#specifically Hajime/Izuru-centric

[jonquilandlace]

hrnnnn okay so Salem my beloved can attest I write a lot but never like post anything because it's all fragments of works that generally would be multichaps but are never finished enough *to* post

but I have had the strongest urge to actually post stuff for ages

and,,, I am almost to the point of successfully talkin myself into writing something to be posted,,,

[midnightdemonhunter]

I don't if you consume a lot of this sort of content, but do you have any Mikan-centric recommendations? Specifically fanfics/things on AO3 so I can put them in my Mikan collection, but comics would be fine as well. I'm fine with any ship also—I specifically really want works that deal with either Mikan and Junko's relationships or Mikan's relationships with the rest of the remnants! But I'm pretty much fine with any Mikan content. I have a Mikan collection that needs more work! Though it's fine if you don't have anything to recommend, too; I'm not sure how big on reading fanfic you are versus writing it (her smile is the sun is one of my favorite fanfics ever btw). Just was wondering if you had any Mikan centric recommendations!

Ooooo thank you for the ask! I do in fact read a lot of fanfic, and there have been many times where I've gone out of my way to find Remnant or post canon sdr2 fics, so I do have some in mind!! (And thank you for the compliment!! I'm delighted to hear my fic stands out to you!!) Here's some Mikan recs:

The Lion's Den - Chapter 1 - Arcawolf - Dangan Ronpa [Archive of Our Own]

Okay so this fic is LONG, and it’s Makoto-centric, since it's 90% his pov in an au where he’s kidnapped by Remnant Komaeda in the middle of Despair Era. However Mikan’s dynamic with Makoto and the other remnants is a prominent feature, and I remember really enjoying her in this fic!

Kayleen756894 | Archive of Our Own

I’m just linking the author here since literally all their danganronpa fics are about Mikan and Junko lol. Might not be your thing if you’re looking for a darker, canon-compliant exploration of Mikan and Junko relationship, since all their fics are non-abusive Junkan, but I do love their writing style, and their fics are really fun! I’d recommend giving them a shot!

Okay it’s been a while since I read this one BUT I love all of op’s danganronpa works, and so I trust it completely! It’s post canon, and focuses on a still despair-filled Mikan’s recovery with the help of her classmates! So exploration of both Mikan’s relationships with them and Junko!

There's Something Wrong With Mikan Tsumiki - Chapter 1 - RedPen - Super Dangan Ronpa 2 [Archive of Our Own]

Obligatory ‘There’s something wrong with Mikan Tsumuki’ rec because all of Redpen’s remnant fics are SO good and everyone needs to read all of them. Premise is that after Hajime also gets Despair Disease, Fuyuhiko stays at the hospital overnight instead, and tries to prevent any murders! This is mostly Fuyuhiko’s pov but one of the chapters IS Mikan's pov and I just love her perspective and general creepiness in this!

Also obligatory rec of one of my own fics! Each chapter is a different direction specific remnants could have gone in! Mikan features a lot in the first chapter, and chapter 6 is fully a Mikan chapter, with the concept of her having birthed Junko’s child during the apocalypse! It focuses a lot on her dynamics with Hajime and Izuru during and post Despair Era, and I really enjoyed writing it!

Another one of mine whoops, but this is basically the funeral the About-to-become-Remnants give to Junko, and Mikan is a pretty noticeable figure in it!

Took me forever to find this fic again but this is one of my absolute fav Mikan oneshots!! It’s post canon, and concentrates on her dynamic with Komaeda and her former relationship with Junko. Really love how op tackles her own self-hate, and her continuous struggles with escaping Despair.

Anyway, that's all I can remember for now, but anyone can feel free to add more recs in reblogs or comments! I'm always happy to add to my repertoire of Remnant related fics :)

[losthomunculus]

how deep does student endangerment go in Hope’s Peak Academy?

Disclaimer: this is mostly speculation/theorizing but I’m too lazy to keep clarifying that in the middle of my discussion so take my statements as ringing true to my SPECULATIONS, not to canon. I’ll try to specify when something is directly stated in canon and link to events in the wiki.

Also warning for spoilers and everything fucked up that comes with Danganronpa (elaboration under cut)

triggers: murder, suicide, brainwashing, human experimentation, terrorism, cults, manipulation, academic institutions mentally abusing/preying upon/exploiting/neglecting students, extreme idolization

more medical stuff is in some of the links btw specifically in reference to Izuru Kamukura and Yasuke Matsuda including beside murder so don’t click those if you’re wigged out by that and haven’t already been scared off

So basically, HPA is Fucked

Okay so HPA is shit at keeping their students safe, obviously. Not only did they knowingly admit multiple murderers (Mukuro Ikusaba, Syo Fukawa, Peko Pekoyama [implied], possibly Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu) AND those who likely employ murderers (Fuyuhiko and Natsumi Kuzuryu) but they also let students become murderers under their care (Izuru Kamukura [self defense], Nagito Komaeda[? see: explosion], Student Council, Sato, Yasuke Matsuda, possibly Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu [unclear if Sato was his first murder], The Madarai Brothers [attempted]). 

