I wrote a non-pony thing · 5:13am Aug 22nd, 2016
Killing Gamer, 12k words
Admittedly, it has a number of elements you might expect from me--villainesses, darker themes, lesbianism, careful adherence to the possible edges of canonicity, constant dialogue and inner angst without the slightest thought given to establishing locations--but it has no ponies in it. It's a Dangan Ronpa story. And DR is a very story-heavy franchise, meaning that even though this story is set in the prequel days of DR3 it still gives away plot points and twists of DR1, DR2, and arguably even DR0 (the series numbering is kinda weird).
As such I would not recommend this fic to anyone not already familiar with the series--I mention it here only because it's been ten months since Magic on the Rocks, and it's nice to know that I still can write things. Whether I'll be able to translate this renewed ability into anything pony-related remains to be seen--I'll admit I've been paying very little attention to the fandom lately, though I have been keeping up with the episodes--but it seems at least more possible than it did a few days ago. :) I'm alive!
yaaay you're alive! this is the best news.
What do I need to know about Dangan Ronpa to read that? I've read, uh, the first two games, but the series kind of... got weird after that and I don't know what (if any) plot progression happened after that point and what was just rereleases and retellings of those.
4164321 If you've read DR1 and DR2 you should be fine: you know the context and the characters and the conceit and there are no major plot twists that will get spoiled. The story takes place generally around the time of the Tragedy of Hope's Peak, which was more or less explained toward the end of DR2... DR0 provides a couple more details on that, which this story runs with, but even in DR0 the whole thing is little more than a background event. You'll lose a little bit of context from not watching DR3, but that stuff does get quickly summarized toward the start of this story. I wouldn't worry about it.
(Going into a bit more detail... there are a handful of side stories I haven't actually read (Togami, Kirigiri, Hagakure, IF) that are probably ultimately unimportant. DR: Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is a separate game with its own story, albeit a weird one, but it barely comes up in this fic at all. DR0 is a pair of novels that take place before DR1 (as one might imagine) and do a little bit of work for setting up the first game's plot but not really in an essential way; this fic references DR0 slightly but it's not required reading by any means. The really big one is DR3, which is an anime series instead of a game... but it's extra confusing because it's actually two anime series being broadcast simultaneously, one taking place before DR1 (the Despair arc) and the other after DR2 (the Future arc). So far, Despair is mostly just showing literally everything that happened before DR1 started (possibly including DR0, we don't really know yet), and there hasn't been any real plot twist yet, which is odd considering, y'know, it's Danganronpa. This story is kind of attempting to supply a twist just in case.)
(Or two twists, but the other is more subtle and I'm not sure how noticeable it is without the DR3 background.)
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Well, it got me to watch nine episodes of DR3
lastmonday night, (and probably the remaining threetonighttonight), so that's probably an accomplishment? It also got me to be really kind of disappointed in Despair Arc, which is definitely an accomplishment.That half of the series, uh. Seems really unfocused and pointless, almost. It's sort of just jumping around, just trying to checklist off the stuff that needed to be established for the Killing Game parts of the series. Which means that all that really matters is the Future-side character stuff, since DR1 and DR2 generally did a good enough job for themselves. And then even the slice of life-y bits are pretty mediocre, because Class 77-b is just way too large when they're not being killed off. The highlight of the series so far has just been seeing Mukuro and Junko interact, I think. Well, that and the really great ED theme.
Future Arc seems pretty good, at least, if really dumb.
Anyway, trying to comment on the actual story:
I really really liked it, as should be expected! You are really good at writing and I wish I got the opportunity to read it more often. Nanami's inner thoughts were wonderful – she was already usually the best character in SDR2, and you well captured the really dumb kind of way of writing a character who thinks about everything in terms of games. Junko was also pretty great, and I wish her canon incarnation was even a quarter as good at comphrehending the concept of despair, instead of just kind of causing chaos for the sake of having a villain.
The final twist is kind of... really fantastic, considering Nanami's role / absence from SDR2, and I'm not sure if I'm more excited at the idea that that is where Zetsubou-hen is leading, or that you're that much a better writer than Chunsoft. I'm not sure I caught what the more subtle twist – I can't tell if it's just an implication I missed, or that not having watched DR3 beforehand it was just something that I didn't realize was a twist at all.
