Picturing DICE as a group of people so chaotic it makes Kokichi look reasonable in comparison is SO funny to me.
I think Kokichi would keep his childlike mischievous attitude, but I'd really love to see a serious and stern leaderly side to him where he needs to be the one to scold someone his own way, or even when he needs to bark out orders quickly.
Some DICE members seem older than him, but it'd be funny if his overly responsible nature (hidden by his loud personality and silly hijinks) would turn him into some sorta dad friend, especially since the fandom at large headcanons DICE to be made of orphans. It's even more amusing with the older members.
How can someone be a little brother figure and a dad friend at once? By being as confusing as Kokichi, of course!
(A single dad who works two jobs, who loves his kids and never stops, with gentle hands and the heart of a fighter, I'm a survivor🎲)
The way that despite his boring spiel* Kokichi is so ready to believe and trust and work together in chapter one (mf doesn't even investigate) and then the example Monokuma makes of Kaede shatters allat💔💔💔
I don't think Kokichi is used to being distrusted nor alone at all.
He's always been surrounded by DICE*, and he's used to taking care of them as their leader, so his villain persona must be jarring as fuck to abide by, because I don't think it's a mask he has to turn to often. He'd use his leadership skills to calm DICE down outside of a killing game, so I don't think he's as used as it seems to just constantly genuinely upsetting others rather than simply trying to make them laugh*, but he feels like he must start conflict so that Monokuma doesn't do so himself.
He needs to be the scapegoat, but at the same time he does want to be trusted and understood, as he states his intentions clearly more than once. He is written off from the start though- when he expresses grief over death even in chapter one, the others immediately assume that it must be a lie.
Kokichi becomes the embodiment of a lie, of distrust, but he wasn't always that way. And in the end, that's not truly him either*- only the cause of his doom. But that's why he was chosen for the killing game:
His sense of responsibility as a leader was meant to be his downfall.
*I headcanon that DICE all lived and slept in very close quarters, so Kokichi is used to constant physical contact thanks to them, which he only gets in the Killing Game when getting choked out, punched, and maybe through a few piggyback rides from Gonta.
*Kokichi uses the word boring a lot. From the beginning, he calls the killing game not boring as a coping mechanism as that word seems to be of utmost importance to him, since he calls Kaede "not boring" and on his deathbed (death press?) asks Kaito if he was boring. This is obviously meant to abide to Kokichi's slight gamer motif, and it could show a fear of being forgotten. "Was I boring?" could mean "Will you remember me?" If you believe his entire being was implanted by Team Danganronpa, then it could be an insecurity his pre-game self held and resented, tired of being just as "boring" and fitting into societal expectations like everybody else. (I headcanon that his pre-game self would be a well liked class president due to his lines in the prologue)
*In the swimsuit event with Kokichi in Danganronpa S, Gonta says: "Kokichi lies a lot, but...at the end of day, you always do something that makes everyone laugh. Gonta not smart, but Gonta understand that much."
*Even if it's not truly him, nobody really changed their view on him even after watching his motive video. K1-B0 was the only one to choose to believe in Kokichi's good intentions, and I think Kaito must've believed in him too, at least to an extent, because 1. it's KAITO and he represents belief, and 2. he clearly believed in the plan and states that he went along with it because he thought it would work, and not just because of Maki. Even so, nobody who believes in Kokichi is alive anymore, so his aired out intentions don't matter as much as the impact of his actions does.
Non-despair AU where DICE sneaks into Hope's Peak Academy to visit Kokichi who misses them a LOT, and they interact and prank Kokichi's classmates so everyone realizes that Kokichi isn't lying about his ultimate talent. Kaito is in for a rude awakening, as he'd for sure be the butt of most of the jokes and pranks LOL...
Perhaps an accident happens and they help!! After all they're pacifists, nothing truly evil..! IDK but I need it✨
(I need more Kokichi using his talent istg it makes me go feral. I NEED HIM TO BE SURROUNDED BY HIS FOUND FAMILY.)
I rewatched drv3 and I want to say that I don't dislike Saiouma nor Shuichi at all, -quite the opposite, really!!- but I hate that the basis for it seems to be the mistranslation of Kokichi deeming Shuichi "trustworthy" when in the og game he labels him with "stay catious", which is the OPPOSITE of trustworthy.
Of course he'd be suspicious of a detective being put into a murder mystery killing game, he thought Shuichi was the mastermind! It's such a turn off whenever the "trustworthy" thing is mentioned in fics because it doesn't make any sense: It's not like they had many positive interactions together that would justify Shuichi somehow being trustworthy- at best there's the time Shuichi bandaged Kokichi's finger (basing it all on that would be too emotion driven for someone as logical as Kokichi), at worst there's when Shuichi left Kokichi's concussed ahh to wobble off screen.
(Unrelated, but why do people write Kokichi SOLELY thinking of Shuichi on his deathbed, rather than DICE? He suspects DICE isn't real but in his mind that's his family and always has been. People idly mention Gonta too occasionally, but aside from the guilt of getting him killed, Kokichi would think of Gonta more, bc they were actually friends and were often seen hanging out.)