But I mean they also participated in illegal human experimentation so like WE BEEN KNEW. Nah I’m not here to talk about their obvious neglect, I want to talk about the societal impact HPA has had and the student culture that likely made it possible for The Tragedy to occur.

Ok so we say ~The Tragedy~ as if it was one event but that’s kinda vague to to be clear I’m talking about the external chaos that happened after Shit Went Down at HPA. The events leading up to it being The Tragedy of Hope’s Peak Academy (which I’ll call The Student Council Killing Game for clarity), The Parade, and The Reserve Course Mass Suicide.

Also Danganronpa has a tendency to greatly exaggerate mental illness because psychological instability is what makes the entire storyline tick. But I feel like many people GREATLY overlooks how that is also applied to the Reserve Course and Hajime Hinata, who is usually regarded as one of the most sane of his class.

Hajime Hinata’s mental health Concerns me

First, let’s look at the Izuru Kamukura Project/Hope Cultivation Plan. So, first things first, they actually got someone to agree to an ungodly amount of human experimentation. It’s also heavily implied (if not outright stated, my memory isn’t that good) that if Hinata rejected the offer, another Reserve student would take his place.

Now teens are dumb. And the Steering Committee did not advertise the full extent of the project. But any sensible high schooler would cringe at the idea of body, let alone mind, altering surgery. That begs the question of just how desperate are these Reserve students if this sounds like a viable option to them? Surely not all of them would jump at the chance, but the fact that even one accepted and the Steering Committee was confident they could replace Hinata if he didn’t is pretty disturbing and goes to show how valuable talent is to the students.

It’s somewhat comparable to Quirks in My Hero Academia, except MHA actually goes into the kind of Fucked Up Izuku Midoriya and namely hero society is for him to accept All Might’s Quirk. If you’re not familiar with MHA, it goes deeper into how Fucked their Hero/Quirk centric society is in the manga and exposes the results of such idolization and value attributed to their equivalent of Ultimate Talent.

But anyway back to Danganronpa. The fact that they could get someone to be their lab experiment, not looking good for the mental health of the students. Agreeing to the Kamukura project was essentially an act of suicide, and while that may not have been apparent to Hinata it should have at least occurred to him in some capacity that such major surgeries could drastically alter his mental state and even kill him. If it did occur to him, it means he thought the risk was worth taking. And if it didn’t? It likely means he was just that desperate.

And alright alright that’s Hinata’s decision. What about everyone else? Most students are just there for Hope Peak’s name, right? Where’s the indication that they’re all severely mentally ill?

The entire Reserve Course sounds kinda despair inducing

Well, first off, private school environments are Not Great mental health wise. The Reserve Department is advertised as a feeder for the Main Course, as in providing possible students to it (in reality the only feeding it actually does it monetary); so it’s probably safe to compare it to the environment of an actual feeder school, in this case an unnamed Harvard feeder school I will be referencing out of personal experience.

Academic competition is a hallmark of these schools. Along with extreme workloads. Basically you never stop moving, especially if you have certain skills you are trying to develop (in the Reserve Courses case that would be those still trying to become Ultimates). The “do or die” attitude is highly encouraged, constantly working students past their limits to burnout. 

Now imagine all that fun jazz, while also knowing you actually wont get into the Main Course, unless you’ve deluded yourself like Natsumi Kuzuryu. But is that enough?? Enough for what you’re probably asking so let me explain where I’m going with this.

Why am I so concerned with them again?

Monokuma’s Gloomy Sunday is the video sent to the Reserve Course to trigger the mass suicide. We see from Danganronpa 3 when used on Makoto Naegi that it likely compelled watchers to commit suicide by preying upon any pre-existing sources of despair in their life. This is the only case we’ve seen the actual mental effects of it so I’m just assuming that’s how it works. The reason I’ve been rattling off about the mental health of Reserve Course students is because I feel there’s the implication that there already had to be a seed of despair within the students to make the mass suicide work.

And yes it technically could have been the Student Council KG that was enough to do it, but it feels absurd that out of at least 2,360 students, it worked on 2,357 of them, the three excluded being Izuru Kamukura who was working with Junko Enoshima, and Sato and Natsumi who died previously. It would surely be shocking, but doubtable that all those students had a personal enough connection with the Student Council, all of which appear to be Ultimates.

