Darth Wiki / Discordronpa

(The name "Discordronpa" is sufficiently generic that we assume there are several unrelated games going by that name; if you've decided to trope yours and it looks like this isn't it, drop a message on the discussion page and we'll figure out how to disambiguate.)

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Discordronpa is a series of Danganronpa fan-roleplays run on Discord, by a Discord user who goes by the name Moon. It consists of four entries:

• Discordronpa 1, the first killing game
• Tomorrow Trust, a post-DDR1 RP
• Discordronpa 2, a second killing game
• Paramount Peak Academy, a post-DDR2 RP

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife "Discord-Chan" masterminded a bunch of killing games as a False Flag Operation against other social media companies.

After the completion of Discordronpa 2, Moon announced that Paramount Peak would be the end of their running the series, but gave their blessing for semi-unofficial continuations.

This roleplay contains examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: Discordronpa 2 takes place in 2023, and Paramount Peak in 2025, with a world that's mostly identical to reality, but a lot fancier technology than the real-world start date of 2021.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: The second game allows players to change their "avatar" into existing fictional characters, and gain the associated abilities. Not all of them are precisely the same as in canon.
  • Pika chooses to take on the form of a Ditto, enabling him to shapeshift into any Pokémon and use any move, which is substantially more powerful than Ditto actually canonically is. The other characters occasionally speculate on why this is.
  • After a Heroic BSoD, Robin takes the form of Cat Blanc. However, he doesn't have the trademark "infinite power of destruction" that Blanc got from being akumatized, only the normal Cataclysm he has as Cat Noir. He postulates that it's because he's not actually akumatized, but the issue isn't explored in great detail.
• Alter-Ego Acting: All roleplayers are playing as fictionalized versions of themselves.
• Alternate Continuity: Paramount Peak takes place in a post-DDR2 timeline, with the one major adjustment that the dead were not Killed Off for Real, but discovered alive in their pods when the "survivors" escaped the game.
• Ambiguous Situation: The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue says that Sylvi attempted to revive the ghost data as AIs, but that history has forgotten whether she succeeded and they all lived happily ever after, or she failed and died of grief.
• Amnesiac Resonance: The Sage of Dragonloa Hates Being Touched at first, but, to his own confusion, he doesn't mind when Robin is cuddly with him. After all, Robin, and in fact the entire Tempest system, were some of his closest friends as Fran.
• Anti-Climax: From the beginning of the second season, the Tempests were secretly the Ultimate Infiltrator, which was intended to be revealed at a dramatically appropriate moment. Despite all the foreshadowing, no such moment ever actually arrived, and the reveal ended up casually dropped (and ignored by everyone) while fighting the mastermind.
  "Yeah I don't think Tim's listening to us..."
  "... Eh. That's a relief. Our plan has been a complete shambles since day one."
• Armor-Piercing Question: In the second game, Sylvi has just risked her life on a ridiculous scheme to use her Jester role to take Sealeo's appearance, thereby baiting Moon (who wants Sealeo dead) into attacking her. Her friends are chewing her out for this, but she's adamant that it's fine because she stopped before she got anywhere near death or severe injury... until Ana points out that she had only stopped by accident, with no apparent plans to stop — "How much closer would we have gotten if you hadn't accidentally cried out there? How close were you willing to get?" Sylvi has no response to this.
• Bittersweet Ending: The second game ends with Geek, Krystal, Pika, the Tempests, Moon, E, Shiff, Lillie, and Door all escaping from the game, defeating Tim Cook, shutting down Apple and destroying its HQ. However, the other fourteen players, all their close friends, have been Killed Off for Real unlike the first game, and it's strongly implied that at least one of the survivors will be Driven to Suicide from grief.
• Big Good: GB for Discordronpa 1, as she was a spy sent in by unknown authorities to save the lives of the teenagers trapped in the Discordronpa Killing Game, and Door-kun in Discordronpa 2, as he's the force on the outside trying to save the others from Tim Cook and the killing game and ends up saving them in Chapter 8's finale.
• Body Double: After surviving the first game, Krystal hires an impersonator to replace them so they can go into hiding and avoid the consequences. This body double, Faye, gets put into the second game in her place, and killed by Cutbug in the first chapter. Nobody realizes it until several chapters later when, unaware the killing game is even taking place, Krystal sends Pika a meme and inadvertently tips off the masterminds.
