#obligatory reminder that i do more than just danganronpa headcanons

[mythgirlimagines]

I'm glad that it made you smile! :D Always happy to brighten someone's day. Could I request another HC? A HameFura/Danganronpa Xover, if you are still doing HameFura ones. Bakarina going to Hope's Peak as the Ultimate Farmer if you don't mind.

I still am, dw! I haven't gotten one in so long.

Katarina was aware that her talent was a bit…unusual? Like there weren’t likely to be many other people who had that talent. But that was fine with her; she loved what she did.

She put so much work and effort into being a farmer and tending to her crops, she didn’t care what other people thought about it. She was content with keeping up the hard work.

Usually she’ll show up to class with dirt on her clothes somewhere, even though she has clothes she wears specifically for farming. Even she doesn’t know how the dirt gets there.

Additionally, because she’s always up very early to work, she goes to bed at a decent hour so she can have plenty of sleep. She doesn’t mind that this sometimes means she misses class events.

Working hard on anything feels great, but especially the physical labor that came with being a farmer. Katarina couldn’t imagine any better way for her to spend her life!

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary Extra: Rantaro’s Love Hotel Event

At one point I vaguely mentioned that I might make a post covering Rantaro’s Love Hotel event sometime. Unlike most of these events, Rantaro’s one is in fact very good, to the point that it might actually be my favourite piece of Rantaro content. So if I ever wanted to briefly talk about some of the things that are interesting about Rantaro that aren’t relevant in the main storyline, this is honestly the best way for me to do it.

(And maybe there’s also a not-so-Rantaro-specific reason I want to talk about this, too.)

Obligatory warning: this is side-mode bonus content, but I will be mentioning endgame spoilers; don’t read this if you haven’t finished the main story of the game.

First off, understanding this event requires knowledge of what we learn in Rantaro’s FTEs. So, while I don’t quite want to go out of my way to cover those line-by-line, here’s the gist of them for anyone who doesn’t know.

Rantaro’s family is fairly rich and travels around a lot, and one time while in a foreign country, he lost track of his little sister, who was supposed to be following behind him, and she vanished. Ever since then, he’s been doing everything he can to get her back, travelling all over the place and getting himself into all kinds of dangerous scenarios.

Rantaro feels as though his Ultimate should be something like Ultimate Useless Older Brother for letting this happen to his sister in the first place. But Shuichi concludes after hearing the story that maybe Rantaro’s actually the Ultimate Big Brother. It’s not Rantaro’s fault that he lost her, and he’s been trying so hard since then to get her back, essentially devoting his whole life to it, which sounds like the best kind of big brother there is.

After Shuichi agrees to use his detective skills to help Rantaro find his sister, Rantaro then casually adds that, oh by the way, he’s actually got twelve younger sisters who all went missing in similar ways on separate trips.

…And this is the point at which I go “yep, that backstory’s definitely fictional”. Letting it happen once could have been an accidental lapse of attention, sure. But after that, Rantaro would have been extra determined to protect his remaining sisters and not lose them too, so there’s absolutely no way he would have let it happen again eleven more times. That’s just wanton carelessness, as if Rantaro doesn’t actually give a damn about his sisters’ safety at all, which is very clearly the opposite of the truth about him. This only makes sense if it’s fake memories and never actually happened.

(But man, no wonder he hates himself, since he genuinely believes that he really did somehow just carelessly let that happen to every single one of his sisters like the worst big brother in the world.)

Rantaro’s backstory here doesn’t really have much bearing on his role in the canon plot, since his issues there are an entirely separate story fuelled by the whole Survivor Perk thing. Still, this does somewhat help explain why Rantaro is the type of person he is. He probably already had trouble trusting people and feeling like he deserved to be trusted even without the Survivor Perk handicap making it worse – recall fresh-out-of-season-52 Rantaro telling his future self to “trust no-one”. And yet, despite that, he also has a very strong instinct to look out for others and be protective like the big brother he is, hence trying to end the killing game despite his hesitation to trust anyone. His protective instinct might lean towards girls in particular, since they’d be more likely to remind him of his sisters – he did comment at one point that he was worried Kaede’s proactiveness might get her in trouble with Monokuma. (This is why I headcanon that the two survivors from season 52 were both girls; I just think it’d be fun if part of why Rantaro sacrificed himself for them was that they reminded him a little of his sisters and he wanted to protect them at least where he’d failed before.)

