Dangan Ronpa: Forever Despair
by Kitt_Monroe is a Danganronpa fanfic featuring an original cast of sixteen characters. They are all students of Hope's Peak academy who have been trapped by Monobear in the deserted city of Hope's Peak Metropolis. The only way to escape is to kill someone and get away with it - standard fare for a Fangan Ronpa fic.
It's written in a script-based format inspired by Dangan Ronpa: Legacy of Despair that mimics the original games' puzzle-solving aspects and encourages the reader to solve the cases along with Len Tatane, the narrator. The story will eventually feature spoilers for both Dangan Ronpa games. You have been warned.
Beware, spoilers may be unmarked.
Dangan Ronpa: Forever Despair contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Subverted: Shiraishi believes she accidentally murdered Suzuki, but she's mistaken.
- All Take and No Give: The core of Nakahara and Hoshino's friendship in Chapter 3, with Nakahara taking and Hoshino giving.
- Always Identical Twins: Len Tatane and his sister Rin are, or at least were, identical twins, which he tells Toda in Chapter 4.
- Ambiguous Gender: Nagisa Akiyama has been referred to using "they/them" pronouns for the entire story and doesn't at any point confirm a single binary gender for themself. This becomes a problem for them in Chapter 4, when the victim's use of the word "them" to refer to meeting with someone implicates them in the murder.
- Amoral Attorney: Ryo Nakahara is the Super High-school Level Attorney, and she resents and frequently belittles the rest of the group for no reason. Emphasized in Chapter 3 when she grows abusive toward Hoshino and eventually murders him.
- Anger Born of Worry: Toda's constant secret keeping has increasingly frustrusted Tatane to the point where he finally calls her out on it in chapter 5. The worry comes from the fact that all of the past victims of murder and/or murderers have followed a similar pattern and he is concerned that something bad will happen soon.
- Asshole Victim: The first four victims qualify, to different degrees. Suzuki planned to commit a murder; Sam attempted a murder and was killed in self-defense; Hoshino attacked his killer, though without planning to kill her, and Nakahara, his killer, was then murdered herself. Umemoto finally averts this in Chapter 4 by not doing anything dangerous or violent before being murdered.
- Hoshino points out the problem with this concept in chapter 3.
- Bait-and-Switch: Chikaru is set up as the first victim, only the last line of the chapter reveals that it was Suzuki instead.
- Born Lucky: Takara Chikaru's talent is Super High-school Level Good Luck.
- Break the Cutie: Poor Shiraishi has mistakenly believed herself a murderer, learned her best friend has sustained a head wound that may prove fatal, and then said friend becomes a murderer and is executed. Her demeanor in chapter 3 is very subdued.
- Break the Haughty: Nakahara, who declared herself leader of the group in Chapter 2, fell apart in Chapter 3 and was murdered in the same chapter.
- Brutal Honesty: Umemoto can be like this at times.
- Clear Their Name: Jinno is the prime suspect of the first murder because it appears her name was Suzuki's dying message and only Tatane and Toda are willing to believe she might be innocent.
- Tatane, Toda, Umemoto, and Kyoyama are all suspected of murdering Nakahara and Hoshino in Chapter 3.
- The Corpse Stops Here: Averted in chapter 1. Tatane worries that Chikaru might be the prime suspect since she was the first to find the body. He's wrong, see Clear Their Name.
- Defied by Fujimoto in chapter 2 by running away before anyone can find him with the body...which winds up making him look suspicious anyways when the others realize he should have been the first to find the body.
- Cosplay Otaku Girl: Ayano Teruya's talent is Super High-school Level Cosplayer.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The executions, of course.
- Sam's seems like this at first, because he was apparently tortured prior to death. However, he could Feel No Pain and inflicted those wounds on himself.
- Deadpan Snarker: Jinno gets like this when she's annoyed.
- The Dulcinea Effect: Shortly after meeting her, Tatane feels a desire to protect Chikaru.
- Everyone Can See It: Between Tatane and Chikaru. Even Toda pokes fun at how obvious they are. Tatane, on the other hand, is just confused by the others' remarks.
- Expy: Kamiko Jinno is a large, strong intimidating student, but also a very thoughtful individual. Tatane notes upon meeting her that the forums warned people to be careful of her. Sounds a lot like Sakura Oogami.
- Eri Shiraishi's story is similar to Kiyotaka Ishimaru's and they are both shouty students and have similar talents. A character they showed great affection towards also both ended up being the second culprit.
- To a lesser extent, Ayano Teruya is this to Ishimaru as well. They were both students that pushed for unity in the group and died in the story's third chapter.