Something that kind of sticks out to me, though, is how much meeting Izuru would even affect anyone aside from Nanami. She was the only one who had actually been friends with Hinata – I'm not even sure the rest of the class had even met him? I mean, still, meeting the result of the (really dumb) human experimentation that Hope's Peak has been doing and learning all that would be distressing in general, but it seems like a bit much for Junko to have invested into that. But also she's Junko so it's not like you actually have to put any consideration or explanation into her motives, right?
Anyways, thank you for writing, really really hope to see more from you sometime!
(write twigate)
4169972 Many thanks, as ever. :)
So I do sort of share your disappointment in Despair Arc so far, though I'm still holding out hope (lolhope) it'll improve itself. There are probably people who were more tapped into the initial marketing than I was, but the initial impression I got of Despair Arc would be that it would be about Junko converting the DR2 kids to despair. And, like, nothing else? The first episode more or less supported that idea, but then it started going in a bunch of other directions. And also we got a Chiaki. And right now nobody knows why there's a Chiaki, in-universe or out. The general assumption is that she's going to get killed by Izuru and it'll be sad, and my reaction to that is... why? What does she add to the story by being killed in such a way? Why does she get so much focus? This isn't me not wanting my waifu to die, this is me genuinely confused what the story is doing. So I wrote Killing Gamer as one possible answer to that, but really I find the situation so weird right now I've honestly convinced myself that DR3 must be building up to something with her.
(I hope so, anyway. The franchise has suffered from characters going nowhere for weird reasons before... Akane's survival in DR2 made a lot more sense to me when it was suggested she was originally going to be the villain, and Hiro's survival in DR1 is kind of justified by his having died in the demo version.)
And I guess that's my view on Despair Arc as a whole right now? There's still time for it to find some sort of payoff somewhere, I just don't know where that might be. I don't even care much about Mahiru and I'm still annoyed by how little time was spent on her reaction to Sato's death. Somehow the show needs to find a focus.
Oh, if you're watching DR3 but didn't play Another Episode Ultra Despair Girls you may eventually get confused by the appearance of someone with green hair! She's, well, she's Satan. That's really all there is to say on the matter.
Regarding the story, I did not intend to suggest that Junko showed Izuru to everyone--so that's interesting, I'll have to look at the wording later and see if I can clear it up a bit more. Everyone has their own super-personalized despair tracks. Although I'm not sure I'm on board with your criticisms of canon Junko's motives, because I thought she was pretty consistently despair-focused in DR1, though later developments with her (DR2, DR3, DR0) tie into my more general discomfort with DR's expanded backstory for reasons other than DR3's "checklist" feeling...
As for the subtler twist, you're not really supposed to see it, because it's not what the story is about. The reader's focus should be on Chiaki. But basically there's a reason the person Chiaki spends the whole story talking to is never named, while the only person she should be taking advice from never seems to make an appearance.
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Yeah, that sounds... really dumb and like it wouldn't accomplish anything. Which... isn't out of expectation with this series, sometimes, but I feel like there has to be more to it than that. Given the latest episode of Future and the structure of the serieses, she has to be orchestrator of the final game if they're not using your plan.
Speaking of, I really hope that Ruruka finally does anything interesting to make up for the three entire characters who feel like they could have been entirely removed from the show, and yet have had almost four entire episodes of runtime devoted to them. I mean, Izayoi's dead now, so can there really be like any purpose to his character aside from "do cool anime knife things"? (which were admittedly pretty cool)
Oh, neat. Is there an actual theory supporting this or anything? I was sort of expecting... anything to come out of her, given she had the Owari to contrast Hinata's Hajime.
Yeah, it really bothered me how... that got completely forgotten by the next episode. Except also kind of not at the same time, because that incident was the entire reason Nagito did everything in episode 4? Maybe?
And then don't get me started on the six month timeskip where literally nothing interesting happened or changed (besides Saionji's build).
How long was Yukizome even their homeroom teacher before that happened, like three weeks??
I did read a brief summary, but the show eventually covered it. Kind of badly. Jeez, Episode 7. Why.
