#The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya

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🎀 🌈🔒

Thanks for the ask! This is all from my single currently-extant WIP, the Haruhi/Danganronpa crossover.

🎀 How many named characters are in this WIP? How many do get a POV?

Already answered here.

🌈 If at the beginning of your WIP the characters knew about the end, would they kill you to stop you from writing it?

Ding-ding-ding-ding-Bingo! This is the one I really wanted to answer.

So one of the key themes of The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya is "To what extent is Haruhi Suzumiya to blame for the Mutual Killing Games?" From inside the fic it certainly seems like she is. There's more than enough instances where it looks like Haruhi is outright supporting Ultimate Despair. And even if she doesn't, the rational conclusion for anyone inside the universe is that none of this would have happened without her powers: both in getting the games going and in ensuring the coincidences needed for proper Danganronpa-style murder mysteries. To the characters inside the story, everything bad that happened flows from her.

But we know that's not true. Haruhi Suzumiya does not exist in the world of Danganronpa. The killing games happen regardless.

So to answer this question, let's apply the same analysis to myself. My characters would want to prevent me from writing this fic. Danganronpa will continue to exist anyway.

🔒 Would you let your family, friends, or other people you know in real life read your WIP?

Yup! My parents are my preliminary beta-readers, reading it before it goes to my main fandom-expert beta.

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Tag Meme!

Tagged by @jelimore. Thanks!

Last song you listened to: Hunger, by TheFatRat

Last movie you watched: A Haunting in Venice. Not as good as the other Branagh Poirots, but decent.

Currently watching: My MAL list is here. Particular shoutouts to Dark Gathering, Kusuriya no Hitorigoto, and finally getting around to watching the Evangelion movies

Other things I've watched this year: Recently finished watching Bodies, the Netflix time-travel detective series. The last episode slipped up a bit, but on the whole it was worth watching.

Currently reading: Nearly finished 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. I've been having a bunch of misses with old 'classics' recently, so this was breath of fresh air.

Currently listening to: A random selection of Nightcore mixes.

Currently working on: Currently in post-ZEcret Santa flaking, but I'll get back to The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya at some point. I need to do some more editing of Arc 3 to lock some details in place before I get to the murder.

Current obsession: Had a fairly sharp chess game a couple of days back. I won, but I'm still running over the key moment in my head to make sure I calculated right.

Tagging @graceisprettygreat, @bookworm-2692, and @dagny-hashtaggart, but only if you want to do this.

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🍖 :]

Thanks for the ask! (Random WIP Ask Game)

My only current WIP is my Haruhi Suzumiya/Danganronpa crossover The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya. So this answer is for that.

🍖 How many fictional people were harmed in the making of this WIP?

Casualty list:

Haruhi Suzumiya characters killed: 2 onscreen, at least 8 off.

Danganronpa-style OCs killed: 8

Danganronpa characters killed: 4 (at least, some details of that side aren't properly planned yet)

Characters traumatised for life and then sent to Canon (where they are then killed): 1

Characters manipulated into Despair-loving nutters (who weren't such in canon): 14

Characters miraculously granted a new form of life: (minus) 1

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❔ for the WIP ask game

Thanks, Anon!

❔Choose a random WIP and talk about it.

I've only got one real WIP on the go. I've talked about The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya in various places, but I'm not sure how much of that you'll have seen and it'll be nice to have it all in one place.

TUoHS is my Haruhi Suzumiya/Danganronpa Crossover fanfic, in which Haruhi is accepted as a student at Hope's Peak Academy and consequently Kyon, Koizumi, Nagato, Asahina, and Asakura end up there as well. I've, um, bodged the timeline so that they're in the same year as Makoto Naegi, in a second class.

The roster for that class, 78-B, (and the roster for the killing game) is filled up by OCs:

Satoru Ishihara: Ultimate Journalist

Konosuke Kamio: Ultimate Film Critic

Katsuya Terasaki: Ultimate Firefighter

Hitomi Maeda: Ultimate Chemist

Mayumi Uehara: Ultimate Mathematician

Arata Nakayama: Ultimate Archaeologist

Taichi Fujino: Ultimate Driver

Yayoi Mikawa: Ultimate Cosplayer

Ikko Watari: Ultimate Scam Artist

The story will be in two halves once it's completed: a future side that's a Fanganronpa with these characters, and a past side with the Haruhi characters at Hope's Peak, sort of blending standard Haruhi antics in that setting with showing how Ultimate Despair and the killing games will start in this crossover.