Yes I would be pissed to find out my money was allegedly being used to create a murder weapon but it would be more Parade inducing despair, not get preyed upon by my school’s freaky underground despair cult where we watch a snuff film on loop in the basement (yes this is something actually mentioned in The Parade article).

So again, this leads us back to Ultimates and their roles in society. If their despair, is enough to cause despair in complete strangers (as seen by the effects of Killing School Life) you have to wonder what the fuck kind of pedestal Talent is being put on by Hope’s Peak Academy and possible schools of the same nature.

Conclusion

Sorry there’s no conclusion. This is really just an info dump meant to get other people speculating about further world building so I’m not the only one thinking about it. Maybe it will help you when writing the Reserve Course and Hajime Hinata, who knows. I just like to sit and think about these aspects of characterization.

Kinda fucked up, huh?

[satiricalgaming]

Looking for a partner for some Danganronpa roleplay, specifically Nagito Komaeda centric. I’ve been interested in doing Nagito/my female or male OC with someone, but also Izuru/Nagito! In Izuru/Nagito, I can play either of them.

I would be willing to do Nagito/Hajime as well depending on the plot. This rp can be set either during island life in the NWP, during Ultra Despair Girls, or after NWP!

I’m 24 years old so I would like a partner that is 18+ only, and I tend to do literate, multi-para rps in third person/past tense! Please shoot me a message on Tumblr if you’re interested and we can exchange Discords from that point!

[kimmysfandomblog]

🔥 for the dr3 anime. Have at it. (Before I forget I just wanna say I agree 110% about your opinion on Ko's sexuality. Single-target sexuality, I think it's called?)

Thanks for the ask, Hyun :) Sorry I took so long, but I have a lot of feelings when I write about this subject ^^; I accidentally... wrote you an essay ;;;;;;;

(And also, thank you so much!!! I never knew that existed, but it sounds very much like how I headcanon Ko!)

Unpopular Opinion on DR3, huh? I feel like I am generally... aligned with how most of the fandom view DR3?  DR3 was written poorly, DR3 ruined some characters (specifically a certain girl I love), DR3 had a bad mastermind/main antagonist, DR3 retconned  things poorly, etc. Like, honestly, the only thing I can do is actually tell you something I like about DR3, lol.

I guess one unpopular opinion would be that DR3Z Episode 3 is still my favorite out of all of DR3 (Hope Side included)!

I think when someone refers to their favorite episode in DR3, it would be something like Hope Arc, maybe an episode of Future Arc (like in Episode 6 when we were super hype about possibly Kamukura being there instead of Hinata and all these boats coming on their way). While I was also super hype about that, and I may have watched Hope Arc 20x times that day because my boy Hajime Hinata is safe and Happy, I have to say, I just like DR3Z Episode 3 more. It wasn’t completely satisfying (I don’t know if any episode of DR3 can be said to be completely satisfying, especially once you’ve finished the series), but it made more of a lasting impact on me.

First of all, I think one of the things that made me attached to it is that this is a much more Hajime-centric episode. We start with Hinata’s POV, and it shifts only a few times to other perspectives (Like Fuyuhiko’s, or Sato’s). WHen I finally got to know and love th DR2 cast, I was prepared to be excited for DR3 and getting to know their pasts. I first saw the DR3 trailer not knowing what they were talking about until they released the game on team, so when I rewatched it in anticipation, I got excited! One of the things I definitely wanted was more of Hinata! He was, and remains, the best DR Protagonist! I kinda figured that we would get more of Izuru than of Hajime, but I wanted to at least get more out of his motivations, and, yeah, we kinda did! It wasn’t what I thought we would get, what with a few mentions of his parents, but not so much of what they were like, but parts of Episode two, and all of Episode three were made to explain it a bit. SOme stuff, we already know, or could guess, such as that Hinata was desperate for a talent, and that be acquiring a talent, he would get Hope (Or a meaning to his life).

However, we get some additional info. Firstly, in Episode two, it is mentioned that HPA is paying for his tuition, should he enter the Hope Cultivation Plan, implying his parents are not as rich as we thought (DR2 made it seem like they were, since his parents were mentioned in that sort of flashback sequence). That puts a lot of pressure on him... not to mention they give him some time to decide. By the start of Episode three, he mentions he only has a week left. Within that one week he has left, he is acquainted with both sides of the decision, represented by Chiaki, representing the Ideal solution, where he wouldn’t need the project to have Hope, and Natsumi, representing the, I guess you could say, “Logical” solution, as in that no one alive cares about anyone unless they have talent, and HPA is giving it to him with no monetary cost to him, or his parents.

