Fanfic / i won't let you

i won't let you is a Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony Alternate Universe Fic by chivalrousAmour in which Kaede Akamatsu has ADHD. This leads her to make the impulsive decision of just patting Kokichi Oma on the head during the second of his Free-Time Events, which in turn leads to the two of them becoming friends and cooperating as the Killing Game goes on around them. The fic is completed, with 55 chapters and over 100,000 words.

It spawned two sequels, forgeries, forgetfulness, and forgiveness, a story picking up after all of the victim's of Tsumugi's killing game join the Future Foundation (complete) and (because) i'm a machine (after all) (complete), about the members of SHSL Despair going through their own virtual killing game.

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The series provides examples of:

Tropes applying to the entire series

• all lowercase letters: Every title.
• All There in the Manual: The author's blog includes post-Costume Evolution designs for the cast, relationship charts, and some drawings.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: It's a series tradition to include a bonus chapter in which Kaede and Kokichi discuss unused scenes and art, gleefully pointing out that it's a fanfic the entire time.
• Cuddle Bug: Kaede and Kokichi are very touchy with each other, even before their Relationship Upgrade.
• Cutting Off the Branches: In the first story, the relationship between Kaede and Kokichi is supposed to be open to interpretation for the main story, with only the bonus chapters being explicitly romantic, in order to appeal to both people who wanted to see Kaede and Kokichi as Platonic Life-Partners and people who wanted to see them as an Official Couple. Come the second fic, the author doesn't even bother with pretending they're not a couple.
• Fire-Forged Friends: The survivors of Tsumugi's killing game become a close-knit group after escaping.
• First-Name Basis: There's an upgrade to First-Name Basis Once a Season.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Kokichi easily gets jealous whenever someone seems to getting too much of Kaede's attention, leading to him picking petty fights with Rantaro, Shuichi, and Angie in the first story and Makoto Naegi in the second.
• Official Couple: What Kaede and Kokichi eventually wind up becoming.
• Only Sane Man: Shuichi.
• Painting the Medium:
  • Some segments are written in script format to better emulate the games.
  • Skills are awarded for clearing certain events and maxing out Free-Time Events, but because it's a written story, we never get to see the skills in action.
  • Mementos of the killers and gifts for maxing out Free-Time Events are still given, though instead of underwear, the protagonists receive personalized gifts.
• Post-End Game Content: The bonus chapters.
• Yandere: Played for Laughs in one of the bonus stories. Kokichi gets amnesia, wakes up, sees Kaede, blurts out a "marry me", sees the ring on her finger, and starts plotting to Murder the Hypotenuse. Kaede drily tells him they're already married.

Tropes applying to i won't let you

• Adaptational Heroism: The others are incapable of seeing Kokichi as the same antagonistic force he was in canon.
  • The best example of this is when the mastermind attempts to frame him and Kaede as the amnesiac masterminds of the killing game.
  How in the world was anyone supposed to think that he could possibly be threatening after not only witnessing Kaede carry him like a football on the daily, not only witnessing him scream at a girl climbing a crane, not only witnessing him drag Kaede away from just throwing gifts at people, but also him having his hair done up in little bunny hair clips that Kaede just had?

