Watching Danganronpa: Despair Time was a mistake. I cannot stop thinking about my brand new blorbo. My terrible young man. My perfect angel. Here are assorted ramblings about the latest character I have latched on to entirely because he is the absolute goddamn worst.

Is anyone who follows me into Danganronpa: Despair Time? No. Am I going to keep talking about it regardless? I'd like to see you stop me.

The reason you're suffering through this is that I've already written my sole Despair Time fic idea, and this was not enough to exorcise my feelings. I've got all this writing energy and nowhere to put it! So apparently it ends up in rambling blog posts. I can only apologise.


( Talking about my favourite character in Danganronpa: Despair Time. )


I haven't lost my mind this hard over a fictional character in a couple of years; I think the last time was 2023, when I met Jack Shephard and experienced the Great Light Yagami Rediscovery. I'd forgotten how much fun it could be! And also how deeply unfortunate. Sometimes a character just gets my throat in their teeth, and all I can do is wait for them to stop shaking.

Glancing at the watch I'm not wearing, I see that it is once again time for me to lose my mind over something ludicrously niche.

Danganronpa: Despair Time is an unofficial Danganronpa fan series on YouTube, mimicking the style and concept of the Danganronpa games: sixteen talented young people are trapped in a building and forced to murder each other. I was a little sceptical, but I thought I might as well give it a try.

I'm really impressed! This fan series nails the Danganronpa tone, I like the characters, and it's so dense with interesting plot developments and revelations. I tore through the whole thing and had a great time.

Below the cut are the increasingly rambling and invested notes I made while watching everything that exists so far: the prologue and the first two chapters. At one point I fall hard in love with one of the characters within the space of a few seconds for extremely predictable reasons, i.e. that character being The Worst.


( Notes on Danganronpa: Despair Time, up to the end of chapter two. )


I'm already impatiently looking forward to more. Why have I done this to myself?

I recently posted this meme to my Tumblr:

Ask me whether I’ve written a thing (ship, trope, dynamic, category of fandom, etc.) and if I’ve written it, I’ll link you. If I haven’t written it, I’ll tell you how I would write it if I did.

(The meme is called 'fic author Never Have I Ever', although obviously you can ask whether I've written something even if you've written it yourself!)

Here are the resulting questions, and my responses!


keltena: For Never Have I Ever – 2nd person?

Ooh, good question! I’ve only written second person a couple of times.

Caged (Deltarune, 2018) was my first Deltarune fic, written when only the first chapter of the game had been released. The narration of Deltarune is written in second person, so I felt it made sense to use second person for Kris’s perspective!

I can’t remember my exact reasoning for using second person in Astray (Life Is Strange 2, 2019), but I think I can make a good guess! Daniel Diaz, at the age of nine, is the youngest character I’ve ever written from the perspective of, and I was concerned about getting the right narrative voice for him. Writing in second person let me remove the narrative voice from Daniel slightly, so I didn’t have to worry so much about making sure it felt authentically nine years old. I did still try to capture some element of Daniel’s voice, though!


doreyg: Epistolary for the Never Have I Ever meme?

Note from the future: I actually misunderstood what 'epistolary' meant when I answered this! For some reason I’d got it into my head that epistolary fiction had to involve an exchange of messages (letters, emails, notes, telegrams etc.); I hadn’t realised it was just telling a story through documents of any sort. So it turns out that the Visitorverse chapter I mention below does, in fact, count as epistolary fiction!

Oh, I’ve actually never tried writing epistolary fiction! The closest I’ve got is this chapter from the Visitorverse (Assassin’s Creed, 2015), told in the form of in-universe documents: an email and three interview transcripts.

I’ve read some very cool epistolary fanfiction, but I think I’d struggle to write it myself. People have such different speaking and writing voices, and most canons don’t provide a lot of in-universe written material, so I rarely get the opportunity to familiarise myself with the characters’ writing styles!


runicmagitek: for the Never Have I Ever ask: arranged marriage fic?

This one I’ve really never written at all! Possibly because most of my ships don’t really lend themselves to being married. I don’t think I’ve ever written about characters being married if they’re not married in canon, come to think of it. (Well, there’s Aveline/Shay in the Visitorverse, but one of my cowriters had previously established them as married within our shared universe, so they were married in... fic canon?)

If I did write arranged marriage fanfiction... hmm. I think this trope could be fun in Death Note, actually. Light and L get an arranged marriage to each other; they ignore each other completely because they’re busy murdering and trying to catch Kira, respectively; they slowly realise that the person they’re married to might be their enemy.


marmolita: have you ever written sex pollen?

Sort of! I haven’t written literal sex pollen, but I have written characters having (fade-to-black) sex as a result of some sort of mind-altering influence.

In canon, just before transforming, the werewolves in The Quarry seem to get a little giddy, having their moods and urges amplified. It seemed like a good excuse to write a fic in which lycanthropy essentially functioned as sex pollen: Burning (The Quarry, 2023, Laura/Travis, non-explicit mutual dubcon).


goforthequill: Have you ever written a fic about culture shock?

Oh, interesting question! I think Overwritten (Severance, 2024) might qualify? Mark reintegrates, meaning that the half of him who’s spent his entire life in an office suddenly has to cope with being in the outside world, and he doesn’t really know how to handle it.


I really enjoyed doing this, so, if you're curious about whether I've ever written something in particular, feel free to ask in the comments!