#i was going to use a more serious artstyle and then i went nah

[technically-human]

Oh, Ivo. You are no Maria.

[danganronpa96]

So uhhhhh what Inspired you to do DR69 in the first place? Crossover Fangans are quite frequent as of now ( such as Cartoons In Danganronpa, totally not promoting one of my current favourite on going Fangans (; ) but nah on a serious note, just really curious to the upbringing of 69 and how the whole thought process with it's conception went yknow?

Ah yes, my origin story (or well the fic’s at least lol)

I did mention this in another post, but one day while I was scrolling through danganronpa fics (terrible decision, I know) I stumbled across a fic called DR9: Despair’s Counterattack (by PurpleDrank). Now, just by looking at the absurd but hilarious cast list, I was infatuated with the idea of placing random characters into a killing game. I knew of fangans that existed such as SDRA2, but I hadn’t really been exposed to the idea of crossover killing games until that fic.

I don’t think anyone knows this, but since I was young, I was obsessed with crossovers. And I mean obsessed. Not like those 2 TV shows having a crossover special kind of interest, no, like slapping characters from separate medias I enjoyed and just thinking about them doing stuff together. From the most trauma-torn grunge middle-aged man to a cartoon horse to a random anime girl just hanging out because… why not? It’s free, and no one can stop you.

And believe it or not, that hasn’t changed.

For fun, I was just like, “lol, what if I wrote down my own cast of characters that might be funny to see interact because it’s not like anyone’s gonna read it anyway.” Once I assembled the cast, it spiralled from there. Oh, who would be the protagonist? How would these characters look in my current artstyle? What would the first floor of the school look like? At that point I decided to abandon my current fixation on a set of old OCs and focus on creating this fic. Unlike DR9, I wanted to actually draw the images myself, seeing as how photo editing could only go so far with the intro cards and not for more dynamic CGs (still respect the use of it though cuz it does make things more visually engaging imo).

I remember trying to figure out how to produce my own murder cases. I was very interested to try and use ideas related to the characters involved in the case, which is why for the first case, the BDA image is a reference to a gag from spongebob, and the method of murder is directly tied to the murderer’s iconic ability in his game. I also remember drawing small diagrams and jotting down the truth bullets that could expand the case such as accounts in a notebook I had. This process has actually been used a bit for DR96 too — just using different mediums to help plan can really refresh your mind if you’re having trouble figuring things out.

I didn’t think the fic would get as popular as it did. Back then, I’m certain crossover fangans were not a huge thing, and definitely not as saturated as they are now. It was fun having a small following, but as things grew, it definitely was exhilarating as it was intimidating. But I don’t regret going through with it at all, as I’ve seen first hand how it’s inspired many, allowed people to connect and form friendships and even open people up to other medias.

So all in all, I’m just a big crossover fan and danganronpa is a strangely good medium for it, and makes for a pretty gruesome one at that lol