  Literally no one could see Kokichi as threatening at this point. Annoying, yes, but not a threat.
• A Day in the Limelight: Shuichi has several 'Super Sleuth Saihara Shuichi Search Segments', in which he tries to figure out Kokichi and Kaede's relationship.
• Ambiguous Situation: Angie claims to be disgusted by the other students, especially Kaede, and to be completely willing to condemn all of them to death so she could escape, but Kokichi suggests that her murder of Korekiyo was an attempt to protect all of them. Whether or not she was putting on an act so the others could condemn her more easily is never explicitly confirmed, but the sequel indicates that Kokichi might have been right all along...
• And I Must Scream: Kiibo's head is separated from his body, forcing him to live on as a head reliant on others, completely helpless to stop the killings. Kaede claims it's worse than being executed as the killer. Supposedly.
• Asshole Victim: Korekiyo. His death is pretty gruesome, but absolutely nobody feels sorry for him. Lampshaded when Kokichi notes someone must have really hated him to kill him so horribly, then blithely continues that everyone there had reason to, especially the girls.
• Back from the Dead: The main story ends with Kaede waking up from the simulation, with Angie and Korekiyo having already woken up.
• Bag of Holding: Kaede's backpack is noted to be capable of holding a punching bag, a chair (as-is the case in canon), and Kokichi. This turns out to be subtle Foreshadowing.
• Boom, Headshot!: The first victim is killed via a shot to the head. The fact that their skull is still intact clues Maki into there being quite a bit of distance between them and the weapon.
• Breaking Old Trends: There are only three murders, and none of the canon motives succeed in causing a death.
• But Thou Must!: Every time Kaede tries to spend Free Time with Korekiyo, Kokichi forcefully drags her away. It's even written as a yes/no choice with the "yes" slashed through.
• Butt-Monkey: Shuichi.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Kokichi acts as Kaede's.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: As per the series' norm.
  • The second victim, Korekiyo, is simultaneously strangled and garroted with a clay wire cutter, then has his head shoved into hot wax.
  • The second killer, Angie, is chased by a masked man through a corridor of dead girls and onto a bridge over a lava pit. While she's crossing the bridge, the man cuts the ropes, which sends her swinging through the air and slamming against the side of a cliff. She desperately tries to climb up, her arms and legs getting cut by the splintered wood, but as soon as she reaches the top is thrown down...then grabbed by flying Monokumas...who bury her up to her head in a pile of clay. Monokuma proceeds to beat at and cut the clay, and once the sculpture is finished, throws it in the lava to cool.
  • The third "killer", Kaede, is sent through rooms where she is faced with multiple-choice questions about her friends. She answers them correctly, but doing so harms her in some way related to the friend, such as being shot with a crossbow (Maki) or burned with a spell (Himiko). The last room is Kokichi's; refusing to choose either "a liar" or "a corpse" as her answer, she picks "a friend", which Monokuma deems incorrect. The floor drops out beneath her and the landing breaks one or more bones. She is faced with a final monitor, which asks her whether she is a traitor, a murderer, or dead. She refuses to pick, and slowly all options change to "dead'. A group of Monokumas fall through the door and land on top of her, an unending rain of blunt force trauma that reduces her body to almost pulp.
• Death Glare: Kokichi aims an absolutely hateful one at Monokuma after the later executes Kaede under false pretenses.
• Decided by One Vote: The first trial's votes are evenly divided between the two possible culprits, forcing Kaede to be the tiebreaker. She manages to save them both.
• Everyone Lives: Due to the game being set Inside a Computer System. Even Tsumugi lives, albeit she chooses to remain in the VR and start killing games with NPCs based off the cast over and over again.
• Evil Is Petty: Played for Laughs. Tsumugi's form of revenge on Kaede and Kokichi has apparently been getting the former killed early and turning the latter into a Jerkass in her subsequent, NPC-only killing games.
• Flanderization:
  • Discussed and Played for Laughs in one of the post-game bonus stories. Apparently, Tsumugi has been making Kokichi worse in each installment of her killing games as a petty form of revenge.