• Book Ends: The first and last "traditional" trials of the second game have the same climactic reveal: everyone presents their hands for inspection, and the killer is outed by an injured finger. In the first trial, Cutbug injured themself hiding the impostor's body, and in the seventh trial, Heather sacrificed a finger to produce a Red Herring feather.
• Commonality Connection: In Paramount Peak, Sylvi and Knife get a little bonding moment in the survivor groupchat over having wings and finding that very awesome.
  Sylvi: hell yeah wings, those are cool as hell
  wing gang
  Knife: wing gang
• Dissimile: Inverted; Sylvi compares being trapped under a sleepy friend to being trapped under a sleepy cat, "except"... and then decides that there's actually very little difference between the two.
• Deadpan Snarker: Often Door does this throughout Discordronpa, Tomorrow Trust, and Paramount Peak.
• Defective Detective: This applies to Door, who is the Ultimate Detective. He has issues talking with others, often coming across as condescending and an asshole, and has severe sleep apnea as well as Survivor Guilt throughout the duration of both Discordronpas.
• Drama Queen:
  • Door likes being overdramatic and theatrical with his appearances, often making a theater reference or otherwise being ludicrously dramatic in everything he does.
  • During a Heroic BSoD after the sixth trial, Robin uses the avatar change to mimic being akumatized into Cat Blanc, complete with being transformed by a cloud of black smoke. There is zero in-universe reason for this to have happened, and he admits later that he was "having an extra moment". Even when he changes back to his previous appearance, he makes a point of ripping off the "akumatized" cat collar and all — Sylvi asks if that was actually necessary or if he was just being "extra" again, and he claims not to actually know.
• Faux Death: Door pulls this completely accidentally, as in his execution in the prologue of DDR2, he logs out of the simulation before he's burned to death. The rest of the cast isn't aware of this until Chapter 4.
• Functional Addict: Applies to Door post DDR1, in DDR2, Paramount Peak, and Tomorrow Trust. While he is an alcoholic, he's still able to interact normally and overall live a relatively decent life.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Door uses a rapier for the entirety of Chapter 9 of Discordronpa 2, and as the Big Good of DDR2, he is by technicality a hero.
• He's Back!: In the first season, post Chapter 4, Door has a mental breakdown for most of the following chapters Kai's death and execution. However, in Chapter 7, he finally steps up again with comforting Kiwi and promising to "Get the hell out of there."
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Door often falls into this in his worse phases, often blaming himself for not being good enough or smart enough.
• Hope Spot: In the second season, Cutbug killed Krystal for the specific purpose of dying and getting out of the game, with the intent of breaking open the system from outside. After their apparent ejection from the simulation, they're presented with a dialogue box, purporting to contain the code to unlock the sim and save everyone... but when they click it, all they get is THERE IS NO WAY TO SAVE THEM. =), followed by a lethal injection killing them for real. Appropriately, the sequence was named "Fool's Golden Ending".
• Identity Amnesia: The Sage of Dragonloa shows up at the beginning of Paramount Peak, claiming to have no name and no past. It very quickly becomes clear that he's the result of Fran rejecting the vaccine against the Laser-Guided Amnesia virus.
• Inside a Computer System: Every game so far has taken place in a virtual world.
• Invincible Villain: As the owners and admins of the computer system they're all trapped in, Monowumpus and Discord-Chan are completely impossible for the players to oppose in any meaningful way. Averted with Mark Zuckerburg, as Door punches him in the face in the final chapter of Discordronpa 1, as well as with Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, who are defeated by the survivors in a RPG style battle.
• Irrational Hatred: Door towards Krystal in Chapter 9 of Discordronpa 2, as he blames her for the entirety of both Chapter 6 and Chapter 7, in particular the death of Kai, which Door isn't really over.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Downplayed with Sylvi, who in principle would prefer to be referred to as both "it" and "she" interchangeably, and damn this trope... but in practice, none of the other players are comfortable referring to a person as "it", so only its headmates actually do so.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Door, despite his substantial Jerkass behavior at times and in general rough demeanor, is a genuinely kind person who hides his nice nature behind walls of sarcasm.
• Kid Detective: Teenaged Detective, but this applies to Door in both Discordronpas - as he's 16 in the original and 18 in the sequel, while finally no longer being this in Paramount Peak Academy
• A Kind of One: In Paramount Peak, Sylvi notes that, since Discord-chan's pods reforged her body into her fursona, she's the only member of whatever catfolk "species" she is in the world. Which means that there's no way to figure out how her species is informing her opinion on headpats.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Paramount Peak's backstory includes the release of an engineered virus that wipes the world's memories of the killing games. The survivors and certain other important people were offered a vaccine to stop the virus and retain their memories, but not everyone accepted this offer...
