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.