So anyway, Rantaro’s Love Hotel event, aka an event where Shuichi has to play the role of the subject’s “ideal fantasy”, which doesn’t have to mean something romantic, shock horror, because this one is entirely platonic. In it, Shuichi finds himself being treated as a student whom Rantaro is something like a private tutor for.

Rantaro:  “That’s why you’re my favourite student. Good job! Good work, Shuichi!”

Shuichi:  (As he showered me with praise, he lightly tussled my hair with a smile.) […] “R-Rantaro… I’m not a little kid…” (Even if this is his fantasy, it feels weird to be talked to like that.)

Rantaro:  “…‘Rantaro,’ huh?”

(His tone had changed. He pulled his hand away, dejected.)

Rantaro:  “Not that long ago… you were calling me ‘Big Brother.’”

Except it’s clearly more than that. Rantaro has come to think of this student as like a surrogate younger sibling figure, no doubt to fill the painful gap while his sisters are still missing.

It’s unclear, though, whether he actually has a student like this in real life. This could just be his fantasy of wanting to feel like a big brother again – a fantasy constrained by the unchangeable reality that his sisters are gone and it’s impossible for them to just magically be there, so his subconscious went for the most plausible alternative instead.

Rantaro:  “Haha… I guess I made you hate me… didn’t I, Shuichi?”

Apparently Rantaro is all too liable to assume that any “younger sibling” of his would obviously turn to hating him at the slightest provocation. (His sisters must hate him for letting them fall into whatever awful situation they’re in right now, right? They’re definitely blaming it all on him.)

The reason for “Shuichi” supposedly hating Rantaro here is that Rantaro recently announced he’d be leaving on a trip soon – presumably another expedition to try and find his sisters – and can’t even say why.

(Shuichi doesn’t figure out that this is about his sisters, which I guess is because it’s possible to get this event without having done Rantaro’s FTEs in which Shuichi learns about that.)

Rantaro:  “I know I’m being selfish, Shuichi. I’m sorry, but I want to shelter you from danger as much as I can…”

Shuichi:  “What? Danger…?”

Rantaro:  “Haha, whoops, guess I shouldn’t have said that… Forget it.”

Shuichi:  “No, Rantaro, I won’t. Not with that look on your face…”

Rantaro:  “Some teacher I am, huh? Making you worry about me…”

Obviously it’s terrible of Rantaro as a teacher (as a big brother) to make Shuichi worry about him. That’s not how things are supposed to go in this arrangement at all, so Shuichi should definitely just forget all about it and stop worrying.

(yes hello guess who this is beginning to remind me of, are you maybe starting to see that other reason I wanted to cover this event)

Rantaro:  “But you don’t have to worry about a thing. Nothing will ever hurt you. I will protect you. I promise. No one precious to me will ever get hurt again.”

There is absolutely no way someone this fiercely protective would ever have let each of his precious little sisters disappear on him twelve times over. No way. It’s so cruel that Rantaro’s fake memories are making him believe he must secretly be the kind of callously careless person who would let it happen. He’s bound to feel like these assurances otherwise are really just empty words that he’ll always end up betraying when it matters, because he would have promised the same thing to eleven of his sisters, more and more fervently each time, and look what happened anyway.

Shuichi:  “W-Wait, Rantaro!” (I don’t really understand, but here goes…) “That… That hurts me, Rantaro. Thinking about you carrying this burden all by yourself hurts me.”

Meanwhile, look at Shuichi hating to see someone he cares about carrying a burden all by themselves, and confronting that person with the fact that they’re hurting him by not letting him help. I wonder who else Shuichi might have said this to, hm? If only he’d known.

Shuichi:  “Maybe you see me as just a student, so you don’t think I can protect you… But I don’t *want* to be sheltered and oblivious to everything.”

Rantaro:  “Shuichi…”

And look at how Shuichi doesn’t want this person to be hiding their troubles from him in an attempt to protect him, because he can protect them too. This unbalanced arrangement of strictly one-directional help and support while the other person suffers alone was never what Shuichi signed up for.

(If only they’d realise that they need and deserve to be supported, and that needing it doesn’t mean they can’t still support others themselves.)

Shuichi:  “Rantaro, you’re going to quit being my tutor, right? So I’m not just your student. I’m your *friend*. You can tell me anything. I know I can help you.”