Yeah, I thought she worked really well as a final antagonist to DR1, as the girl who set up a mass killing game out of fanaticism and sadism, and was a pretty fun character. When, uh... they tried to run that forward into 'effectively destroyed the entire world singlehandedly and is the root of absolutely all evil' in the rest of the series, she... kind of started to suffer for it.
oh. maybe, i, um. :twilightshiftleft: the exact opposite of missed this.
Like, I thought I had just missed how obvious the situation was because of not having watched DR3, and therefore getting a completely and totally wrong idea of who Chisa was as a character. <_< I mean, the pairing was in the tags from the start, it should have totally been obvious what was going on.
But yes, I should have known better than to underestimate you and think that any impression I got from your wordcraft was anything but completely intentional.
4170593 Dumping spoiler tags because there's really no way to talk about DR without being spoilery; even TvTropes doesn't make an effort there. Though I will warn that by the time I am writing this I have watched today's Despair episode.
Oh, hah, that works too! :D Perhaps I leaned a little heavily on the references to her as a teacher after all. Some of the additional context you may have been missing if you're new to DR3 is that there are a surprising number of parallels between Chisa and Junko in their appearances and poses and word choices and even occasionally outfits, enough that they're probably deliberate, but it's not clear yet whether that's just an ironic contrast or whether there's something actually afoot. Blindly trusting a POV character hasn't been a good idea since Hajime.
I mean maybe? She has to be something, but there's also the possibility that the good guys could have a plot twist on their side for once, I guess? Right now the Despair arc doesn't seem to want to portray Izuru as especially evil--he's still figuring out his place in the world--which is good news for his Future arc self. If there's anyone who could try to counteract what Junko's trying to do with him in Despair right now, it's Chiaki, and maybe she could do that just by talking with him instead of getting killed? Idk. There may be some more possibilities there. Monaca could have a gamegirl for a non-sinister reason!
For one thing, I'm still assuming the Future arc is going to end on a positive note, like DR1 and DR2 before it, and it might be kind of weird if the Despair arc ended at around the same time with absolutely everything terrible. Since they're running in parallel, maybe we're going to see the Despair arc set something up for the Future arc to use at the last minute.
Maybe.
Meh. They just don't care about her. She doesn't get a single line for her grief, she's lost all her DR2 hangups about men, she's reduced to being a totally ordinary human being who's there to react to other people's weirdness. Obviously all the DR2 cast is a bit cramped for screentime in this sprawling arc but I barely recognize her.
Again trying for a more optimistic reaction here... I sympathize a lot with episode 7, if I'm reading it correctly. It was a tricky writing situation. They're trying to end the DR series/continuity with DR3, but they had this massive loose end in the form of
pickle satanMonaca. They didn't want her to be the ultimate villain of DR3, but she did have to show up, so she got to provide a healthy dose of red herrings for a while and then was removed from the table (along with the rest of the AE cast) so the rest of the show could focus on the final conflicts. I think that's pretty sensible. Part of imitating Junko means that you get bored with your own personalities and plans, after all, and that's just what she did.I have no idea what's going on with them! It's not the first time in DR that characters have formed groups larger than two--witness the drama of Mahiru, Hiyoko, Fuyuhiko, and Peko, or even Taka and Mondo and Chihiro--but the structure of DR3:Future is a lot different than a series of independent murder trials, so it feels weirder to have them all but separate from every other character. I really can't tell where their/her plotline is going.
But Ruruka's cute so I'll forgive her for now.I don't have a link to any comprehensive summary, so I'm just going on vague impressions here, but some of it is her last name yeah. I think she may have appeared in early marketing materials more than one might assume she would? This concept art makes her look more evil and she's even wearing the chained collar that later showed up in AE:UDG on Nagito. I don't speak or read Japanese, but I've seen her beta self referred to as the "ultimate criminal" and/or the "ultimate sinner" (which I guess goes well with certain aspects of her personality, gluttony and sloth and stuff). So I don't know if anything's been confirmed at all, but there seems to be a certain amount swirling around her suggesting she used to be a much bigger deal than she turned out to be.
Or maybe Chiaki does go evil and orchestrate the future arc and Izuru is the one to talk her out of it. I dunno.
(I have spent the last six months talking Danganronpa with a friend on Skype and ever since the DR3 cast list was updated to include her a good deal of that has revolved around throwing out varyingly implausible ideas for how and why Chiaki exists.)