#HOWEVER. i've become very emotionally attached to three of these and they're likely to be the next fics i post (likely in the new year)

[wymgreenteam]

wip wtuesday

as the worst season of academia befalls us (finals) and i have to hide in my cave (the studio) for the next couple weeks in order to make it through, here's a little wip update :) these are short excerpts from the five fics currently filed under my "working" folder, in no particular order:

second hand heart — girldad nico au (or: recently put on ltir captain of the new jersey devils jack hughes accidentally gets roped into babysitting au)

hallmark au — currently untitled holiday vacation resort au where jack is the owner of this cute little cabin getaway and nico's an exec who's in desperate need of some r&r... this is basically just a quest to see how many hallmark tropes i can smush into one fic (answer? a lot.)

time loop au — currently untitled twist on a time loop au... :)

certain as the sun — beauty and the beast/swan lake fusion au... fantasy and magic and stuck in close quarters with rising tensions (and stakes)! oh my!

natural causes — you know how jack and nico both went on ir at the same time for a bit? yeah. i have nothing else to say for myself here.

[modgirlyreposts-revamped]

Kamiko and Minori are kind of this fangan's naegiri or maybe kuzuhina the way Rian and Alice are its saimatsu, in terms of personalities (Kamiko is cold, calculating and mean, Minori is determined and hardworking but not naively positive, Rian is uncertain of himself, though he's more emotional than Shuichi, and Alice, while more emotionally distant than Kaede, is kind and positive)

Kamiko is basically the cold, shielded person I've told you about before, but I don't think I've explained Minori, so a quick rundown: she has a very "driven by sheer force of will" personality. She's brave, outgoing and analytical, but also compassionate and always willing to help. She basically felt as though everyone around her was just letting things go to shit without closure or justice, so she got her start as a detective by solving a missing person case in her area, successfully proving the victim had been kidnapped by his abusive girlfriend but may have still been alive, and giving the police her findings saved the boy. Minori was renowned as a massive hero, especially for the way she promised the boy he didn't owe her anything for saving him but that she couldn't stand the refusal to "dwell on the bad" like that wasn't almost all there was. She isn't an optimist, really, but she wants to believe she can fix things, and she fears being helpless more than anything, even death.

Minori's hardworking personality endears her to Kamiko, who challenges her to push herself harder as Minori does to her. They develop a mutually beneficial relationship that grows into infatuation, as Minori is either really bad at hiding her attraction to Kamiko or just doesn't care (she's bad at it.) Kamiko, however, feels like she can't grow attached to someone else, because focusing on anything but her academic talent will cause her to stumble and fall and lose everything. Minori thinks if anything, anything at all, she deserves to have the one normal teenage experience of falling in love, which kind of drives a rift in their relationship that comes through in Minori's frustration with those around her, as after chapter 2 she has a completely justified meltdown, screaming at everyone that they're all idiots dooming themselves to their own deaths with their selfishness, which is especially directed at Kamiko and Heiran. With a proper understanding of Minori's character, that whole sequence becomes really upsetting. Especially with the notion that the stress of it all literally makes her physically ill as she's later found in one of the bathrooms throwing up. It's literally so much, she puts herself through so fucking much trying to save everyone else.

The real tragedy is, though, after chapter 2, she realizes how deep this whole thing runs. It makes it apparent that she is not going to find the mastermind and make it out alive, and she has to tread carefully to make sure the others don't die because of her. She withdraws and is unsure, just trying to get from day to day without telling anyone she's on the verge of giving up. The fear of giving up is her only driving force, and she wants to make sure she does something, anything- it's the only reason she can survive. If she ever stopped moving, if she ever stopped trying, she may as well die- and she probably would. It would be a slow and painful death on so many levels, so she keeps pressing forward, keeps searching, keeps fighting, keeps watching over everyone. She's quick to forgive Kamiko after she's apologized to Masumi for her behavior, not wanting to hold grudges. She doesn't want to be complicit in anything bad happening to Kamiko because she didn't care enough. She has to help everyone, she tells herself. She has to save them. Is she supposed to just look away from the bad? She fucking can't. She has to save them.

The last three nights before her death, she sleeps with Kamiko. Not in a suggestive sense, in a literal one. It happens simply- Minori knocks on her door gently just before nighttime, and despite Kamiko's hesitation to attachment, she agrees to let Minori share a room with her. One night, then the next, then the next, and then on the fourth she's gone. They find her floating in a water heater.

Kamiko burns her hands trying to fish her corpse out of the 130 degree water. She barely manages to grab her coat, but her clothes and hair are so waterlogged she can barely lift her at all, and can't get her out of the water. She only tries once before the pain is too much to bear. She's devastated, but can't show it. She refuses to show it. She can't give up. She can't stop moving. She can't stumble and fall now. She's already lost Minori, she can't risk figuring out what else she could possible have left to lose.

The nighttime announcement has gone off. They aren't allowed to investigate. Kamiko is a panicked mess, trying to figure out how to fix it. Every instinct in her body is telling her to retreat.

When she gives in to it, Rian walks her to her dorm. She loved Minori, she loved her so fucking much, but it wasn't enough. Minori's determination wasn't enough, Kamiko's love wasn't enough, it wasn't enough. It devastates Kamiko. All she fucking wants is to get Minori back.

Even years later in the sequel, Kamiko is suspected by other characters of being the mastermind looking to avenge Minori's death at the hands of everyone who failed to save her, leading to a scene that has lowkey crushed me to write where Kamiko, still emotionally repressed and just trying to move forward and live a better life, breaks down being reminded of it all, and admits she would have done anything she could to save her. Looking back on it, she wishes with everything in her that she'd just let her hands burn to useless wrecks to get Minori's corpse out of the water heater, or gone with her when she left early in the morning to help her, or just grabbed her by the arm and asked her to stay, but nothing, nothing will ever be enough, nothing will bring her back- Kamiko failed her, and nothing she could do would or could ever avenge her because Minori's death was her failure. She sees it as a failure, and she has held it against herself from the moment they opened the lid of that tank and found her body inside.

The devastation it causes her literally makes her contemplate suicide out of sheer grief. When Rian goes after Alice, she sees for a moment in the heat waves and the terror in Rian's eyes the night they found Minori dead. She sees herself in Rian's desperation, and sees Minori in the burning heat he runs back into to save Alice. It's why she stays. She can't run anymore. She can't evade and just try to survive. She has to be there. She'll wish for the rest of her life that she could have done that for Minori, her first real love, but she follows what Minori would have done in that moment.

In her future design, she wears a blue jacket similar to the green one Minori always wore. The loss weighs on her constantly. The memory hurts, but it comforts her. She knows she's lucky her hands weren't damaged by that one moment of stupidity she dodged out of- Alice and Rian, bearing possibly permanent burn scars, weren't as fortunate. She will forever wish she did. She doesn't want Minori to just be a memory, not yet. Sometimes it feels like she'll forever be that sixteen year old girl with braided hair, her face burning bright red an avoiding eye contact as Minori laughed, gently clasping Kamiko's hand in her own. Minori was everything to her. She has to move on, but she'll love her forever.

She watches the fire, begging to herself that Rian at least will come out. She can't leave. Her own bare-bones survival has taken backseat. She needs them.

I went from 😀 to 😦 so quickly, since I apparently forgot that this is a fan made Danganronpa-

I relate to Kamiko a lot, so that’s most likely why Minori’s body discovery got me fucked up, since if that happened to someone I loved that much, I would react almost exactly like Kamiko