After all the commotion about the new motive, Kyouko found herself back in the library. 

...and that's LITERALLY IT. i literally wrote one line of a new scene and never came back. i didn't even write any notes so i literally don't know what my intent was lol. i hope that was a fun enough read! i ended up liking it more than i thought i would and even found myself adding in new things based on the lore from modern detco and the kirigiri novels. first i'm gonna talk about the major plot points, then talk about how i'd change it and/or expand on points i clearly did not think about. :)

FIRST UP: the murders! of course this is what everyone wants to know, right? even though it has been about 10 years, i vividly remember what i came up with for this part. which is good because i also vividly remember that the only place i wrote this down was at the back of an old sketchbook and i have NO idea where that is now lol.

• chapter 1: we saw this one but we didn't know who the victim was! the main fic wasn't going to cover it but i wanted to afterwards write a danganronpa if-styled fic where ran didn't kill the 16th person and we got to see who it was. it was someone working for the mastermind who was told to infiltrate the group and kill someone in a way that would easily pin the blame on someone else. for some reason they were going to have shinichi's face. i dont remember if i had a reason for this though lol.


• chapter 2: so the gimmick in this fic was that a lot of the deaths were going to be accidental, self-defense, or like... a rube goldberg machine that makes someone kill someone. i don't think i ever came up with "how" this one would work but sonoko was going to be lured to the pool by the mastermind and put into a precarious situation that she couldnt escape from herself, but if someone tried to help her it would set off a trap and kill her. idk something to do with drowning. anyways heiji would be the unlucky one to fall into this trap, but while he's trying to find out a "true" culprit before the blame falls on him, someone pulls a togami and frames kaitou kid. some people think kid did it, others think the person who framed kid is the real culprit. the truth is that someone just framed him for fun and to get his identity out in the open (again: for fun). i remember it was going to be amuro who received kaito's secret, but since its been revealed hes actually a "good guy" i'm not sure that fits anymore. mastermind trickery might be behind that too honestly if i rewrote this. heiji executed, kaito revealed during the class trial. (aside: iirc the motives only ciruclated for a couple days and i'm pretty sure i wrote down who would get what, but i can't remember any of it aside from these!) (I ALSO WANT TO REMIND EVERYONE THAT I CAME UP WITH THIS FIC IN 2014 WHICH MEANS I CAME UP WITH THE MOTIVE SWAPPING IDEA BEFORE DANGANRONPA V3 DID!!!)


• chapter 3: so you may notice a theme here lol. in retrospect i feel so ashamed and unoriginal for copying the dr1 murder formula, but the danganronpa series ITSELF did it for both sdr2 and v3 so i don't feel so bad lol. akako was going to do a double murder "for fun" i guess, placing a hex on tagaki and they do a murder swap. akako would kill sato, and tagaki would kill habuka. i think afterwards tagaki would get upset and kill akako, but in hindsight i think she could just vaporize him for trying. after hakuba dies, kaito would become the third main pov character and we would finally get to get inside his gay little head.


• chapter 4: haibara suicide in her room. in which she tries very hard to make it clean and obvious but much like the original game, the mastermind messes with the scene to make it seem like a murder. i remember it was going to be big "pin the crime on amuro" hours since yknow. blorg moment. this one was really fucked up to come up with because the definite intent & implication as a writer was that there would be no one left to make the aptx antidote. sorry shinichi. anyways if all the murders happened as explained i think at this point kirigiri would think hope's peak is cursed because of how similar the deaths are, and this would lead to people really realizing how rigged this game is.


• chapter 5: yall i don't know what was supposed to happen in this one. i think sera and subaru/akai were somehow both supposed to die in this one. i don't know how though. if i were to write this without changing anything prior to this i would probably just skip the murder and add them to the survivor list.


• chapter 6: so the survivors were going to be conan, kirigiri, kaito, amuro, and kazuha. conan and kirigiri were obviously going to live to the end as the pov characters, and i think i wanted bourbon to live to the end as the red herring character, but kaito and kazuha were unplanned. i think i remember going into this NOT wanting kaito to survive to the end but he 1) has to much plot armor and 2) kind of had to live to take hakuba's place? kazuha i literally think i forgot about her. like straight up i swear she had like two lines in this whole fic. but she's awesome so good for her i guess? anyways when they escape the dr1 survivors are there waiting for them and kirigiri probably cries idk


• THE REVEALS: so the masterminds would actually be the kids from ultra despair girls (remember when i said i started writing this shortly after that game came out in japan?? yeah!). at the time of writing we in the english-speaking community didn't actually know much about them (or the game itself) beyond their general personalities so i didn't know what i was cooking for them at the time (and tbh i still don't know much about that game lol), but here in 2024 i'm imagining they're targetting the dr1 survivors one by one by putting them in a mutual killing game with people in their circle. they started with kirigiri because she's the detective, so if anything happened to the others she would probably be the first to catch one. they obviously want to pick up after junko's death but don't exactly get what made her despair & killing game so special, which is why they are content to have a direct hand in making murders happen. they're impatient and want to see everyone suffer, and they are all also arguing over the monokuma controls. i think eventually at least one of them was going to show up in a scene before the reveal or something?? like they're caught wandering the school. i vaguely remember thinking about that.

so yeah, it was edgy and used the danganronpa cookie cutter formula. like i mentioned, i wanted to do an "if" spin-off where no one died and they just solve the mysteries because none of these guys have any reason to play the killing game. i don't remember any of my plans from that tho, aside from not-shinichi being there. they'd probably get the escape switch or whatever, idk dude lol.