  • Also applies In-Universe. When Tsumugi forced everyone into the virtual reality, she programmed exaggerations of their real-life traits into their avatars, ie ramping up Kokichi and Maki's distrust of others, Himiko's sleepiness, Angie's preaching, etc.
• Flat "What": Kokichi's response to learning Korekiyo's a Serial Killer.
  Kokichi: (blank-faced) He's a what.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Kaede being able to fit an actual person inside her bag is a clue that they're Inside a Computer System.
  • Upon learning that Korekiyo is a Serial Killer with almost a hundred victims, Kaede protests that can't be true, because how would something like that have not made the news? Because The Tragedy was going on at the time, that's why.
• Guile Hero: Both Kaede and Kokichi qualify, especially when they work together.
• Hope Bringer: Seeing Makoto trust and believe in his friends during his killing game inspired Kaede to become more open and trusting herself.
• I Owe You My Life: Miu says this verbatim to Kaede (twice) after the Pianist keeps her and Kiibo from getting executed.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Well no one has much sympathy for the villain in question, but Tsumugi is utterly incompetent as a mastermind. None of her motives work, she has to fake her own death to start the killing game, and there's only one real murder before Kaede and Kokichi outgambit her. The cast aren't afraid of her and outright mock her.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Korekiyo gets caught by Kokichi, Angie, Maki, Shuichi, and Kaito in the act of attempting to murder Kaede. After they knock him out, they secretly inform the rest of the group in order to arrange a guard schedule while all promising not to let Kaede know. This becomes a point of contention in the second trial when she has to uncover why Korekiyo was under guard and no one wants to spill the beans.
• Morality Pet: Kokichi becomes a lot nicer because of Kaede's influence.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Kokichi breaks down sobbing and begging Kaede not to even discuss a Thanatos Gambit when she first raises the topic with him.
• Off with His Head!: A non-lethal example, because the person being beheaded is Kiibo.
• One Degree of Separation: Almost the entire cast is revealed to have been harmed by the Remnants of Despair in some way. The exceptions are Kaede (who was targeted by Tsumugi) and technically Miu (she blames Izuru, but he didn't personally do anything to her).
• Properly Paranoid: Kokichi grows increasingly forceful in refusing to let Kaede spend Free Time with Korekiyo and eventually says he's going to sleep in her room. He is completely right to do so, as that very night Korekiyo tries to break in and murder Kaede.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Kaede and Kokichi for Monokuma, so much. He even loudly gripes that he will let anyone who murders them get off without a trial. No one takes him up on it.
  • Korekiyo's attempted murder goes awry thanks to encountering these one after the other. First, Angie spots and overhears him muttering to himself as he tries to pick Kaede's lock. Then, he finds Kokichi in the room with the sleeping Kaede. He backs out, realizes a frozen Angie is there, and charges at her. She runs outside and he chases her, right to where Kaito, Shuichi, and Maki are training. The trio knock him out and tie him up.
• Stealth Sequel: Stealth Interquel, rather. The fic is set just after the first game, before the second, the spin-off, and the anime, while canon V3 is one of Tsumugi's fictional virtual reality killing games.
• Thanatos Gambit: Kaede and Kokichi pull one off to end the killing game—Kaede pretends to have been brainwashed by a Flashback Light into strangling him and hanging his corpse. In actuality, he stuffs excess fabric inside the noose to give himself enough room to breath, while she keeps people away from his "body" under the pretense of grief. After the group reluctantly votes her as the killer and her execution, Kokichi strolls into the courtroom, directs a Death Glare to Monokuma, and declares that Monokuma is now guilty of murder.
• Title Drop: In chapter 35, though Kokichi drops several similar phrases when trying to keep Kaede from being reckless.
• Walking Wasteland: Miu laments that when Izuru Kamukura showed up in her city, all her inventions just stopped working.
• Will They or Won't They?: A constant question amongst the group, especially after Kaede and Kokichi switch to first names and make a habit of sleeping in the same bed. They do.
• Wham Shot:
  • In chapter 8, the first victim is revealed to be Tsumugi Shirogane herself.
  • In chapter 30, the victims of the third case turn out to be Kaede and Kokichi. (Though Kaede is quickly revealed to have survived.)