I am nearly 300,000 words into the future side and I'm only halfway through the third arc so I'm still miles away from being able to publish and that fact weighs on me every day of my life.

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For the fanfic ask meme! K, L, M, V!

Thanks for the ask!

L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

It’s working out at about three official drafts at the moment: first draft, edited after my parents have read it, edited after my beta-reader has read it (Thanks, @blackflirtlarping​!).

There are a couple of chapters which I like to re-read from time to time and I’ve occasionally noticed errors and fixed them then-and-there. But I don’t think I catch enough at once doing it like that for it to count as an extra revision.

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?

I’ve got two sequels planned for TUoHS, the first of which is ridiculously spoilerly just from the concept of it alone, and the other of which is about what Nagito Komaeda is up to in this alternate timeline.

Once I’ve finished those (so, like, not for at least fifteen years) there’s a couple of other ideas I’ve been percolating. Probably the only one that’s developed enough to mention is the crossover between Pokemon and Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar I had some inklings of. It would basically be a reimagining of the Worldwar story but with Pokemon, so rather than the aliens having advanced technology they’d have IV-bred EV-trained Smogon move-setted pokemon. Where Worldwar had a character who was a representative of the Manhattan Project, here he’d be a Rocket Scientist trying to tell people about Mewtwo. And the role played by the belligerent governments of WWII would be played by the Champions and Elite Fours of each region. Also, there’d be a scene where the aliens declared Brock to be a superior specimen of humanity because he’s attracted to every lady he comes across. (That probably makes more sense in context.)

V: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

Back before the second fic in the Game Theory ‘verse of Nanoha fanfics (by Immatrael) finished, I had this vague idea for how I might start a fic in that verse based just before the time period of the third season of Nanoha. Basically it drew on some connections in the world-building implied by the ending of the first fic, though I have no idea how I’d continue beyond that first scene to turn it into an entire story.

Unfortunately, the ending of the second fic churned up the status quo completely (not that I’d accept anything less from my favourite fanfic) such that I don’t think my idea works anymore, not without knowing quite a lot more about the setting Immatrael and her collaborators have developed.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?

My angstiest idea is pretty spoilery (TBH, it’s the big spoiler of TUoHS, to the point where I’ve been calling everything related to it ‘The Spine’) so I’ll stick it under a read-more Stupid Tumblr isn’t letting read-more work, so I’ve ROT13′d it instead.

(@blackflirtlarping​: please, please don’t read.)

Gur sbhegu zheqre bs GHbUF unf Zvxheh Nfnuvan nf gur zheqrere. Gur oehgnyyl natfgl cneg vf gung ng gur cbvag bs gur Pynff Gevny, fur unfa’g npghnyyl pbzzvggrq gur zheqre lrg sebz ure crefcrpgvir. V whfg ubcr gung V’z hc gb jevgvat gur Ohyyrg Gvzr Onggyr sbe gung gevny, juvpu jvyy or nobhg arrqvat gb pbaivapr Zvxheh gb npghnyyl tb onpx naq qb vg fb gurer vfa’g n gvzr cnenqbk: gur svany jbeqf ng gur raq bs vg jvyy or ‘Rfgnoyvfurq Vasbezngvba’. 

C.F. Gur vqrn sbe gur bgure frdhry gung V zragvbarq rneyvre naq qvqa’g qrfpevor vf gung, fvapr Zvxheh qvrf qhevat gur nygreangr gvzryvar bs zl fgbel, zl gvzryvar vf gur bar gung Shwvjnen sebz pnaba genafcbegrq bire sebz.

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11 Questions WIP tag meme:

Thanks for tagging me, @pomegranate-belle!

I’ll tag: @blackflirtlarping, @kiichu, @transezual, @eatingfireflies and @i-demand-a-hug.

1. How long have you been writing?

I’ve tried to start writing something a bunch of times during my life, but I only really got anywhere when I did some writing for the college magazine when I was at uni. Which was... eight years ago now oh fuck I’m old.

2. What are the major themes of your current wip(s)?

The main theme of TUoHS has to be, ‘Haruhi Suzumiya would be a dangerous fucking nightmare in any piece of fiction that wasn’t at its base slice-of-life.’ Because, duh, she would be. I’ll also need to work in my take on the usual Danganronpa hope/despair themes, but I’m willing to let that develop as I come up with later murders rather than lock it in precisely now.