- Eyes Always Shut: Tatane wonders how Teruya is able to see like this.
- Becomes O.O.C. Is Serious Business when she opens them while accusing Nakahara.
- Feel No Pain: Sam due to a medical condition. It is part of his motive for attempting murder.
- Figure It Out Yourself: Toda always pushes Tatane and everyone else to try and figure something out during the trials even when though she seemed to have figure something out before hand.
- This comes to hurt her relationship with Tatane in Chapter 5 when he begins to lose trust in her as she refuses to explain her actions and insists on keeping secrets despite her own claims that everyone should work together.
- First-Name Basis: The characters are generally known by their surnames, but Teruya and Sam refer to the students by their given names. In Sam's case, it's because he's from Germany and is unused to Last-Name Basis. He usually corrects himself. He eventually asks the others to use his first name.
- Date starts calling Shiraishi by her given name during the first trial.
- Umemoto and Kyoyama begin referring to each other by their given names, starting in Chapter 4.
- Flat Character: Fujimoto until Umemoto calls him out on it.
- Genius Bruiser: Jinno is the strongest student and also fairly thoughtful and knowledgeable.
- Genki Girl: Teruya and Suzuki. Kanno might be a Genki Boy.
- Gratuitous Japanese: Teruya peppers her speech with Japanese words and phrases even though everyone is technically speaking Japanese in the first place. Lampshaded during the accusation against her in Chapter 3:Teruya: No, the words tsumaranai orokana!! It means “boring and stupid,” I should not have to explain this to you— I should not be able to explain this to you we're all fucking Japanese!!
- Green-Eyed Monster: Sam's motivation for attempting to murder Date; she felt pain while he could not.
- Hate Sink: Nakahara. Everybody loves to hate Nakahara, even the creator of the work themselves.
Kitt_Monroe: Anyway... Nakahara is trash. And irredeemable! Tell your friends. - Heel–Face Door-Slam: Umemoto attempts to reform his behavior and become a better person at the beginning of Chapter 4 and is promptly murdered later that chapter.
- Homoerotic Subtext: The relationship between Umemoto and Kyoyama is all but outright stated to be romantic.
- Fujimoto's interactions with Tatane imply that the former has a crush on the latter.
- Hot-Blooded: Date
- I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me: A variant: Chikaru is very flattered that someone as important as Tatane would do so much for a person with an "unimpressive" talent like hers. Tatane finds her low self-esteem worrying.
- Idiot Hair: Do you even need to ask who?
- Jerkass: Nakahara, Umemoto, and Sam to a lesser extent.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Umemoto can be a huge jerk, but he tends to vocalize what the others are thinking.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Nakahara may belittle everyone constantly, but she is also the one trying the hardest to fight Monobear's rule and cares deeply about keeping her classmates safe.
- Subverted in Chapter 3 when she goes off the deep end after being demoted from group leader status, and ends up abusing and eventually killing Hoshino.
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Jerkass Woobie: While the group's reasons for rejecting her are largely her own fault, it's hard not to feel bad for Nakahara when no one challenges Umemoto's claim that none of the students want her as their leader. - The Leader: Nakahara is a type 3, Toda is a type 2
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When asked what the point of the mutual killing game is, Monobear muses about how to balance the information revealed with the story length.
- Lights Off, Somebody Dies: A variation: Somebody is found dead after an earthquake during a party.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Shiraishi likes pink and acts quite feminine; she also all but confirms to Tatane that she has romantic feelings for Date.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Poor Kyoyama ends up getting this after accidentally killing Umemoto.
- Naïve Everygirl: Chikaru appears to be one of these.
- Never the Obvious Suspect: Unfortunately averted with the Chapter 4 killer, Noboru Kyoyama.
- Oblivious to Love: Tatane, oh Tatane. He regularly misses romantic cues from Chikaru in the first three chapters, and from Fujimoto as well starting in Chapter 4.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Jinno swears when Nakahara disrespects Sam after his death. Teruya lampshades this:Teruya: Kami-chan made a swear! That's seriously out of character for her!
- When the timid, conflict-averse Hoshino gets angry with the group, things have gotten bad.
- Kyoyama stops stuttering and tells Umemoto to stop making excuses when they're placed under suspicion in Chapter 3 and need to clear their names.
- Out of Focus: Akiyama has arguably been this throughout the story, having almost no personal stake in any of the murders or motives so far. This starts changing in Chapter 3.