Tropes applying to forgeries, forgetfulness, and forgiveness

• Badass Biker: Kaede, Kirumi, Rantaro, Himiko, and Shuichi use motorcycles in their attempt to rescue Kokichi.

• Battle Couple: While Kaede and Kokichi are more focused on persuasive skills than most examples of this trope, they still qualify.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Tsumugi starts helping her former enemies after Kaede treats her nicely and remembers her name.
• Broken Pedestal: Monaka confesses to the other Warriors of Hope that she and Junko were manipulating them. Their image of Junko is shattered, but they accept Monaka anyways.
• Cool Big Bro and Cool Big Sis: The Despair Capture Movement essentially becomes a collection of older siblings for the Warriors of Hope.
• Distressed Dude: The story starts with Kokichi being captured by the Warriors of Hope.
• Drives Like Crazy: Most of the group, since, as Himiko points out, the world ended while they were in high school, so none of them had time to learn to drive. Rantaro is somehow still even worse than the others, to the point that everyone agreed not to let him drive ever again.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Despair Capture Movement moves to capture the members of SHSL Despair.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: Miu's help her achieve Improbable Aiming Skills, since she uses her robot arms to quadruple wield.
• Happily Adopted: The Warriors of Hope utterly adore the V3 kids and are happy with all of them.
• Heel–Face Turn: The Warriors of Hope become allies of the Future Foundation after being basically adopted by the V3 kids.
  • In a lesser example, Tsumugi winds up helping her former victims, though no one but Kaede is willing to trust her just yet.
• Famed In-Story: The Despair Capture Movement become heroes in the Future Foundation by the end of the story.
• Fingore: Ibuki bites off two of her fingers to tell Maki where to find Hiyoko and Mikan.
• Foil: Kaede's similarities to Junko in appearance and sheer charisma are pointed out and abused to capture the despairs.
• Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex: Actively Defied by Kokichi, who thinks it will only encourage Kaede's reckless tendencies.
• Indy Escape: Upon being surrounded by Sonia and her guards, Kirumi and Kokichi have nothing but a few moments, a curtain rod, the curtains, a spear, and a few strings from Kirumi's apron to escape. They make it.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Non romantic version. In spite of the word gentle still serving as as Kotoko's Trauma Button, she is totally fine when Gonta uses it when calls himself a gentleman because she realizes that he really is one when compared to the men who hurt her in the past.
• It's Personal: Each of the members of SHSL Despair have hurt one of the V3 cast personally, with the exception of Kaede.
• The Kindnapper: After he proves himself to them, The Warriors of Hope become much nicer to Kokichi.
• Necktie Leash: Kokichi gains a habit of doing this to Kaede. It helps that she's one of the few to wear her uniform correctly.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: In the author's design sketches, the amount of people who wear their Future Foundation uniform correctly can be counted on one hand. (Not counting Tsumugi.)
• Ship Tease: There's some between Kirumi and Rantaro.
• Sequel Hook: Izuru starts his game inside the simulation.
• Spared by the Adaptation: All of the Future Foundation heads, along with Yuta remain alive here due to the V3's group presence.
• Super Window Jump: Kirumi has a habit of sending vehicles through windows. Especially motorcycles.
• Off the Rails: The Despair Capture Movement tries to plan out their attempts to capture the members of SHSL Despair. Emphasis on tries to.
  • Their habit of improvising when unexpected circumstances hit is what makes Izuru Kamukura take an interest in hope: Compared to despair and their well-laid plans, their ability to adapt on the fly seems much more chaotic.
• One-Paragraph Chapter: Chapter 30.
  this is an oumasai fic now. they killed me. im sorry.
• Token Good Teammate: For a given definition of 'good', considering that they're still a member of SHSL Despair, but Ibuki Mioda is revealed to hate Junko and despair, and willingly points Maki towards the location of Mikan and Hiyoko's hideouts.
• Troll: Miaya manages to combine trolling with exposition.

Tropes applying to (because) i'm a machine (after all)

• Accidental Murder: Mahiru and Kazuichi become killers unintentionally. In Mahiru's case, she didn't know Nagito had poisoned an ingredient she was using in baking. In Kazuichi's case, he hit Nagito too hard in the process of restraining him.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Ibuki is the protagonist this time.
• The Atoner: Ibuki, though she doesn't remember why.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Usanami is very determined not to hurt human beings, but her definition of 'hurt' is 'cause them to cause their facial expression.'
• Harmless Villain: Izuru's AI doesn't actually want to hurt anyone, but her coding won't let her stray from the goal Izuru gave her.
• Foregone Conclusion: It's set Inside a Computer System. None of the killing game's victims are Killed Off for Real.
• Fusion Dance: The group decides to merge Izuru's AI with one of the teacher A.I.s to be more easily monitored. She is accidentally merged with Usami instead. Though, she doesn't seem to mind, calling herself Usanami afterwards.
• Loophole Abuse: Usanami's goal is to cause chaos. She decides the most chaotic course of action is to betray her master.
• Mistaken for Murderer: The students vote for Mikan as the killer of the first case, meaning they all would have died had Chiaki not hit the Reset Button.
• Mood Whiplash: Sonia died in the middle of the girls-only baking event. Nagito's body is discovered during a beach outing.
• Morton's Fork: If Izuru gets his memory back, the simulation resets and goes back to normal. If the others remember being SHSL Despair first, the simulation resets and the game starts over again. As Usanami puts it, he will simply reset it over and over again until he remembers his past.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Mahiru becomes the first killer by helping Sonia and Chiaki in making their apple pie taste better.
• Obvious Judas: AI Korekiyo is still a serial killer. He goes evil the first chance he got.
• Take a Third Option: Usanami is given the goal to 'cause chaos in the simulation' in the hopes of recovering Izuru's memories, but she doesn't want to hurt people. She decides the most chaotic course of action is to join the Future Foundation and loudly announce all of her plans.
• Tsundere: Hiyoko is one for Ibuki.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Chiaki's reason for the killing game? She wants to use Izuru's Morton's Fork to loop the simulation forever, keeping the students from leaving and possibly getting hurt.