3. What do you want people to take away from your story once they’ve read it?

An experience similar to playing the Danganronpa games. If readers can enjoy the murder mysteries - following along closely enough to enjoy working out some things in advance but not finding the whole thing too obvious - I’ll be happy.

4. Would you be excited if people write fanfiction about your wip(s)?

Probably? There’s some good hooks in the past half of the story which might attract some recursive fanfiction. And maybe people will like the OCs and want to do fluffier stuff with them that I wouldn’t consider. I think I would feel more comfortable if people were to contact me before doing something so I could vet it. Everything before the story is fair game, but there’s quite a bit of idea-space after the story that I’d want to reserve for sequels I want to write.

5. What’s your go-to writing beverage?

When I’m doing ‘write drunk, edit sober’ my go to drink is vodka-coke.

6. Who is your favorite oc? Tell me about them!

Ooh! Close choice between two:

Mayumi Uehara (The Ultimate Mathematician): Is essentially a self-insert (I knew long before starting to plan that I wanted an Ultimate Mathematician character) and also the OC slotting into one of my favourite Danganronpa archetypes. Plus my favourite line from TUoHS, the one I go and re-read when I’m feeling down, is a line of dialogue by her.

Hitomi Maeda (The Ultimate Chemist): I’ve got a database of all my characters, and one section is for descriptions of their personalities: quite a few paragraphs of text for most OCs as I’ve built them up. Hitomi’s now just reads ‘I have a massive crush on her.’ That’s enough to make her the easiest character for me to write by far. Plus she’s gotten me out of a couple of dead-ends while writing.

7. Do you feel that mistakes are important learning tools in the writing journey?

Not really? Unlike with maths or chess, I don’t really learn from my writing mistakes as I look over them. I just get locked-in on them, unable to change them without the help of the help of a beta-reader.

8. Rank your ocs by their capability in a footchase (either running after or from smth, your choice)

Let’s see:

Katsuya Terasaki (The Ultimate Firefighter)

Taichi Fujino (The Ultimate Driver)

Arata Nakayama (The Ultimate Archaeologist)

Ikko Watari (The Ultimate Scam Artist)

Satoru Ishihara (The Ultimate Journalist)

Hitomi Maeda (The Ultimate Chemist)

Yayoi Mikawa (The Ultimate Cosplayer)

Konosuke Kamio (The Ultimate Film Critic)

Mayumi Uehara (The Ultimate Mathematician)

I’ve long had a similar list ranking (both my OCs and the Haruhi Suzumiya characters) by who would win a fight. The big changes for this list are that Ikko Watari has shot up from last-but-one place, while Yayoi has dropped from third among my OCs. Also, while Katsuya is first out of my OCs on both lists, I’ve decided that his Talent has enough of an impact that he’s about equal to Haruhi in a race, rather than significantly worse than her in a fight.

9. Does your wip have romance? tell me about it!! if not tell me about a friendship/important relationship in your wip!!

I was about halfway through the sixth chapter when I realised that Arata Nakayama was crushing like hell on Mayumi Uehara. Had a bit of a think about it, decided it was mutual, and edited back to chapter four to hint at more of it. It doesn’t come from a particularly positive place for either of them: Mayumi is one of the few Ultimate students who doesn’t trigger Arata’s hangups about Hope’s Peak, while Mayumi (who as a self-insert - of me, no less - is about as close to an existence of pure selfishness as you can get) notices that Arata treats her better than the rest of the cast, and likes it. But I’ve decided that their romance itself will be happy and healthy.  It’s not a major part of the story - just offstage and a side detail like most of the other romances are in DR - but it does have effects on the plot. I’ve also decided that they will also get together in the past half of TUoHS, and that they would in any non-killing-game AU.

10. Do you believe in the advice kill your darlings?

Yeah: I have had cases where getting out of a block has needed me to get rid of a particularly witty but dead-end-aimed sentence. Most recent one was during the last part of the first trial, where I had three clues left to use and wrote a pithy way of introducing the first of them. But I quickly realised that talking about that clue would set the killer off, so no-one would get the chance to bring up the other two. I had to go back and use a different clue first, even if it wasn’t quite the same slam-dunk. That’s a general point, really: ‘Kill your darlings’ is particularly important in a mystery story like TUoHS, where controlling the information each character has is crucial for keeping the story on track. If a pretty phrase gives or requires from a character details they shouldn’t know, then it needs to go.