Also the way Kokichi's arc ends with Shuichi deciding there was nothing to Kokichi but lies hurt sm like WDYM? Kaito may have omitted some things, but he still spelled the answer out for you, detective. (He figures it out later when going into Kokichi's room though so it's not a big deal but STILL💔💔)
I just wish saiouma fics weren't so centered on, well... A lie. There's still plenty of ways to develop them together, even without the trustworthy label! I like their ship, to an extent, and I believe it can be done well while staying true to the og game, but so many things about them seem to be taken at face value rather than truly analyzed. Their dynamic would be more interesting if it stayed true to them, and if both of their flaws were acknowledged, as well as the mind games there could be with Kokichi suspecting Shuichi.
Crazy how the localization also fucked up Kokichi's relationship with Kaito (for example, in ch 2 in the og Kaito tells Maki to let Kokichi go or he'll die, while in the english ver he tells her to let him go or she'll die; end of ch 5, og Kaito says "He was a liar to the core", rather than "he was a lying sack of shit" ) and Gonta (in the og it was more clear Gonta and Kokichi were scheming together in ch2, and that Gonta knew about the true purpose of the insect meet and greet; in general, Gonta is portayed in the english ver as a dumb caveman and I wish people wrote him by just making him talk formally but in the third person like he does in japanese, because it takes away from his character- and, by extension, Kokichi's)
I've read SO much fanfiction in this fandom, and the probability of me finding something that addresses the canon dynamics rather than the localization ones is lower than the chance of a meteorite coming to kill me on my birthday. What a shame.
I still love most things this fandom makes, so I guess this -the trustworthy thing- is just a pet peeve of mine.
Every time I read something where it's even offhandedly mentioned that DICE is either non-existent, dead, disbanded, or grown apart, I take -99999999 psychic damage. Some content where that's the case is certainly absolutely amazing and admirable, don't get me wrong, but it makes me want to crave happy DICE even more.
I want DICE to be there in a post-vr AU. I want DICE to be there in a HPA AU. I want DICE to be there in all sorts of despairless AUs, and even despair AUs, crossovers, in any and every universe.
I want them to be Kokichi's family, to love and to be loved by him fiercely, to understand or learn to understand their little leader intimately, to be ride or die's when it comes to him and each other.
I want Kokichi to get a chance to grow older and for them to be there for him as he does. I want Kokichi's care to be highlighted, and I want DICE to love and admire him.
I want him to save them.
I want them to save him.
I want them to just be there for each other, alive and well, even if it takes time. Unconditional love! Give me DICE! Angst is fine as long as comfort follows, for once💔
In a Vr Post-game AU, do y'all think Kokichi would anonymously interact with his own fandom and write metas about his own character to fuel the fire?
What if he becomes a huge troll and/or a serial doxxer and quickly gets a cult following of over 10k people for his great work in the fandom as a major hater/fake fan, but nobody knows it's fucking Kokichi Ouma, the iconic Ultimate Supreme leader from season 53 of Danganronpa.
Under his fake alias Kokichi becomes infamous/famous (as controversial as his in-game self) to the point of being a big name in the fandom (what an interesting way to use the talent the simulation gave him...) because he wants to use it against Danganronpa itself.
One of his followers ends up lighting Tsumugi's house on fire. Life is good.
Bonus if it all started from Kokichi finding his old pre-game account!
(When people recognize him on the street he fakes a blush and rambles about how it's a cosplay and sometimes says he even got plastic surgery to look like, well, himself. He has so many crazy fans that it works 99% of the time.)
Is anybody gonna beat me with hammers™ if I say I like Irouma....WHAT IS UP WITH THEIR DEGRADING PLAY why does Kokichi keep insulting her if he knows it turns her on🤨🤨
I don't think Kokichi underestimated Shuichi with his plan in chapter 5 at all. If anything, it was the opposite.
I think Kokichi overestimated Shuichi, wanting to believe (subversion with Kaito. Ha.) that Shuichi's truth-seeking tunnel vision wouldn't lead him to cooperate with Monokuma, of all creatures. In chapter 4 Kokichi was sticking close to Shuichi because he wanted to test his detective work, possibly with this back up plan in mind, and that's why he puts him against Kaito. (And also because he wanted to attach himself to Shuichi since he knew Gonta would die, and he was generally tweaking the fuck out.)
Kokichi was probably hoping Shuichi would figure out his goal of outsmarting the mastermind before revealing the truth, but Shuichi does so only after it's too late, and Kaito is forced to step out of the exisal because once Monokuma knows the truth it's over.
It's either this or Kokichi knowing his plan would fail but hoping anyway, because he and Kaito were gonna die regardless, so why not make one desperate last ditch effort? One he must've planned for a while, since writing the script couldn't have been a one day deal.
Even so, Kokichi wanted to save Kaito, which is proven by the spare jacket he leaves for him in the exisal, since Kaito had no means of knowing he would be kidnapped, and he couldn't exit the exisal to grab one pre-trial. (Kaito died of his illness so I hate when people attribute his death to Kokichi, especially since he was totally on board with his plan.)
So yeah given what Kokichi knew, his plan in chapter 5 was a total banger and it technically succeeded since it's the last one of the game and Kaito couldn't be saved anyway💔👍
People tend to think it's stupid because we as players know chapter 5 of Danganronpa consists of the last murder, but since there were meant to only be 2 survivors in v3 I assume that Tsumugi had planned more than 6 trials.
