Chapter Five Part 8 Up! (March 2nd) · 1:46am Mar 2nd, 2021
Early post because of sleep schedule issues. Cursed renovations… next post on Thursday at midnight GMT- 8 per normal.
Part 8 is up! Which means the questions have been answered. The trial is solved. The truth is revealed!
Who is the blackened? Well you’d better go read the part to find out before you read more of this blog entry, because I’ve got a lot to say.
So, as you’ve seen, it is Trixie! That’s right, our lovely guest protagonist is in fact the culprit.
I’ve said a lot about this already in the author’s notes. To build on that further: I wanted to honor the trope of the Chapter Five culprit being someone close to the protagonist. I also wanted to honor Chapter Five being a ridiculous confusing mess, and do my own take on “who’s the victim who’s still alive” like V3 did, albeit with a big variation on the execution. Naturally, after I planned this all out but well before it would’ve posted, witegrlninja proceeded to do something similar in vP with a fake out death for the main protagonist, meaning we both took similar approaches, albeit with wildly different results. 
Trixie being the culprit was something I feared would be too obvious when going by standard DR tropes and literary tropes in general. I needed her to perform the crime in a way that made it look like it was impossible for her to do it, while still bringing in foreshadowing. As you’ve all probably noticed by now I like to favor seemingly odd, inconsequential hints in the first part of each Chapter that end up playing out to be huge later on, as I did with Flash’s notebook borrowing in Chapter Four, and again here with Trixie’s favor. So to accomplish my goal of making it look like it was impossible for her to perform the crime, I needed to do three things.
1. I needed the murder to be spread out over several areas, with the body ending up in three different distinct places.
2. I needed to give Trixie a way to overwhelm Adagio so Adagio didn’t have a chance to fight back, while presenting the scene in a way that didn’t make that obvious.
3. I needed to emphasize Trixie’s infirmity and her being locked away, while still providing clues that she might be lying to herself.
Again this is why I deliberately had her acknowledge her skill with self-deception in the part just before she took over as protagonist. This was intended as a clue that her narration in the following part could not be trusted. I tried to make that extra clear by altering, just a little, the way the other characters acted, to give the impression she wasn’t being the most reliable narrator. Looking back I think I didn’t manage that as well as I thought I had, since I focused primarily on Rarity… who is so known for being melodramatic and over exaggerated that it probably wasn’t noticed at all by anyone.
But yes, she was lying to herself over how crippled she really was. She’d become much more deft with her crutches than she let on, allowing her to do a lot more than one might think she was capable of at first. She was still slow, most definitely, but she could get things done. Especially with the body. As she says in the closing argument, she rigged up the blanket like a dog sled, dragging it and Adagio’s body behind her. She had plenty of time, and was still working on finishing up as late as five AM--this is why the Monoponi file lists 2:00 AM to 5:00 AM for the time of Adagio’s death, because it’s the time frame Trixie spent working on her crime.
Using a variety of props like an improv flashbang is an idea I have to credit to my husband. He suggested the idea of bedazzling Adagio’s senses, which was a fantastic idea. Just one of the things Trixie deployed would’ve been annoying, but sight, smell, sound, and touch all at once? It wouldn’t have lasted too long, but all Trixie needed was a moment. She was waiting just inside the main church with the rock and beaned Adagio the instant the siren was overwhelmed, then quickly stabbed her.
In a way, Adagio suffered the quickest, easiest death of everyone who died aboard the ship, save for perhaps Fluttershy, and even Fluttershy suffered massive amounts of fear before she was torn to pieces by the guns. Adagio, by comparison, had no idea she was about to die until it all happened, so fast she couldn’t react. It was nice and clean, a stark contrast to the suffering Trixie inflicted upon Pinkie Pie. This was both because she had to do it this way to have a chance of killing Adagio, but also to help show how Trixie was doing this for selfless reasons, to protect everyone else, rather than the entirely selfish and self-serving reason she killed the first time.
Incidentally, Pinkie being referenced repeatedly was intended as another oblique hint that Trixie was the culprit, because she killed Pinkie. Both of them have similar levels of creativity, in similar directions. One could even say Pinkie inspired Trixie, in a way.
Had I gone the direction of killing Sunset off, Trixie would’ve likely admitted her guilt right after Rarity asked her if she had any idea who was responsible. At that point there would’ve been little else to figure out, and Trixie was that close to giving in entirely. It would’ve left things far more melancholy, to say the least.
I feel I made this mystery fairer than the last one, but I will admit it was frustrating trying to figure out a way to hint towards Monoponi’s involvement that didn’t give things away. His involvement in telling Trixie she can’t say a word to the others, in all but ordering her to kill Adagio if she wants to have a chance of Sunset surviving was intended as him trying to ensure Sunset died. He didn’t expect Trixie to succeed in killing Adagio to begin with, let alone for Sunset to escape.
I suppose if you look at it that way, this case did feature a “game breaking” aspect after all, in the sense of Monoponi trying to accomplish something and completely failing at it. Still not the same thing as trying to deliberately break the structure of the game, or have Sunset explore some locked off area of the ship to get control over it or something like that, but I guess it technically counts?
So why go this route to begin with? Well apart from the dynamic issues I’ve mentioned before… I also wanted to write a protagonist is the culprit, because that’s fun, and I also wanted to write one where the culprit actually won. This has been a running theme of mine in past attempts I’ve made at planning killing games--there were such ones I made but never got past the planning stages--is having this kind of twist, the culprit winning. Usually that would involve everyone else dying, but this case presented me with the unique opportunity to turn that on its head, and have the culprit win by saving everyone else. By having them sacrifice to save the rest. And by mixing it with the protagonist being the one responsible, it helped me achieve two things at once.
I did, briefly, consider having this actually be Sunset. Had I chosen to make Sunset the culprit, Trixie would’ve taken over as permanent protagonist for the rest of the story. But I decided against this, mostly for the same reasons I decided against killing Sunset off as a victim. (And for those wondering, no, I don’t have an idea what her execution would’ve involved. It was never a serious enough consideration to warrant that.)
Hopefully this doesn’t feel cheap. Like I said back at the start of Chapter Five posting, I’m very proud of this chapter. In terms of standard Danganronpa fare, it’s my favorite of the entire story, both with the mystery I wrote, the choice of culprit, the reason for the culprit, and the way in which it all developed. The one fly in the ointment is poor Adagio coming across as, well… the cartoon villain that she is, as JCarp put it, but I’ve gone over many times why I felt that was justified.
So next time we will wrap up Chapter Five, then onto the Interlude, followed by Chapter Six itself. We’re close to the end friends, but we’ve got a long way to travel yet.
To briefly touch upon another topic: that silly one shot I did, “Twilight Takes A DNA Test” seems to have started a trend, as there is not one but two unofficial sequels to it by separate individuals. I’ve already gone ahead and notated this on the story description itself, but for anyone reading this blog post who decides they want to write a sequel to DNA Test, you have my permission. Just send me a link when it’s posted so I can read it. 
The flashbang was a great idea. It really plays well with Trixie’s character because, you know... she’s got tricks up her sleeve.
I have nothing to say other than this chapter was just about perfect! I'm glad you're proud of your work!
5464996
Yup, it's true!
5464998
Thank you.
5465021
You're welcome!