11. Do you prefer plotting or worldbuilding? Why?

The stories I’ve written haven’t needed lots of worldbuilding; they’ve all been hugging close to the world of the originals. I’d like to be good at worldbuilding, but I suspect I won’t be nearly as good as I am at plotting.

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99

(Send a number to get a line from that page of my WIP)

Thanks for the ask! Page 99 lands us right at the start of chapter 8, where we get a line that demonstrates exactly how I’m handling the Haruhi Suzumiya characters in a Danganronpa scenario.

“My superiors didn’t tell me that Suzumiya had killedanyone,” Asahina murmured, “but the records from this time are pretty patchy inplaces. If Haruhi had… it wouldn’t be completely unreasonable that we weren’table to find out about it. Koizumi wouldn’t have mentioned it if he knew – allthe people at his Agency worship her. And Nagato…” Asahina shuddered. “So… itreally could be true.”

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1, 7, 14, & 20 for the WIP Ask Game!

Thanks for the ask!

1. Summarize your WIP in 10 words or less.

‘Is the Danganronpa/Haruhi Suzumiya crossover,’ does a good enough job here, I think. There’s the details of the actual murders, of course, but I think most people would get to the the same broad strokes from that starting point.

7. What are you most proud of?

I think the first murder and trial has come together nicely. There’s a lot of moving parts which I needed to keep track of, but I was able to use all the clues in logical ways to reach the conclusion while advancing at least half the cast’s character arcs.

14.Have you chosen birthdays for any of your characters? If so, when are they?

Yep! I needed them for the DR style character profiles. There’s a canonical one for Haruhi (October 8th) and a date for Kyon that googling suggested was relatively well supported by at least some of the fanbase (May 24th) so I went with them. The wiki says that Mikuru also has a canonical birthday (October 21st), but for now I’m putting her birthdate as on her profile. For the rest of the Haruhi Suzumiya cast I just made dates up because I needed them, so I would quickly change it if I found out the canonical dates:

Itsuki Koizumi: October 5th

Yuki Nagato: June 15th

Ryoko Asakura: February 29th (Yes, I know this restricts which year the story could take place in. But I can’t get over Ryoko being extra enough to include that in her cover story.)

I’ve also picked birthdays for all my OCs:

Satoru Ishihara: December 22nd

Konosuke Kamio: April 4th

Katsuya Terasaki: September 12th

Hitomi Maeda: September 13th

Mayumi Uehara: March 2nd

Arata Nakayama: November 16th

Taichi Fujiwara: June 18th

Yayoi Mikawa: March 9th

Ikko Watari: January 3rd

I mostly selected these with a random number generator.

20. Post a brief excerpt.

The most significant part of the first arc that isn’t a total spoiler is…

“Yeah, that.” Haruhi completely missed the point of everything I was worried about. But then she said something that was even more disturbing. “If Hope’s Peak Academy students are more able to try actually being worthwhile than I thought, maybe I was wrong about something else as well.” Haruhi glanced down out the window at something in particular, then spun away from the windowsill to stare right at me. “Maybe, when I saw all those thousands of people crowding like rice into that baseball stadium, and when I looked up the population of the town in the encyclopaedia, maybe, just maybe,” Haruhi looked right at me, hope glinting in her eyes, “Maybe the town we lived in was totally more special than I thought.”The town ‘we’ lived in?If I had to describe what happened next, ‘lunge’ would be entirely the wrong word. Haruhi was just there, standing right in front of me, her pointed finger jabbing into my chest. When I looked down, more closely, her finger wasn’t just aimed at random. It was creasing my pocket, right where the logo of the school – the one I probably should have chosen to attend instead – was stitched to my uniform.“You’re from Nishinomiya, too,” Haruhi stated, poking me again. There wasn’t any doubt in her voice; much worse, there was no doubt in the force of her jab. “That logo… It’s exactly the same as the one outside. That logo is the same as this school’s and, well, I can see my house from here.” Haruhi glanced in that direction. “I know where we are.”

How’s that?

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B, K, L, N for the fanfic ask meme!

Thanks for the ask!

B: Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?

Not really? I tend to go for more high-stakes fiction when writing so it’s not really related to my real life at all.

Closest thing I can think of is that the inspiration for the little philosophical detours (ala G-OLM) came from things I was interested in. But even then, that’s more based on the fact that ZE has to have philosophical detours.

L: What’s the weirdest AU you’ve ever come up with?