Shuichi’s approach to this is exactly what he does in Kaito’s Harmonious Heart event and I love it. Rantaro’s trying to insist they have this tutor/student (big brother/little brother) relationship that means Rantaro has to hide all his worries and problems and bear all of that by himself to keep Shuichi safe and oblivious and not worried – but no. Shuichi is having none of that nonsense that puts so much extra undue pressure on Rantaro, because they are friends and he wants to help. Just like with Kaito – he sees this as the best, simplest way to get through to his friend and stop them being so goddamn selfless, and it is.

(Or, well, he and Rantaro might not even technically be friends in this Love Hotel event if Shuichi hasn’t done his FTEs. Still, Shuichi is playing this role of someone who views Rantaro as a tutor/big brother/friend, so he’s acting out what he would do if a person he cared about in that way was behaving like this. Sure, Rantaro never even mentioned that they’re specifically friends, but Shuichi extrapolated from the situation that obviously this person would consider Rantaro a friend as well as those other things. Shuichi is good.)

Rantaro:  “Are you sure about this, Shuichi? You’re at the point of no return…

Shuichi:  “I would never want you to face it alone, Rantaro…”

Rantaro:  “You’ve really come into your own. Haha… Alright, I give up. I’ll tell you everything.”

Looks like it worked! Rantaro now has (in his fantasy) not just a surrogate little brother, but a friend and comrade who’s going to help him and be there for him as he searches for his sisters. Which is probably a lot more beneficial for him in the long run than just yet another younger sibling for him to feel like he’s letting down one way or another.

Rantaro:  “Just… until the end of this lesson, can we act like nothing’s changed? The time that I’ve spent as your teacher… has been such a comfort to me.”

I also really like this, because it shows that Shuichi’s response to all this wasn’t Rantaro’s fantasy. Rantaro wanted to just re-experience the feeling of spending time with a younger sibling who’s safe and protected and is never ever going to get hurt or be in danger at all. And Shuichi essentially threw that out and told Rantaro not what he wanted to hear, but what he needed to hear – that he needs to stop being so selfless and let the people who care about him help him for once, because they don’t want him to be suffering alone and he deserves better than that.

This is a really great event because it’s a rare – and really well-done – showcase of Rantaro’s issues from his backstory. They’re some pretty fun issues, so it’s honestly a big shame that they’re basically not relevant at all in the main story and only even come up in bonus bits like this. (Granted, someone had to be the first to die, and the way it was done with Rantaro was probably one of the best ways to make that person still feel fairly narratively relevant and not like a complete throwaway – but it does sadly mean that most of his potential as a character and not as a mysterious plot device had to be squandered.)

But that’s not all; I also really like this event because of Shuichi’s role in it. From what little I gather of how these mostly-stupid Love Hotel scenes go, it probably doesn’t usually even matter that it’s Shuichi in them, because he’s just a placeholder forced to play this role no matter how uncomfortable it makes him and how unlike him it is. But in this one, Shuichi being here does make a difference. Not everyone would have responded to Rantaro’s situation like this, but Shuichi did, because he’s a really good friend who’d never want to let the people he cares about carry their burdens alone.

So not only is this a great event for showcasing Rantaro’s issues, but it’s also great for showing us how good and supportive of a friend Shuichi has the potential to be, even towards people who are stubbornly trying to put themselves in a one-sided protector role that has to carry burdens alone. Shuichi was always exactly the right kind of person to help Kaito with his problems, too – if only he’d known what Kaito was hiding from him in the first place.

(Also, man, if Rantaro had lived longer, he and Kaito could have had some very interesting interactions. I love how many characters in this story it’s possible to draw parallels and contrasts to Kaito with.)

[morethanaprincess-a]

@monsieur-de-paris​ asked:  💓💕 (hope it's not too late?)

I couldn't find a ship meme for my purposes so I made one up!

Send 💓 and I’ll talk about a ship I’m currently writing for Sonia (even if the mun is on hiatus or hasn’t replied to our threads in awhile!).

