☆pinponpanpoooo~n☆: on personhood and being a blorbo

Danganronpa fucking sucks. But also I really love Danganronpa.

Let me explain! I am Kokichi Ouma! From New Danganronpa V3! I’m a popular character, i’m a controversial character. People have bad takes, people have shit takes. People reduce my character down to a bunch of bullshit sometimes. But you know. That’s not new to me. Because I was part of Danganronpa, when i was in Danganronpa. And god that makes no fucking sense from an outside perspective.

In NDRV3, Danganronpa is a show. It was inspired by the popular game series. so, Danganronpa and Super Danganronpa 2? The anime? Another Episode? IF? All fiction! None of that stuff happened. But… Team Danganronpa saw the popularity of the game series and decided… hey. They did a simulation in SDR2, right? Why can’t we do that? So, they began recruiting people for the show. I was one of them in a later season. They take your identity, and replace it with that of a character that they create. All of your memory of your past is gone, replaced with something that never happened. It’s real to you, but it never happened in reality. You’re then inserted into a virtual world, where you’re put in a fake scenario where you have to kill one another, or be killed yourself. Are these deaths real? No. When you die in the game, you don’t actually die. You wake up out of the virtual world, confused and scared, and are shipped off to Team Danganronpa’s hospital. Eventually, once you’re well enough, you’re on your own. You become a celebrity, everyone knows your name. After all, Danganronpa is one of the most popular shows in the world. You make tons of money, though most of it goes to Team Danganronpa. They do pay for your housing, as well as any medical costs, though. But, yeah, you made it out of the killing game. Now what? You have no identity. You can’t trust anybody. You are, essentially, a fictional character wandering around the world, being paraded around by your creator. You can’t live a normal life. Everyone has opinions about you. Everyone knows everything about you. People have dissected your every trait. You are not a person. You aren’t a celebrity, even if the industry tries to convince you that you are. You’re fake. I’m fake. My past and personality have been rewritten. I have no idea who I was before the game. I have trauma that might have not happened to me. I have connections that don’t exist. But, god, they’re so fucking real to me. Nobody gets it. How am I supposed to live a normal life when my life is a show? My life is fiction.

So, yeah, I have experience with being a “blorbo”. I look around at the Danganronpa fandom now, and I have a sense of familiarity. There’s comfort in being fake. I’m used to it. Being a blorbo is all I’ve known. But at the same time… people think things about me, because they look at me and don’t see a person. I’ve been banned from Discord servers. I’ve been put on DNIs and blacklists. Why? Because I’m the fictional character, Kokichi Ouma. I’m not a person. I can deal with the shit takes. I can deal with the misunderstandings of my character, even though I’ll absolutely rant about them in private. I can deal with the shipping, even though me and the Shuichi Saihara in my brain both loathe the idea of being romantically together. What I can’t deal with is me, personally, being seen as fake. You can talk about the character all you want. But don’t go up to me and treat me like I’m not a person. You shouldn’t do this to any fictionfolk. We aren’t your blorbos. Well, we are, but we’re also not. I’m a real, breathing person. I was back then, and I am now. Treat me like one. Listen, if you must treat any fictionkind like blorbos, let it be me specifically, because, again, I’m used to it. I don’t like it, but I’m used to it. But also don’t. Don’t treat anyone like they don’t really exist. I’m a person. I work a 9-5. I play Katamari Damacy in my free time. I listen to jpop idols. I get a grape monster and a pack of cookies when I go to the store. I love Hot Topic. I’m a person. Fictionfolk are people. Don’t forget it.