-gundham genuinely did not know he liked video games until chiaki got him into them. his understanding of them was things like 'visual novel about stuff he doesn't care about', 'platformers about guys he doesn't care about', 'strategy games about topics he doesn't care about', et cetera... but then. his horizons were expanded. things like pokemon, digimon, wobbledogs, zoo tycoon, planet zoo, spore, wolfquest, stray, rain world, creatures, viva piñata, simanimals, all of the petz games... and so many fucking more.
-not to mention all of the games that aren't about animals, but you can play as them if you want? holy shit. he has high standards about what level of anthropomorphizing he's okay with, but chiaki tunes in right away on what kinds of mechanics he likes and what he doesn't. he doesn't have the same kind of game autism that she does, so he's never really able to verbalize what he does and doesn't like in a game involving animals... but she is. and she curates games for him with a nearly 100% hit rate.
-he's super sketch on things like rain world at first, because he isn't sure he'd like something that doesn't focus on the care of animals... but of course, he has his mind changed ridiculously fast. turns out, if he has a cute thing to look at the whole time, he has motivation to learn almost any kind of gameplay to accompany it. she finds fast that you could set him up with an ipad and a shitty jigsaw puzzle game and he'd be all over it if the images he gets to assemble are just stolen animal photography.
-of course she makes sure he has a balanced diet of game genres to play, though. can't have him indulging in too many junkfood games, even if they're still a good addition to a full gaming schedule.
-i think they both struggle with sleeping when they're supposed to... they often end up both awake all night until the sun comes up on accident. unlike gundham, though, chiaki isn't genuinely an insomniac, so he ends up putting her to bed and then getting on with his day... he loves being night owls together, but he does get jealous of her dozing throughout the day. he's like a dog waiting for its master to come home at the end of the day when she finally wakes up. after a cycle of this, he gets so exhausted that he conks out completely... so they rarely actually sleep at the same time. </3
-this doesn't mean they don't lay all over each other when given the opportunities, though. they just don't get to sleep-cuddle very often.
-BUT WHEN THEY DO.......!!!!!!!!
-a plotbunny i've been sitting on forever with them is this: i love the idea of gundham talking to her and finding out she doesn't like slice-of-life/romance visual novels. this seems odd to him at first, but ultimately, he totally agrees - they suck, and none of the decisions in them make any sense. it's like the people who write them don't even understand how to communicate... so, as a bonding exercise, they attempt together ONE LAST TIME a dating sim... and none of the options like them. not a single one. they try to romance every last character and fail every one somehow, leaving them both really disheartened and annoyed. they both WANTED to enjoy themselves, they just couldnt! they both totally could see the romantic charm of all the dialogue options they chose! they make sure to tell each other throughout this process that oh yeah, you're definitely right, that's totally what i'd say if i was trying to come on to someone!! at some point in the middle of the night they have to just give up and gundham has to try his best to try to comfort her... sometimes it really is everyone else on the planet that's just dumb. he thinks she's right, anyway. they pivot to playing final fantasy or something instead and just focus on killing stuff for the rest of the night.
-speaking of bunnies, i think gundham gets her a rabbit. as in, gets himself a rabbit, but says that it's chiaki's. that's the plan, anyway, until the rabbit actually gets way more attached to her than to him... which he's kind of bummed about, but it's also really, really sweet.
