the perfect height for it! And yknow,,, whenever they’re not immediately in the company of others,,he can get a little frisky ;3c (komaeda has no concept of shame, also touch starved)

Kamunaegi:

Neither of them are very physically affectionate but naegi tends to absently touch kamukura, like if they’re relaxing together he’ll be just laying a hand on him or idly playing with his hair. its a nice thing for kamukura who appreciates minimal but still affectionate contact.

6. Who would they ask if they ever had a threesome? 

Komaegi:

Definitely hinata lol, they’re both really into him.

Kamunaegi:

Junko Nah, it would be kirigiri. We’ve all played dr1, and i think kamukura would respect her a lot and enjoy her company as well. Also shes super hot so.

8. What do they like in bed?

A-Anon-chan! how bold of you uwu~~

Naegi by himself is super vanilla but will/can be convinced to try anything his partner wants at least once. He likes things that are mostly just very affectionate probably. Also getting topped lol.

Komaeda….dudes a mess in bed, He’d be really iffy about his own body and receiving too much attention so he’d probably enjoy the control of being on top, but also hes a total bastard tease when he tops. On the other side he would also enjoy being able to totally trust his partner too.

Kamukura is hard to do but i think he would really enjoy bringing reactions out of his partner, and also getting so caught up he loses his composure. he would like trying out a lot of new stuff in bed when he feels up to it to explore different reactions and stuff. it’s exciting sex with the most deadpan guy ever.

9. What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other?

I’m taking the sfw and in relationship meaning of this question.

Komaegi:

Naegi once got so excited when he and komaeda were talking that he didn’t notice he was heading towards the edge of the lodges pool and stepped right into it. he was absolutely fine but super embarrassed, Komaeda was worried and then enamoured.

Komaeda was caught adding pictures of Naegi to his secret Naegi Makoto: Ultimate Hope scrapbook. Komaeda wanted to die he was so embarrassed and Naegi was a…little weirded out, especially by some of the earlier entries but liked all the pictures of them together.

kamunaegi:

The most embarrassing thing naegi ever did in front of kamukura was to show him his old party trick of having no gag reflex but 3 seconds in he got very embarrassed and nearly choked to death on the ice block he’d been demonstrating on. Kamukura was impressed before naegi started coughing up a lung.

kamukura may be the ultimate everything but this guy is Not Smooth!! He once got so flustered at something incredibly cheesy but super sincere that naegi said, and then got mad at being so flustered at such a cheesy line that he went to turn away and give him a sharp remark but instead he got tripped on his hair and fell right over. He was so shocked it took him a good minute to recalibrate, naegi was surprised and worried, but also,,,,lol.

25. Why do they fight?

Komaegi:

They fight over komaeda’s low sense of self-worth and the way he can be so acerbic to people sometimes. Naegi does Not Appreciate either of those. komaeda does not like the way naegi can be so soft and somewhat naive and he will just let people push him around. Also, hope and luck and talent, especially in the beginning.

Kamunaegi:

They fight over complicated moral matters, especially when it comes to talent and kamukura’s occasional apathy to people. while kamukura also thinks naegi lets things happen to him too much and he should do what he determines is the best course of action, through his superhuman brain.

but both of these pairings work through it!!