Now, we know that Chiaki is technically right, that even without a talent, you can have hope, but the problem is that she doesn’t have that same perspective. She does have a talent, and those words she learned from Yukizome can only help her because they were meant to say that Talent shouldn’t restrict Chiaki from doing what she wants, just for the fun of it. Hinata, meanwhile, has much less freedom in this Talent-driven society he is stuck in. No one will acknowledge his existence without talent, and because of  that, he can’t do anything even if he wanted to. By the end of this episode, he sees this flaw because unlike Nanami, Natsumi has the same perspective he does. She dies and it looks like as if no one cares at all about her death.

Now to Natsumi, she is the character struggling with society’s rules that you have to have a Talent to mean something. Both of them actually believe in these rules, and they are both desperate to get into the Main Course, but for Natsumi, the need is greater. She has a brother and his bodyguard who are both acknowledged as Ultimates, yet though she probably spends time with them both, Natsumi was left out. She was deemed, by society’s leaders in HPA, that she wasn’t enough for them, so how could she be enough for her brother? She would do anything for the same opportunity Hinata got. Hinata, who had been stuck with Reserve Course students that were all trying to accept they were nothing more than Reserve Course students and would never move on to the Main Course, now has come across someone similar to him, who has also refused to give up on their dream of being acknowledged as something special.

Hajime feels like the Hope Cultivation Plan is his only chance to finally be happy and proud of himself, but at the same time, he is, by nature, skeptical that such a plan would. It’s too good to be true (and it was, of course). The episode starts off with him looking up the school’s website, which doesn’t give him any real results. He’s only got a week to decide left, and he’s not completely sure yet if this is the right way to go even if, in his head, he desperately wants this to be the solution. It would be easy, and would benefit him and his family. But, with that doubt he still has, he latches on to Nanami’s words that he won’t need talent to be happy. THese words sound right. They sound like this is something that exists. But, it isn’t proven. In fact, it is disproven by Natsumi, first by her denial of his words that Talent isn’t everything (because it is something to enough people for it to matter), and secondly, when Natsumi dies despite coming from an influential family, and when she dies, her death is covered up with lies and unsatisfactory answers. This girl who he only just came to know and kind of befriend is dead, and he could do nothing about her death. He even pieces together that Sato killed her by chance, and that there was something clearly wrong with Sato to begin with, but then she is dead. Two classmates, now dead, and both of them had their deaths covered up. Hajime is not dumb, he can put pieces together (He didn’t need as much help in the trials unless someone was withholding information (usually Komaeda)). He knows exactly who to ask, and would have investigated it, but is stopped by Juzo.

He of course doesn’t know Juzo is trying to make sure he doesn’t dig too deep and gets targeted by HPA for revealing too much, but Juzo really doesn’t know how to talk with anything other than physical language. As in beat up a 15-16-year-old kid into submission, but you know. Juzo is just one more reason on top  of Natsumi’s death that he accepts the plan. Juzo validated his thoughts that he, nor anyone that lacks talent, matters.

It’s really heartbreaking to see Hinata like that, however I suppose, in his own way, he thought of the project as his way of breaking the mould of normality he was stuck in. You know that he needs to become Izuru Kamukura, you know it has to happen, but it does crush me how he had to come to the “realization” he is worthless otherwise to do it, through two deaths and his own degradation by Juzo. (and being saved by Chisa... probably not what he wanted.)

I find it interesting that the person that represents accepting the Hope Cultivation Plan is Natsumi, because we know if Fuyuhiko had ever heard her speak the words she did to Hinata, he’d have denied it. He’d have said she deserved to be in his place, that she would have been the better clan leader, that even though she didn’t accept his role, he would always introduce her as is Ultimate Little Sister, and no old men and drunk scout can change that.

If Hinata could have known that by being such a supportive friend, his friends would value him more than just as someone who has an Ultimate Talent, or EVERY Ultimate Talent, and that he provides all the difference just by being himself, I don’t think he would have turned to the Hope Cultivation Project.

But that isn’t how things went. Hinata, had no proof that Talent was truly meaningless. Society kept on validating that Talent meant much more than someone not acknowledged to have any.

Oh... I got.... way off topic ^^;

Well, overall, this was an emotional episode. I get why people don’t like it much: They really rushed the Twilight Syndrome MurderCase, to the point of not even showing the events in the minigame. I also wished for more Natsumi and Hinata interaction, or have this episode split in two (and take place instead of Love SOup incident, please). I found Satos’ character to be ver much lacking as well, since they reduced her to some kind of yandere-like personality (although thinking back, was she like that in the Twilight Syndrome Murder Case?) However, for what we got? It’s still something that I really love! It gave us an insight into Hinata, and an awesome character to boot!

(I also kinda skipped over the Hinam bits, but the Fountain scene was pretty sad, even if I’m really ehh about the way Nanami sees he’s hurt and still offers him to play, and other weird things like that involving those two... Like I swear Nanami would be way more concerned about his wellbeing in DR2 and pick up on the obvious bad signs and act on them more)