(unrelated: i just searched in my google drive to see if i started it at all and i found a 55-page document called "dang detect conan ronpa drabbles". where the hell did this come from. dude there's even porn in here, i didn't write this. huh?? apparently this document was shared with onion?? did you do this?? dude 2015 was a different time i would just let my friends write porn in my google drive documents. ANYWAYS PORN ASIDE maybe i'll post some of these later? none have to do with this fic they're just dcmk & danganronpa crossovers. but i mean there's 55 pages of this shit PLUS various "longer" crossover fics i made so there's probably something in there i could post.)

SO. while painstakingly formatting this fic to go on this site, i got to reread most of it and i have a lot of thoughts as a result. here's a list of things i would do differently if i actually continued this or rewrote it today:

• focus on why each character got invited. i'm genuinely BAFFLED i didnt touch upon this. i really just gloss over everyone getting the note and showing up huh?? certain characters i would trim in the first place (see next point) but there are ones i would keep that definitely need explaining. first off, the masterminds were inviting detectives or respectable people who solve crimes in order to bring them to despair and bring despair to kirigiri in turn. so inviting all the detectives make sense, but what about ones like ran, haibara, kaito, and akako? ran i imagine perhaps would have seen the letter when she checked shinichi's mail (alternatively this is why subaru/akai is there but he's a character i'd cut tbh) and/or her dad's mail. i'm imagining her discovering shinichi and her dad got the same suspicious message and she goes to investigate, perhaps hoping to find a trace of shinichi. for haibara: elementary school kid masterminds would probably also invite elementary school detectives. haibara saw that sus as hell letter and followed its trail before the kids could. kaito and akako don't fit the detective mold at all but the masterminds just want to invite some weirdos for fun. they want to meet kaitou kid and a real witch and hope it will make kirigiri go crazy somehow.


• cut/change the cast. i know for certain that takagi and sato are ONLY there because i wanted to have 15 characters lol. i would remove those two, subaru/akai, kazuha (sorry). you can tell i didn't want to write these characters anyways because they barely have any dialogue, and i would hope that removing them would let lesser-used characters like sera get more screentime. because my god sera deserves more screentime lol. aside from the aforementioned kaito and akako, every other character is either known as a detective in some circles or is connected enough to one that they might come in their place. i think it would be beneficial to just leave it smaller and maybe cut out a chapter's worth of content to compensate, but there are a couple characters i'd maybe add.


• kogoro would be a weird one but it would "make sense" if he was invited and i think being the oldest of the group could lead to some interesting dynamics later on. if we keep the ran execution in chapter 1 (which would be fucked up for me to do if i added her dad LOL) i could see him becoming like... main character material come chapter 2. bro uses 100% of his brain and swears to get all the kids and teenagers in the room out of here. a big part of danganronpa is the situation bringing the worst out of characters, so i think an instance of the despair bringing the best out of someone would be kinda peak. this would put the cast at 12, and if we consider the fact that ayumi, mitsuhiko, and genta were supposed to join alongside haibara, that WOULD HAVE put the cast at 15.


• aside from kogoro, adding a danganronpa character as a late-joining cast member might be interesting? as far as detectives go, the logical choices are shuichi and yui. shuichi is already a detco parallel (did you know that shuichi and kokichi have the same birthdays as shinichi and kaito? fun fact!) and although he's not "canonically" a real detective, this is already an AU so literally who cares. i could also swing it so he's a big detective fanatic who was "hired" by the masterminds to infiltrate the game and masquerade as a detective (or he really did get memories implanted?) before doing a murder.


• meanwhile i could bring yui back to life. the kids put her in the school thinking kirigiri would despair over her, and yui agrees to work with them so she can see kyouko again. i think adding shuichi and yui might be good for late-game after half the cast is gone just to have some fresh faces to talk to and new mysteries to cook. it would give kirigiri and the audience more to solve, since a big part of the fic is the dcmk characters solving danganronpa (which readers would probably already know). i don't know if i would have the heart to make shuichi or yui do murder though tbh. i mean technically yui already did murder so she's super capable of it, but i dont want to execute her after she and kyouko just got reunited :(


• timeline changes? not sure if i would want it to be modern detective conan timeline... i think having a distrustful member of the cast (amuro) adds something to the dynamic. conan and friends would probably find out his true nature during the fic though. amuro just seemed sus because during this whole fic because he was trying to contact his secret police buddies on the outside world without giving away his job to everyone else. the danganronpa side wouldn't really change aside from adding more kirigiri novel references.