• Malicious Misnaming: The Tempests refer to a certain mastermind as "Tim Apple", instead of his real name Tim Cook due to their hatred of them.
• Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher: Mrs. Harmony in Paramount Peak has the tone of a kindergarten teacher, despite the eponymous academy being more equivalent to a college. This seems to be at least partly an attempt to distance herself from her past as Discord-chan.
• Never Live It Down: In Discordronpa 1, from the time of his introduction to his death, and even after his death, Glitch is constantly teased for having some kind of spider fetish.
• Offscreen Inertia: In the second game, when Moon jokingly sends a message in the group chat about uninstalling their ass, the Tempests send their clay doll (the chapter's motive) to go look for it to see whether Moon is serious. That seems to be the end of that until three weeks later, when Krystal, seemingly killed in the first chapter, is being reintroduced and brought up to speed on what happened, and Sylvi goes over the motives so far. Robin then asks where the clay doll is, and Sylvi admits it's probably still searching the Wal-Mart for a detached ass that they've long ago realized doesn't actually exist.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Door and Kai are this, as well as Door and Kiwi in Discordronpa 1, while Shiff and Pika are this in Discordronpa 2. In Chapter 9 of Discordronpa 2, Door and E become this.
• Running Gag: In the second game, the Tempests keep forgetting that they've had Laser-Guided Amnesia of the past two years and acting like it's still 2021. This is still going on during Paramount Peak two in-universe years later, though they've at least kept up with the passage of time and are now mistaking it for 2023...
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Door-kun is definently this, at his worst swearing practically every other sentence.
• Sleep Cute: Being Cuddle Bug catfolk, Sylvi and Robin are prone to curling up for catnaps with their friends at the drop of a hat.
• Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: In chapter three of the second season, Sylvi, in the midst of a Heroic BSoD, calls out Monowumpus, demanding that he "end it already". When he doesn't cooperate, they swing a haymaker at him in hopes of setting off the "anyone who attacks the mastermind dies" rule.
• Spoiler Title: The true title of the second season was not revealed until Chapter 8, because the name "Appleronpa" would be far too obvious a hint toward the identity of the masterminds, Apple founders Tim Cook and Steve Jobs (or, well, an AI based on Jobs).
• Tragic Keepsake: Several players keep mementos of their friends who died:
  • Pika holds on to Mallet's hammer.
  • Kai keeps Coolkid's beanie.
  • Fran has Walrein's dying note.
  • The Tempests wear pendants Fran made for them (but wasn't able to give them before he died).
• Survivor Guilt: Door has some serious survivor guilt throughout, most prominent in Chapter 9 of Discordronpa 2.
• Trust Password: During the first season, at the beginning of Chapter 7, Pika comforts Door after a horrific sixth trial by reminding him that Kai, the fourth killer and one of Door's closest friends, has been watching over him the whole time. Door demands proof and Kai himself reminds Door of some of their more private memories while basically being channeled through Pika.
• Tuneless Song of Madness:
  • In the second chapter of the second season, Sylvi responded to the motive of an impending destruction-by-meteor by singing, appropriately enough, "Answers" from Final Fantasy XIV. She fell back into the habit in the seventh chapter, when everyone was poisoned and expecting to die.
  • After crossing the Despair Event Horizon due to Fran's death, Robin occasionally sings Adrien's "little kitty on a roof" song, replacing "his lady" with "their friend".
• Virtual Ghost:
  • In the first game, The deceased are able to speak with the living, as they aren't dead, merely in a deletion queue. However, Door-kun couldn't hear the deceased for inexplicable reasons that were never stated IRP.
  • In the second game, players who die are inexplicably able to show up in a particular back alley due to a glitch, and can occasionally speak mentally with the living. This is due to the leftover data from their mind scans sticking around in the system; Pika downloads this data after escaping from the sim and entrusts it to the Tempests, but despite their intentions to revive the data as AIs, it's not made clear whether they will ever succeed at this. This is also how it's figured out that Door-kun isn't actually deceased alongside his message in Chapter 4, as there's no record of him in the alley.
  • The later chapters of the second game reveal that one of the masterminds is an AI based roughly on Steve Jobs, who (as in Real Life) died in 2011, 12 years before the game started.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: The second game gives everyone the ability to "change their avatar" up to twice per chapter, gaining the appearance and power of whoever they appear as.