The weirdest fanfic idea I’ve ever had has to be a Pokemon/Harry Turtledove’s WorldWar crossover I’ve thought up some things for. Plot points I came up with include having the invading aliens act like competitive Pokemon players bring optimised Pokemon with them (This was back when I sometimes browsed Smogon), having Brock get captured by the aliens for their experiments and being considered ‘more sensible’ by them because he’s attracted to every woman instead of being monogamous, and replacing the Manhattan Project scientist plot from WorldWar with a plot about some Team Rocket Scientists that would have eventually been about Mewtwo.

I doubt I’ll ever write it, but it’s interesting to think about.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

I’d still really like to see a ZTD fic that comes up with a better, less copy-pasted, motivation for Delta’s actions. Especially if it was a really expansive and detailed fic that really explored what happened after the altered ZTD.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?

My angstiest idea ever is Massive Fucking Spoilers for (when I finally get to writing this part) The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya, so I’ll stick it under a read-more.

The Bullet Time Battle from the fourth trial of The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya will be against Mikuru Asahina, where she’s desperate to tell Kyon the truth but keeps getting stopped by her ‘Classifed Information’ conditioning. So she’d just be standing there, mumbling “[Classified Information]” over and over and over until Kyon finally manages to convince the conditioning that he already knows enough to be told the rest. And of course Kyon doesn’t want to do this to Mikuru, but Danganronpa has made it necessary.

In the angstiest version of this idea (I’ll need to work out the specifics closer to actually writing) Mikuru hasn’t even committed the murder yet, so along with the above there’s also the need to convince Mikuru that she has to go back in time and do it to prevent a paradox. Which is just awful.

[chessanator]

7, 16, 17 for the Fanfic Asks!

Thanks for the ask!

7. What’s the last thing you read that made you cry?

I can’t think of any fanfics that have caused me to cry. Maybe the sort of fanfic I aim for makes that less likely?

Among non-fanfic… I don’t know if ‘read’ is the right word, but the most recent few strips of Order of the Stick have been brutal on the feelings.

16. Describe your WIP that currently has the highest word count.

Only thing I’ve got that counts as a Work in Progress is The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya, my Danganronpa/Haruhi Suzumiya crossover which I’ve just reached 83000 words on.

After Haruhi gets recruited by Hope’s Peak Academy, dragging her entire supporting cast with her, the fic comes in two parts: 

Side:Melancholy, where they’re at the Academy and there’d be a bunch of vignettes similar to her actual series but also exploring the dark secrets of Hope’s Peak.

Side:Ronpa, which is a classic Danganronpa-style Mutual-Killing Game with the Haruhi Suzumiya class and my OCs.

17. Describe a fic that is still in the ‘ideas’ stage.

I’d wanted to make a couple of ‘sequels’ to my contribution to Zecret Santa last year, tangentially based on some of the other prompts. One would have involved Luna in a hospital drama, while the other would have been post-ZTD linking both my actual story and that together and tying everything up.

It’s all pretty dead in the water now, though. :-(

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Using text-to-speech while editing a fic:

Pros: Catches all typos effortlessly, with each of them sounding so jarring that there’s no way you’ll miss them again.

Cons: English text-to-speech utterly mangles Japanese names.

Super-duper Pros: When reading Monokuma’s laugh, sounds like they’re firing a joyful little laser gun.

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Finally reached the point of writing my fic where it would be worth showing to a Beta reader! Is anyone interested?

Title: The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya Fandoms: Danganronpa/Haruhi Suzumiya Characters: Kyon, Haruhi, Asahina, Koizumi, Nagato, Asakura, 9 original characters and Monokuma Warnings: Major Character Death, Graphic Violence Summary: It’s basically what you’d expect with what I’ve crossed over. The main characters of Haruhi Suzumiya are accepted as students at Hope’s Peak and are then forced into a classic Danganronpa-style mutual killing game. Of course, the murders, trial and other secrets have a Haruhi-Suzumiya flavour to them. I also intend to write a past side when they’re at Hope’s Peak, but I won’t start writing it until I’ve finished the murder-mystery side to avoid making the same mistake as the Dr3 anime.

Multichapter. Average word-count per chapter: about 8000.

I’m mainly looking for a Beta reader who can help me with three things:

Judging whether or not my murder-mysteries and other twists are solid and without plot-holes but are still interesting because they aren’t too obvious. It’ll be interesting seeing what you predict will happen and why you predict it.

Evaluating my OCs to make sure that they are interesting, relatable and consistent. This is my first time writing multiple key OCs, so it will be useful to see which ones I have to strengthen.

