''The Ouroboros Project''
is a Danganronpa OC roleplay, which met its end around November of 2014. It is a Tumblr/Msparp/Skype roleplay, and it's heavily based on the symbol of the Ouroboros that the game uses as its logo. Just like the game/visual novel, a group of elite students are trapped within a mutual killing game by a monochrome snake that calls himself "Monocobra". With tempting motives guiding the students to kill among their peers, there's not a glimmer of hope in sight! Or is there?
There is a unique killing style in Ouroboros, the students are placed in one large circle, and are given targets, and they are not informed of the identity of the person behind them, creating a perfect circle. The order switches for the different locations: Hope's Peak, a cabin placed in [redacted], and a casino.
There's a nasty twist with murdering a person, you can get away with it. That's right! If you can go ahead and sneak out from being pinned as a culprit, you are free from all that chaos, and there won't be a re-trial for that case. The innocent can also fall victim to being executed for a murderer's crimes.
With that in mind, the most reasonable approach to escaping would be to find out who this ''mastermind'' is or to be the last one standing in the order. Who's the one that trapped them all in there? What's the purpose of this? Will they be able to figure out who the mastermind is, before it's too late?
This roleplay includes the tropes:
- Abandoned Area: Hope's Peak, a snowbound cabin, and a casino—all mysteriously deserted by the time the students show up.
- Big Red Button: Monocobra hits the button post-vote to start the execution.
- The Corpse Stops Here: Subverted; the body announcement can only be triggered when a certain amount of people who weren't the culprit find the body anyway. The first people on the scene are never suspected. At least just for that.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The executions and some of the murders that occur in the roleplay.
- Denied Food as Punishment: One of the motives involves exactly this, along with turning off the heat in the snowbound cabin.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: All memories of their school days were removed, but that's it. Presumably.
- Plot-Triggering Death: The only way the story advances through chapters is when a murder's committed in each.
- Race Against the Clock: There are time limits on motives and investigations.
- Teen Genius: Everyone, to some extent; they were all accepted to Hope's Peak for being the best in their age bracket at what they do, whether it's playing chess, learning languages, or just blowing shit up.
- A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: The voting of the two innocents in chapter 4.
- Win Your Freedom: At first this is proposed by being the last one standing, but then the objective becomes finding the mastermind among them.
Wave One of The Ouroboros Project
- Acquitted Too Late: Both Kikuchi and Daisuke are said to be totally innocent, just before the execution begins.
- After Action Patch Up: Following the events of trial 3, when Kikuchi, Mori and Cole are all injured by falling down a trash chute. Things get really gay.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: "I really do love you. I should have said so sooner." Before the events of trial 4, where Kikuchi makes Tanji promise to let him be executed. Kind of a double whammy of agony considering Tanji's feelings are one hundred percent serious, but Kikuchi's side of their relationship was all an act. Also fits with Daisuke's insistence that he loved Rei before he's wrongly executed for her death.
- Backstory Horror: Can be applied to Shun and his con artist reveal along with his history in the drug wars and Kikuchi, who is believed to be eccentric at worst until it's revealed over his execution that he is incapable of emotion.
- Barred from the Afterlife: The dead kids aren't really dead. Well, not all of them.
- Con Man: Literally Shun, revealed post-trial 3. The mastermind also falls under this, having fooled everybody and hidden in the crowd for several chapters.
- Conveyor Belt of Doom: Daisuke's execution.
- Closed Circle: Refers to the assigned killing system that's based on the Ouroboros symbol.
- Dead Guy on Display: Let the bodies hit the floOOOOOOOOR. Rei also spends the entire investigation period in the aquarium until she's retrieved post-trial.
- Death by Falling Over: How do you make a character who's scared of violence commit a murder? Simply add stairs.
- Death by Materialism: Chapter 3's motive was based on objects important to the characters.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Shun is unrepentant about a lot of things, but at least he apologized for kissing Tanji. "...I realize it was probably a million times more uncalled for to you than it would've been to someone else and I guess I really am just a cruel person so. I'm sorry about that."
- Everyone Is Bi: Even the stated really gay people and really hetero people have exceptions. They're all just in the middle of the Kinsey scale somewhere.
- Eye Scream: Poor Shun. Kikuchi's unveiling also reveals that he's blind in one eye following a traumatic injury. And then don't even ask what's under Tori's bangs...
- False Confession: "I killed Kozue!" That and Kikuchi claiming to have killed Hagane.
- Hazardous Water: Rei's death in the aquarium. Though it's not the water that kills her.
- Her Boyfriend's Jacket: Kind of. Before Eren goes off to commit suicide he leaves Tanji a hoodie. She later gives it to Chokichi.
- The Ketchup Test: Sometimes mysteries stains turn out to be blood, sometimes they're lipstick, and sometimes...they're actually ketchup. Don't think this won't lead to a freakout anyway.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Inverted: Kikuchi happens upon an accidental death and proceeds to beat the corpse bloody with a pool cue.
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Well, the roster was bizarrely gender-unbalanced from the start, so it's only expected that most of the victims and killers would be males.
- Miscarriage of Justice: Occurred in trial 4, with two innocent people getting executed in two trials that went terribly wrong. The Escapologist and the Debunker were executed.
- Murder by Mistake: Tori fell on his own scalpel, okay. And Shun was only trying to kill Tanji when Hagane interfered.
- No Face Under the Mask: Instead of some kind of mundane climax or anticlimax, we get thrown straight into
Nightmare Fuel territory: Instead of a face, Kikuchi has some kind of blank slate. - Official Couple: Rei and Daisuke, Mori and Shun, Tanji and Kikuchi would be a few notable examples.
- Ordinary High-School Student: Everyone got in for their talent except for Chokichi, the SHSL Good Luck, picked by raffle.
- Perfect Poison: Rei isn't actually murdered by anything in the poison cabinet, but by something in the aquarium.
- Plethora of Mistakes: Applies to every murder in some way or the other, whether on the culprits' part or the investigators'.
- Pyromaniac: Fire features disturbingly often here. RIP meth lab. It would be easier to list the characters that are never involved than the characters that are.
- Rage Breaking Point: After the events of trial 4, Tanji and Cole team up to avenge the deaths of Kikuchi and Hagane by blinding Shun.
- Reincarnation Romance: Actually subverted; all the relationships are different in pre-despair.
- The Scapegoat: Kikuchi takes the fall for Tanji after she accidentally becomes a killer.
- The Sociopath: Cole gets this disparaging moniker a lot, being a sociologist, but the only person who really matches "literally incapable of experiencing a deep emotional attachment towards others" is Kikuchi.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Happens often, but most apparent in the cases of Daisuke and Mori.
- Team Killer: Akiyama, Minori, Eren or Tori or maybe both, Zinaida, someone yet to be caught...this kind of happens a lot.
- Useless Security Camera: The students are under constant surveillance, so figuring out whodunit should be a snap, right? Oh, but that'd be no fun.
- The Villain Knows Where You Live: Kind of unavoidable, since they're all stuck in the same place and a certain percentage are murderers.