I thought I might as well start with my favorite Danganronpa ship for Sonia: Sonia/Gundham. While the game and the anime (despite its many, many flaws) gives just a few hints to how well they get on together (trial 4 is still the hardest part of the game for me to get through, and it always will be), I maintain that these two just complement each other so well. Both are strange yet wise in their own ways, with Gundham hardly finding Sonia's rather eccentric interests strange and Sonia, in turn, just entirely fascinated by both him and his animals. She's generally patient and understanding, even though I HC that for the life of her, she cannot believe Gundham would ever possess romantic feelings for her, even though her own less-than-platonic feelings for him run quite deep and usually do so for awhile before she can bring herself to say anything. I don't tend to write her as falling in love quickly, as while she's a kind, loving, and supportive person and friend, giving away her heart is something she's wary of. She has to trust that the person she loves sees her as something other than a princess. But Gundham is the exception to that, and Sonia falls rather hard, rather fast, as much as she is unwilling to admit it until the most opportune moment.

In a non-despair AU setting, I don't really see them as a couple who fights often, or if they do disagree they manage to talk things through rather easily. Both of them are hardworking and are prone to others seeing them only for their talents and their exteriors, as approachable or unapproachable as they may be. And while the rest of the world can't fathom why they're so into the occult, it doesn't matter. As long as they're with one another, experiencing the haunted places of the world and indulging in the dark arts during the rare times they can step away from their talents and jobs, I see them as just the happiest, most loving couple (in...ahem...so many ways. So. Many. Ways.). Additionally, out of all of Sonia's DR canon ships, I see Gundham as being the potential partner that her family ultimately ends up liking the most. Her mother would have a lot of hesitation at first, but he ends up being a good influence on Novoselic, particularly in Skong and Makango preservation, and very supportive of Sonia. Sonia will always fret that she's in the way of Gundham utilizing his talents to the best of his abilities, though, and goes out of her way to make sure that being her partner and part of the Royal Family doesn't become his entire identity. And it's no question that out of any partner, Gundham will have the easiest time with the Makango Catch and Show ceremony. He likely doesn't even have to try to capture a golden makango, they come to him instead. While Sonia, who's been training for this her entire life, takes far longer to catch her own makango. A little embarrassing for her!

But they have their own drama too, definitely in a post-Despair setting. I HC that out of all the Remnants, Sonia and Gundham definitely spread the most Despair, caused the most damage, and likely had the highest kill counts. That's not something you get over easily. And if the other verses I'm writing with Ashi are any indication, Sonia and Gundham are much more likely to bicker and not understand each other at first before slowly warming to each other. But nevertheless, I think no matter the verse, Sonia will fall in love with Gundham at some point. It's inevitable.

Send �� and I’ll talk about a ship I’m interested in writing for Sonia (with the right chemistry, etc). Feel free to send a fandom if you like. Otherwise, I’ll default to Danganronpa canon.

Since there wasn't a fandom mentioned, I'm going to go with a Danganronpa canon ship. But before I do, let me just say that I think Sonia/Charles would be a very good ship with lots of complex emotions and very sweet, loving scenes. I know I've got a modern verse with them right now, but after I dropped those 18th Century headcanons on discord, that could be fun too (though I think I've got a way to bring a bit of the 18th Century to the modern verse as well!). This is the dash's monthly reminder to check out Innocent and Innocent Rouge if you like historically-inspired manga with gorgeous art (obligatory gore/nsfw warning for this series)!

Back to Danganronpa, I'm going to chat about a ship I don't think I've really discussed over here: Sonia/Peko! I really love the idea of writing these two as friends and possibly a romantic ship, depending on my writing partner's interest and comfort. While Sonia would admire Peko's skill with a blade, both as a friend and someone trained in military strategy and combat, I think she'd have a clear understanding that instead of Peko being cold and unfeeling, she just doesn't express her emotions that much. To that end, it'll be Sonia's personal mission to bring a smile to Peko's face. She's constantly in awe how loyal she is to Fuyuhiko, despite how much adversity she's faced. But the Ultimate Princess is a patient person, and understanding for the times Peko just wants some space. But when she wants Sonia's company, Sonia's more than happy to oblige. She'll share her love of serial killers, her favorite anime, or maybe just introducing Peko to her favorite cat cafe. These two both love cute, fuzzy animals! Perhaps they'd play Animal Crossing together?

Though a part of me would love to play a Sonia/Peko with Sonia's talentswap!AU as the Ultimate Mafia Boss, where she shows Peko that not every family would treat her as a tool or someone to be abandoned. That if she wanted, the Borghese Family would look out for her. Not just as the person their Underboss loves, but as a young woman with exceptional skill and a loyal, loving heart.