- Reality Ensues: Nakahara murders Hoshino after treating him like garbage for all of Chapter 3. Tatane is shocked when this is first revealed, but later concludes that it's not actually that surprising.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Toda delivers one of these to Chikaru in Chapter 5, even though they aren't technically her words.Toda: This. Stuff? Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh, I don’t know, that lumpy green hoodie, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that hoodie is not just green, it’s not jade, it’s not shamrock, it’s actually emerald. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Mirari Kotokura did a collection of emerald gowns. And then I think it was Christina Hosokawa, wasn’t it, who showed emerald military jackets? I need a jacket on this, I just realized. And then emerald quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers, all of them more creative than you. Then, it filtered through the outer city department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Hachioji thrift shop where you, no doubt, fished it out of a clearance bin. However, that green represents hundreds of millions of yen and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing a hoodie that was selected for you by me and the people I work with. From a pile of stuff.
- Red Herring: Par for the course in a murder mystery.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Chikaru hypothesizes that Monokuma's first motive, timers counting down to their death, might be this. And then the first murderer's countdown ends at the same time as his execution.
- Ship Tease: Strongly between Tatane and Chikaru. It's even implied that Chikaru does have feelings for Tatane. However, Tatane seems to be unaware of it.
- Beginning around chapter 4, though, Fujimoto seems to be slowly replacing Chikaru as Tatane's love interest, and finally in chapter 5 Fujimoto finally gets the courage to ask Tatane out on a date.
- The Shrink: Satoru Fujimoto is the SHSL Therapist. He's a type 2, with shades of type 3.
- Shout-Out: Nakahara, the SHSL Attorney initiates a crossed swords segment by yelling "Hold It!"
- The Tatane twins, Rin and Len, are an obvious nod to the Crypton Vocaloids Kagamine Rin and Len.
- In her speech to Chikaru in Chapter 5, Toda mentions two other Dangan Ronpa fandom characters, Mirari Kotokura and Christina Hosokawa. They have the talents Super High-school Level Fashion Designer and Super High-school Level Seamstress respectively, which explains why Toda knows of them.
- Toda's entire "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Chikaru in Chapter 5 is identical to Miranda Priestly's one to Andrea Sachs from The Devil Wears Prada, right down to the biting "from a pile of stuff" ending words, though a few specific details are changed to better suit the situation. These changes include changing the colors blue, turquoise, lapis, and cerulean to green, jade, shamrock, and emerald. Oscar de la Renta and Yves Saint Laurent are changed to Mirari Kotokura and Christina Hosokawa respectively. The line mentioning clothing chain Casual Corner was also replaced with Toda saying it ended up in a Hachioji thrift store. Given the fact that all the characters in the work are Japanese, dollars was also replaced with yen, the Japanese currency.
- Shrinking Violet: Chikaru, Kyoyama, and Hoshino qualify.
- Stage Magician: Noboru Kyoyama's talent, he even dresses the part. He has yet to successfully perform a trick, however.
- Stepford Smiler: Teruya's first free time event implies that she might be a type 1. In her final free time event she essentially confirms it:Teruya: But...but no one ever wanted to be around me. I drove people away without even wanting to...Teruya: That’s mostly why I have this “Aya-chan” thing. It was just easier after a while to, to put on a costume and pretend to be someone else...
- The Stoic: Toda and Jinno both play this role. However...
- Not So Stoic: Jinno reacts strongly to any sign of disrespect towards Sam after his death, to the point where she stalls the second trial due to her refusal to accept that he attempted murder. Toda has expressed some doubts to Tatane and was cowed by Nakahara in Chapter 2. Happens with Toda again in Chapter 5, breaking into tears and resorting to childish games when angered by Tatane.
- Sweet Tooth: Masuyo Suzuki loves sugary things, which fits with her talent as SHSL Chocolatier.
- Third-Person Person: Teruya refers to herself as "Aya-chan" which is a shortened version of her given name.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Somehow Nakahara managed to become a bigger Jerkass after she was dethroned as leader, by not only threatening Chikaru for hugging her but becoming more and more abusive towards Hoshino.
- Toda seems to be taking one in Chapter 5, by going from being a leader figure to denying any responsibility for her actions or interest in her or the others' lives.
- Transgender: In Chapter 4, Tatane tells Toda that he and his sister Rin are identical twins. His reaction after saying this indicates either he or his sister may be transgender. Kitt's only comment on this has been "Confirmed", but it's not clear which one has been confirmed.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Nakahara regularly receives these.
- In chapter 3, Hoshino delivers one to everyone else for rejecting Nakahara as their leader.