• Walking Spoiler: Door in Discordronpa 2, because His presence beyond the prologue spoils the reveal in Chapter 4 that he wasn't actually dead, though most of the RPers speculated as much ahead of time.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the second season, Sylvi's roleplayer had an idea for a quick angst bit in response to the death of Cutbug, the first killer, but the in-character reason for this angst bit to happen was immediately negated by the appearance of the glitch room, which allowed the dead to speak with the living as Virtual Ghosts. Not to be deterred, she wrote it anyway and called it an AU.
  • The Tempests' roleplayers made several plans in the second season for how they might die. One of them was that after being pushed past the Despair Event Horizon by a particularly unbearable motive, they'd meet up with someone else and arrange a mutual kill, sparing the rest of the players from both the motive and their executions. Another was that being pushed past the Despair Event Horizon by Fran's death might drive them to kill out of desperation, or give up and let someone kill them just to end it. The circumstances which would give rise to these plans never occurred — even when Fran did die, he managed to go out in a manner that gave them just enough hope to cling to for the rest of the game, and they actually ended up being one of the survivors.
• "World's Best" Character: Comes with the territory.
  • DDR1's talents are:
    • Caloy, Ultimate Gamer
    • Door-kun, Ultimate Detective
    • E, Ultimate Weeb
    • Fran, Ultimate Trickster
    • Galaxy, Ultimate Swimmer
    • GB, Ultimate Veterinary Nurse
    • Glitch, Ultimate Crossplayer
    • Kai, Ultimate Artist
    • Kiwi, Ultimate Writer
    • Krystal, Ultimate Musician
    • Lils, Ultimate Sleeper
    • Moon, Ultimate Host
    • Pika, Ultimate Dumbass
    • Sealeo, Ultimate Breeder
    • Sentret, Ultimate Bystander
    • Shiffna, Ultimate Builder
    • Ted, Ultimate Songwriter
    • Walle, Ultimate Music Composer
  • In DDR2, Paramount Peak is its own institution not affiliated with Hope's Peak, so they're called "Top Level" rather than "Ultimate", but it works the same way. However, Kai and Door become Former Ultimates with their talents from DDR.
    • Artsy Geek, Top Level Stage Actress
    • Bean, Top Level V-Tuber
    • Chesh, Top Level Cowboy
    • Coolkid, Top Level Investigative Journalist
    • Custard, Top Level Psychologist
    • Cutbug, Top Level Cartoonist
    • Door-kun, Former Ultimate Detective
    • E, Top Level Enigma
    • Fran, Top Level Convict
    • Heather, Top Level Gambler
    • Jordan, Top Level Editor
    • Kai, Former Ultimate Artist
    • Knife, Top Level Satirist
    • Krystal, Top Level Musician
    • Lils, Top Level Sleep-Deprived
    • Mallet, Top Level Brawler
    • Magolor, Top Level IT
    • Moon, Top Level Splatoon Pro
    • Pika, Top Level Therapist
    • Sealeo, Top Level Fanfic Writer
    • Shiffa, Top Level Builder
    • the Tempests, Top Level Catgirl (Sylvi), Catboy (Robin), and Angel (Ana) secretly collectively the Top Level Infiltrator, not that anything interesting comes of this
• Xanatos Gambit: The eighth trial in the second game — the apparent victims, Pika and Shiff, had arranged with the apparent culprit, Lils, to fake a murder scene and trigger a Body Discovery Announcement with no actual killer. Once that happened, they had essentially already won — no matter who was actually convicted at trial, it would result in the system glitching out, allowing Door-kun to log out the remaining survivors instead of executing them.
• Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: In the second game, Kai, who is 14 years old, makes an elaborate plan for Fran to accidentally kill Chesh in self-defense from Krystal, using the werewolf motive to drive it all. When he expresses regret for this later and admits he doesn't even know what he was thinking, Sylvi (who is in her 30s) postulates that he did it because he is "still infested with teenager drama brain", and admits to having had a similar mentality in her own teen years.
  Krystal: teenager drama brain would make someone pull a kiyo to get a body discovered?
  Sylvi: given the choice between that and letting the body lie undiscovered forever, yes teenager drama brain would 100% do the dumber and more dramatic thing
  Krystal: ...when you put it that way it makes sense
  Kai: i love (/s) how half of my decisions in these kgs are just "you know what fuck it let's do the dramatic thing instead of the practical thing. why? idfk. i'm prolly gonna die but let's do it anyway"