• conan=shinichi discoveries: if we went with adding kogoro, i think he would be a really good one to discover this, probably via the second motive. i don't know how many days i wanted that motive to circulate, but i feel like that's how a decent amount of the group learns about that one. it's hard to say how many would find out though! on one hand i think it's kind of uncommon for characters like sonoko and hakuba to learn that secret in fics which makes it REALLY enticing to write about, but on the other hand i think it would keep the dynamics more interesting if a couple characters were left in the dark. sera has been confirmed to know. apparently kaito is "confirmed" to know in the present day?? but i think it would be REALLY funny if we didn't follow movie canon and he ended up being one of the last people to know. i'm not too sure about kirigiri knowing about it, although it might be interesting if she didn't know and yui knew on account of working for the mastermind.


• murder changes: so we consider the new cast: conan, kirigiri, heiji, kaito, hakuba, ran, kogoro, sonoko, haibara, amuro, sera, akako, then later shuichi and yui get added.
  • i think chapter 1 and 2 could stay the same.
  • chapter 3 is the first one affected by the character removals. i feel like conan, kirigiri, kogoro, and shuichi need to last to the end for the sake of character development. hakuba, yui, and haibara are basically walking death flags so this leaves kaito, amuro, sera, and akako to either survive or die. i hate to continue the trend of "crazy bitch kills people in chapter 3" AND I ALSO hate to kill off akako because she deserves more screentime, but i think she's the most fitting to do a murder here.
  • if we keep chapter 4 being a haibara suicide, i could see haibara and akako getting along and akako's execution being part of what sets off the suicide. shuichi would be the prime suspect for it and would even confess to it because that's how his memories were rewritten, but it's not him!!
  • let's get chapter 5 out of the way: yui kills hakuba at the mastermind's request. we need to break kyouko's heart twice in one chapter.
  • back to ch 3: i hate to kill off all the women but the situation that makes the most sense to me is akako using magic to control sera into trying to kill kaito, but amuro kills sera and akako is the "guilty" one because she is the one who "planned" the murder (which is what the rule is in dr1). it would fit with the theme of the mastermind changing the rules to fit with whatever they want to do.
  • so the survivors would be conan, kirigiri, kogoro, shuichi, amuro, and kaito. i think hakuba dying later kind of puts a wrench in kaito becoming a main pov character halfway through, but i think it would give hakuba an actual chance to be a pov character and then the torch might be transferred to kaito a little bit more meaningfully.
  • ...although to be honest, the lack of women surviving to the end genuinely bothers me lol... perhaps akako could survive somehow with her magic? or she loses her magic? like if anyone was to survive an execution, i think it would be the person with real magic. kyouko could probably help her "get away with it" by bringing up how the mastermind of the first game let naegi live when he survived his execution. though this DOES negate what i said about it affecting haibara's suicide... so its hard to say. maybe they don't know she survived til after chapter 4. perhaps she could show up during chapter 6? i think with bringing in shuichi (ch 3 or 4) and yui (ch 5) they need at least a full chapter to establish themselves. usually in danganronpa, all the survivors have been developed as far as they can go when chapter 6 rolls around so akako coming back in chapter 6 to go through character development might work.
  
  
• overall pretty much every character needs a revamp in how i wrote them? i expect as much after ten years though, i'm certain at the time i was basing a lot of these personalities off of the tumblr rping i was doing. kirigiri in particular i made kind of manic because i rped her as a freak lol... it's really fun reading a line and instantly knowing how i could make it more in-character, especially after not engaging with these medias for most of a decade. sure i got back into detco a year or two ago but it's still pretty impressive! :) monokuma could use an overhaul too to better get across the differences from junko and also hint at multiple people taking turns controlling him. anyway, unrelated but the reason i stopped writing this fic was because i came up with the 999 detective fic, and that fic is such a step up man it's crazy. like yeah there are things i would change about that one too but this one was basically just a prototype for that one.


• all in all, i'd definitely want to write two fics still LOL. one lean into the gut-wrenching mutual killing vibes that danganronpa does and one to lean into the "no one important dies" philosophy of detective conan. like it feels like a disservice to write a fic in this setting and NOT have characters die, but i don't think it fits the detco characters and the copious amounts of plot armour they have. i'm imagining the masterminds constantly throwing murder traps in the game and the dcmk cast can defuse the situation without casualties every single time lol. turn the despair into a comedy. ALTERNATIVELY, we go hard on danganronpa if and kaito, who got really into the gacha machine, ends up getting the escape switch because he's the luckiest boy alive. i definitely don't have the time or energy to write two fics though!

anywaysss i feel like i had more to say so if i remember it i'll add it. thanks for reading! keep an eye out for more old fics i might drop in the secret pages. i've got a few wild ones i know exist but i'm terrifed to bring into the light haha. (note to myself to remember these but also as a hint to secret hunters for if i DO add them: 1st(?) pov jojo fic, the self-insert oc x sonic fic)

if you really dig looking through my old content like a freak, why not try my fanfiction dot net account next? cuz if those fics weren't already posted there, they would definitely be hidden away on here!!!