The fic (especially the Class Trial parts) relies on some gamified elements and it’ll definitely help to know what the best way to present them is.

Because of these (especially since the OCs should be closer to Danganronpa-style OCs than Haruhi Suzumiya ones) it’s probably more important that you like and a familar with Danganronpa than Haruhi Suzumiya. If you’re a fan of both that’s even better!

I’ll admit this is going to be a long project, but because I intend to write the entire future half before posting and because the writing and planning times will vastly outweigh anything else you should be able to beta read at a leisurely pace with very reasonable deadlines.

I’d be very grateful to anyone who’s up for helping me. This is a story I’ve wanted to write for a good long time and I want it to be the best it can be. If you’re interested, please just send me a message or an ask so I can fill you in on any other details you want to know.

Thank you!

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That moment when you realise Americans and Japanese people don’t know what Christmas crackers are so you spend 731 words explaining how they work because they’re key to your plan to knock off your first OC...

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NDRV3: Final Thoughts

Is this the final Danganronpa?

Overall, I enjoyed it. This was my first one where I didn’t know the solutions before going in, and was nice to see that I could mostly follow the logic of the trials once they started, I also managed to get through, just about, on mean/mean: I can be proud of that, right?

I think the final reveal does answer a lot of objections. The backstory is allowed to have difficulty cohering because it’s fake backstory. Plus, I can appreciate the introspection needed to say, “If you let us make 53 of these, we really will get this insane. Please stop us.”

Nothing, however, can redeem chapter 3. Whatever the ending says, that was not Danganronpa. How would I rewrite that chapter? It needs to be tied into the motive better. Certainly, the motive of that chapter is very weak given that it was only there to aid the method. Connect Kiyo’s motive to that, and he both becomes more sympathetic and the structure becomes stronger. Kiyo was strong in that chapter while he was using anthropology to explain the student council, and I cannot help but believe that I also wonder what the resurrection ritual was supposed to be in context. Could Team Danganronpa really bring back the dead?

Overall, I’d give this a high B. (Both the previous games got A’s; the DR3 anime gets a D or even E).

Final Character Rankings:

Maki Harukawa: Naturally

Shuichi Saihara: His strong showing in the finale, and being the catalyst for breaking out of Hope/Despair, finally puts him above Kaito.

Kaito Momota: Cool all around. There’s a reason these three were the core trio.

Himiko Yumeno: Absolutely Best Girl 

Kokichi Oma: Yes! Not actually Despair! I do like the interpretation where he was always working at least somewhat morally, using the tools he had available to him.

Angie Yonaga: Another powerfully antagonistic figure. I really wouldn’t have minded it if she’d lasted longer and Kokichi had gone first (though her role in the story does lend itself to burning twice as bright and half as long) and if she had I imagine these two would be the other way round.

Kaede Akamatsu: I would have liked her to continue as protagonist. I don’t think the fact that she didn’t actually murder Rantaro moves her much in either direction. Intention is what matters.

Keebo: Strong showing in the ending

Tenko Chabashira: Her core characterisation is still kind of creepy, but I appreciate the sincerity of it. If it had been toned down a little, she’d definitely be higher up.

Rantaro Amami: It’s a shame that his role in the finale was just his existence and not his personality. He deserved a lot more.

Ryoma Hoshi: Still a fan of the ‘let someone kill me to use the first-blood perk’ plan, though later evidence suggests that he was coming from a much darker place than I was.

Tsumugi Shirogane: A decent mastermind. Still, her previous characterisation managed to be both blatant and bland at the same time. Really, she was carried by the setting.

Kirumi Tojo: Another character taken before they could grow into what I hoped they would be.

Gonta Gokuhara: Despite the boost from his tragic trial, I just can’t bring myself to empathise with him for long.

Miu Iruma: My opinions on Miu are well documented. Reading her original description, I had so much hope for her, but she only managed to disappoint.

Korekiyo Shinguji: 98 fucking reasons.

I must admit, the idea behind the real fictional killing games does intrigue me. I’ve thought similar things before about Virtue’s Last Reward’s setup: it would be cool to do, but memory-wiping is basically required to preserve that first Prisoner’s Dilemma. The same with Danganronpa. If I could get some guarantee beyond what the characters’ originals got - resurrection at the end, restoration of my true memory, creative control over my character and not getting Korekiyoed - I could easily see myself signing up for this...

Maybe I am the bad guy? Oh well. Never hurts to be reminded.

