#took me so long bc i made a gif and a sprite edit

[spontaneousglitterbees]

Legally required to ask for Kokichi for the ask game

[For this ask game]

gosh ur so right anon. I am so sorry this got readmore levels of out-of-hand full spoilers for NDRV3 and also rated C for Current Hyperfixation.

favorite thing about them

Counter-intuitive, but I know my past self (including the era when V3 came out) would have hated Kokichi for the same reasons I like him now. Mainly:

I really did go into V3 expecting to loathe Kokichi as a nuisance at best; I’d been spoiled on Ch. 4  before getting into DR because I thought ‘my aim sucks I won’t play it anyway’  and, loving bees and assorted bugs as I do, I figured Gonta would be my favorite. And I mean, he’s up there, but this little shit. How dare he be an engaging character.

Unsure where I said it previously, but Kokichi seems like the kind of guy who would run a How to Beat [X Movie] channel out of earnest (admit so or not) love for the thought experiment of it all, which isn’t just relatable, but a very interesting Type of Guy to have in your killing game scenario. The one constantly pushing the boundaries, but not quite meta-level aware they’re in a video game; genre-savvy and trying to Actually Accomplish Something Constructive. He also goes about it in such a way that launches a couple malatovs at every bridge he has, which, having been anxious and overly rejection-sensitive in high school, is fucking wild to me. You are going about this in the worst way you could, on purpose, and that is fascinating. Mentally I am putting him in a microscope slide because What Is Your Deal

Plus, the way he constantly has some kind of front up to a point where Saihara can’t decide who he really is by the end of Ch. 5… hmm chameleon complex? I find it quite simple, really. Unclear to me if they meant to make him Like This but doubling down on constant over-performance of social signals because communicating frustrates you and it lets you feel some small degree of control in your life is (in my experience at least) very autistic of him and as a result hearing the whole V3 cast consider him entirely indecipherable down to the bitter end… oof ouch real anxieties? 

least favorite thing about them

A) Some of the iconography they chose for his talent. Which I’m pretty sure they pretty much ditched outside promos? So B) Some of his art in the wake of Ch. 4 is… wonky, but not in a way that looks fully deliberate? It undercuts the drama for me a bit. I think Kokichi seems much more menacing when he drops pretenses entirely and just goes blank instead of trying Very Hard to act out a particular emotion (like he does pretty much all the time). Instead of the demon face, something more like this?

favorite line

I blame this for getting "The more that you suffer, the more I enjoy it" stuck in my head, plus the combo of "Now you'll never, ever forget me for the rest of your life! [...] I stole your heart, so now I'm satisfied." The two surface Kokichis asdfghjkl

Looking for quotes though it came to my attention that in Chapter 2 he says "[...] I wanna win this killing game! So I'm not gonna run from it, I'm gonna crush it! That'll be waaaay less boring, don'tcha think?"  kicking screaming they knew exactly what they were doing

shipping and handling

tbh I less ‘ship’ and more ‘please make them interact with one another’, so grains of salt I suppose!

brOTP

Kokichi + Miu. Gotta find who in the amalgamate server said ‘in any other circumstance they’d be besties’ because they are Correct.

OTP

This is a self report but like fuck it we ball Kokichi ♢/♠ Kaito

If you know the intricacies of what that means you may be entitled to—

Pretty much this vine

nOTP

I guess I'm a little squicked thinking of Kokichi/Gonta in a romantic sense? See at least in TAPP they've still got a Lot to talk about before comfortably calling one another 'friend' instead of 'working on it'

random headcanon

Ah a lot of these are already sprinkled in TAPP so what’s one y’all haven’t heard before,,

He started painting his nails during the game initially to interrogate (RE: get-to-know) Rantaro, and kept doing it to discourage himself from biting his nails and cuticles all the time. There's only like one sprite where he does it, but I think it could be a nervous tick

TAPP!DICE may not be real but the tea party policy absolutely is

I've drawn him in skirts doing outfit memes, but I think for him it's less concrete than feeling like dressing femme sometimes and more that, post-game and organization-less, he has no idea who he's supposed to be anymore and is throwing pretty much everything at the wall in many facets of his life. Including but not limited to saying 'screw uniforms' and seeing how long it takes him to get in trouble with HPA for wearing different clothes every day. After long enough unchallenged he starts getting his classmates to do it too. Considering... their entire circumstances in TAPP, they get away with a lot more than the other classes 

unpopular opinion

Is it unpopular to say that some of the info from Kokichi’s FTEs should have been in the main plot? The knife game scene, besides being my favorite, seriously clues the player into what he’s like beyond the artifice without having to posthumously dump that exposition in his room, and that a lot of players confused by him are likely to miss out on characterization that would clarify things Irks Me.

song i associate with them

Oh, only one song? Too bad, 'cuz I Can’t Decide - Scissor Sisters

My other cop-out is 'Cause I’m a Liar - Mcki Robyns-P, which I’m working on a cover for in Synth V

Other than that? I haven’t built up nearly enough song-based associations with the DR cast yet somehow, but I’ll throw in Queen of Nothing - The Crane Wives which is less a Kokichi vibe than “I’m writing TAPP!Kokichi in the wake of Chapter 5” vibes. Isn’t this what you wanted? Time sure feels like it’s running out. Finish what you started, Queen of Nothing, wearing such a heavy crown.

I don’t know if this is in the spirit of the prompt but the thought did occur to me that a Trial 5 animatic to I’m Alive from Next to Normal would slap really really hard actually.

I need more peppy songs in my life, is what I’m gathering.

favorite picture of them

Let’s split it like this:

Favorite from the game? Probably this one

The face of a man asking “what are you gonna do, shoot me?” promptly before getting shot.

Sprite? This one

Is it genuine curiosity? Is he mocking me? Some mysterious third thing? Yes.

and a fanart that lives in my brain rent-free (the-everlasting-ash). Linking instead of reposting bc please support the original artist. There are many, many wonderful pieces of fanart out there, but this one carved a niche in my brain and stayed there (it is the cover image for DR art on my phone on account of Stunning).

Also for the uninitiated on TAPP- [Talent Acquisition Pilot Program AU Masterpost]