#piposnake

I only have two rough doodles of Piposnake lying around but neither of them are what I'd call "Established" as I hadn't figured out the shape of his muzzle and was still trying to figure out his clothes but in a way I wouldn't hate to draw on repeat.

Is it related to the usual psychological problems all the Project Specter survivors plus post traumatic stress disorder from being a combatant?

Piposnake's Crisis Loop is effectively a trauma response where he freezes up completely.

In a meta sense it's to allow him to be a threat while also having a distinctly exploitable weakness so he's not too op for the rest of the gang to deal with. He's easily the most lethal of the three Project Specter survivors (Specter is almost completely self taught and heavily relies on PK to stay out of hand to hand combat range when possible, while Pipotchi has absolutely zero combat skills) so needs to have an Achilles heel somewhere.

In universe the Crisis Loop itself is a cocktail mix of trauma from just existing as what was effectively a baby monkey with a human soldiers mind imposed upon it and the host ape's frontal lobe almost completely fried, along with the helmet being a 15-ish year old model as of "Red Light; Blue Light". Unlike Specter and Pipotchi who at least have the option for safer upgraded helmets, everything that is Piposnake is the helmet itself and the branch of the project that birthed him was quickly shut down, meaning no advancements or safety measures beyond the first installment were ever made leaving Piposnake to suffer the horrors of being a trained soldier who has seen hundreds of hours of combat since infancy, with an old model helmet that cannot be changed or upgraded less the host body goes comatose and risk resetting the helmet itself and all that he is be deleted.

If triggered the helmet attempts a reboot, leaving Piposnake frozen in place and vulnerable until to boot finishes, which is why he is placed on a team (Viper's Nest) rather than allowed solo missions in order to accommodate this vulnerable state when needed. It can be triggered in numerous ways, but is easiest to trigger by forcing him to think about the identity crisis that is that no matter what his mind and memories tell him, he is in fact NOT Solid Snake and all those memories are effectively a lie, His data-brain/monkey-brain can't face it which triggers the Crisis Loop and the data brain chooses a reboot to break it.