I have to mention the fanfic I’m writing here. The ending of NDRV3 has me anxious for a number of reasons:

I’ve mentioned before that my fanfic shares the talent of Ultimate Cosplayer. Naturally, Tsumugi’s prominence in the finale completely screws me. About the only saving grace is that my Ultimate Cosplayer isn’t the mastermind, and is cosplaying openly from the start. I’ll do what I can to differentiate my Yayoi’s cosplay and character from Tsumugi’s, since she’s tied into too many key events in my story to change her cosplay too much.

Some of the ideas have had for my murders are uncomfortably similar to ones from NDRV3. I wouldn’t blame any who immediately draws a connection between the set pieces for my murder 1 and the game’s murder one. Both murder 5s also end with a character going openly violent against Monokuma (I thought I was so clever when I came up with it).

There’s plenty of other smaller things as well. E.g. My character most similar to Kaito also has a self-given nickname for essentially the same reasons.

I’ll keep going, though. I’m 50000 words in already and, more importantly, I need this. Plus, it’s helped me make some decisions that I was stuck on the fence on: one related to the above Yayoi Mikawa, and the other the fact that every temptation to name a character Makoto disappeared after I saw Ma-faux-to.

I just hope every reader will be sympathetic for the similarities that are already set in stone.

Thanks for reading. I hope you all enjoyed NDRV3 too!

[chessanator]

Ultimate Mathematician: 40, 43, B

From here.

Mayumi Uehara, the Ultimate Mathematician

40: How sensitive are they to their own flaws?Not really at all? Mayumi’s biggest flaw is that she’s on a very different wavelength to other people, and that’s ultimately because she’s very bad at noticing when she’s going on trains of thought that other people just can’t follow. If and when she does lose people, she’d much rather carry on without them; she rarely ever notices the option of re-evaluating her approach and topics of conversation to make it easier for others to connect with her. 

She’s happier, that way. And she figures that if you understood large cardinal axioms and the generalised continuum hypothesis, you would be happier too.

43: If someone asked them to explain their sexuality, how would they do so? Interesting story, this. You’re probably aware that I don’t really do shipping, with my one foray having been disastrously rebuffed by the plot twists in ZTD. So I was surprised, as I started to write my fic, when it became clear that one of the other OCs (Arata Nakayama, the Ultimate Archaeologist) had developed a massive massive crush on Mayumi. And, on reflection, I think she’d reciprocate; in a perfect world they would end up together (Warning: I do not write perfect worlds).

I guess that Mayumi could be described as ‘straight by default’. Which is to say, she probably wouldn’t bring up her sexuality unprompted, and while you could work out that she was straight from her preferences and actions it wouldn’t have been a large part of her life.

Up until she met Arata.Why she likes him? He’s hardly unattractive physically, though the effect of that would probably be entirely subconscious and Mayumi would have difficulty explaining it. I don’t doubt that she appreciates the fact that he treats her a lot better than he does other people. And he’s also the type of person whose willing to put the effort in to try and understand her flights of fancy.It’s quite likely that after that, Mayumi would explain both her sense of physical attraction and ideal personality with reference to Arata.

B: What inspired you to create them?I couldn’t create a class at Hope’s Peak without an Ultimate Mathematician, could I?

Mayumi’s probably the best person to ask this question about, really. For anyone else, I’d have to dance around the fact that I created them for a particular part of the mutual killing game. Mayumi Uehara, on the other hand, and despite being different from me in every way but being a mathematician and not liking coffee, is unabashedly a complete self-insert. She’s who I’d want to be without inhibitions and without self-doubt.

Thanks for asking!

[chessanator]

7, 8, 16

For this meme, I believe?

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Tricky one. There’s a bunch of descriptions of Truth bullets from TUoHS that I can’t describe without spoiling, but other than that… I figure all my high tension moments will be dialogue for various reasons, not least because I can’t think of a good prose scene sans-dialogue.

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Two options here. The first is a case where I was able to overcome my usual difficulties with low-tension parts of the interest curve: (From Empty Virtue - Aiice Route 12)

‘The Nonary Game was over, but Phi found herself optimistic. Of all the groups of people who could leave, this was one of the best. She was sure that Clover would do her best to rescue the five players trapped behind her. At the very least, Clover would be drawn back by Alice’s memory.Phi surveyed the faces of the remaining players for their reactions. Dio had retreated to the corner and was sulking, glaring out into the warehouse with pure hatred. Sigma was more subdued. He merely looked down at the letter that Quark had given him and wandered off to the lounge to read it. Phi didn’t follow him: what had happened between Sigma, Tenmyouji and Quark should stay between them, just as Phi had kept Clover’s secrets to the very end. Instead Phi approached K and Luna.“I’m sorry, K,” Luna said meekly, “I was there in the Ambidex Room when she chose ‘Betray’, but… I couldn’t bring myself to stop her. She was so… intense. But if I’d been more firm, if I’d stopped her, you could have left as well.”K lifted his hand and used it to mime a polite laugh, defusing the tension. “Do not worry. I do not hold anything against either of you. After I surprised Clover in her private moment, it is only natural that she would mistrust me.” Then K saw Phi approaching. “Ah, Phi! You were the last to speak to Clover both before the Ambidex Game and before she left, were you not? Did she say…? I don’t quite know how to ask.”“Then I don’t quite know how to answer,” Phi replied.K chuckled for real this time. “Fair enough. What did you intend to do now? Despite the end of the Nonary Game, I still believe it will be worthwhile to continue exploring the facility. There must be plenty of secrets here left to find, and it would be to our advantage if we have uncovered them by the time the rescuers sent by Clover, Tenmyouji and Quark reach us. Besides, I still want to restore my missing memories. Throughout the game, I kept getting… hints, you might say, that I was on the cusp of recovering from amnesia. Alas. I hope that searching the rooms unlocked in the third round might jog my memories.”Luna agreed. “I think I’ll search as well. I want to have a look around the Director’s office and see what it was that had Tenmyouji so spooked when he returned. Um, if that’s okay with you, K?”“Of course. I shall search security instead, then.”Having decided on a course of action, K and Luna left.

It was very comfortable to write this part and I was able to get some good K character moments despite the low tension of the plot.

I think I’ve brought it up here before, especially since I can’t really focus on any later events without spoiling, but this set-piece from The Ultimatum of Haruhi Suzumiya is about the only time I’ve managed a built-up comedy:

“Hey, Kyon! Get down here!” Haruhi called out, capriciously ending my time with Asahina. Once we’d walked down the steps to join her, Koizumi and Nagato, Haruhi waved a folded up piece of paper in front of my face. “Step one: someone has to hold the map. Kyon, that’s your job.”“Wait… when did we get a map?” I asked.Haruhi sighed. “It was right here. I picked it up before you woke up.”I grabbed the paper and unfolded it. It was definitely a map, and the title at the top said it was for the third floor of a south building. Before I could look at it in more detail, though, Haruhi gave another command.“Step two: we have to take notes of everything we see. If we miss any one clue, then Murphy says that clue would have been the clue to solving this mystery.” Haruhi twirled a pen between her fingers for a few seconds. Then she thrust it towards my chest. “Kyon. That’s your job.”Wasn’t I already in charge of step one? Also, who’s Murphy?“You’ve never heard of Murphy’s law? Anyway, you can’t write down notes with a pen unless you’ve got paper, duh. And the only piece of paper we’ve got is that map. That’s why the person holding the map has to be the one taking notes!”That at least made some sense.“Finally, step three. We have to bust down that door and get out of here!” Haruhi spun around and pointed straight at that door, hidden in the shadow to the right of the screen. She beamed confidently. “Kyon. That’s your job.”“Wha-?”So that’s how I found myself ramming my left shoulder into an obstinately locked metal door, tucking a folded up map and pen under my right armpit in a pretty-much-useless attempt to keep the map from getting any more tattered, while Haruhi Suzumiya stood to one side twirling her finger like a conductor’s baton but completely out of time with what I was actually doing.As I took yet another step back, Koizumi tapped me on the shoulder. “You’re looking rather exhausted. Do you need some help?”I very much wanted to decline, but my aching shoulder made it very clear that this door was too tough for me alone. We lined up back-to-back and charged once again. This time, it burst open, and Koizumi and I tumbled into the corridor on the other side.

16. If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

No. Screw that bullshit. I had one non-canonical-ship once in my life and it was not only completely ignored it but instead immediately rendered untenable as quickly as I came upon it. With the typical trends of fandom shipping, I do not in any way expect to coincide with anyone else. So it doesn’t really matter.

in the even that some some supernatural force comes down to force me to choose, I’d at least like to retain the options for my own OCs. One of mine has a pretty-much decisive crush on another - and later events work out just so that typical tumblr shipping will inevitably pair both of them with characters they can’t stand - so if this option was in real life I’d choose to support them.

Thanks for the ask, Anon!