#Akechi Goro i like a lot too

[chatlote]

Just because you don't love yourself it doesn't mean I will stop loving you.

[cosmic-espero]

Not to be Like That but I seriously don't like how P5 vanilla will try and tell me that Ryuji is bad and annoying for being a traumatized teenager wanting positive attention from the people around him and reacting negatively to bullying and then turn around and act like Akechi gets a pass for all the people he murdered because uhhh... reasons

[edenfire]

🌅💗 Shuake Week - Day One - Swap 💗🌅

time to kick off shuake week!!! ( > v <)/☆ tho the prompt for today was "roleswap", I decided to go more for a literal outfit swap instead😂💦

[wake-up-get-up-get-out-there]

I once said that Atlus should make an Akechi-centric game called Persona 5 Black and I stand BY that shit

Clearly the company can’t let the game go (and neither can I lol) so they might as well explore all routes they can take with it. I personally think it’d be really interesting to see Akechi’s perspective of it all, from what first happened to his mother to where he eventually ended up.

[petorahs]

shuake rite of passage is like. spending most of the entire game going 😐🤨🤔😳 at their banter/flirting/dates. being intrigued when the normally silent protagonist exclaims a heated "this isn't 'trivial'!" about his one and only rival's life, completely independent of player input. accepting the undeniable fact that 'our light' is basically a love song from protag's point of view to said rival. finding out about proof of justice ova. watching proof of justice ova. watching proof of justice ova again. going insane at the fact that the normally silent protag who never cries, cried over their rival in public. the fact that he was thinking about him before bed. realizing the one active, 'selfish' choice and wish protag had always involved his fated rival in some way, again completely independent from player's views on said rival.

and then becoming lucid for one second and finding out you just dug yourself into a shuake rabbit hole and theres no getting out

[cloudyydraws]

shoutout to coffee + pancake duos

wish i could doodle more of them but they are so funny to me

[crescentfool]

some scribs based on things i saw at kawaiikon 2023 last week, i had a lot of fun! (in which i use minato + my squidkid as stand-ins for myself)

bonus comic + some thoughts about the con under the cut!

gotta love when u think it’d be cool to cosplay but then completely forget to get anything for the cosplay (i forgot to go to look for yellow fabric for a ryoji scarf)!! so u just go as just some guy (my wardrobe has a few items that remind me of my faves).

ANYWAYS for the con itself, i had a lot of fun! something about it was very humanizing, just knowing that there were other people in hawaii who also like persona (and the other things that i am into). i got to pull out my beloved minato nui/plushie and share him with other people which was. fun!!

the cosplayers were super cool too! the femc cosplayer was super sweet and they had!! a p3 protag itabag and it was so ?? heartwarming and cool for me to see that?? and the akechi + kokichi cosplayers being in the same proximity was also very cool to me (idk i feel like they’re just both interesting characters).

and of course the artists were very lovely... i was very surprised 2 see so much persona 3 (thank you p3p for being put on modern consoles) there, haha. i paid the minato tax™ aka that’s what happens when your favorite character is like. the protag. i have so much beautiful minato art in my home now. i am so happy and normal about this. my heart is sold to him. he has such incomprehensible boy swag that transcends the universe. but anyway.

this is very rambly but um idk im just! grateful and appreciative! that other people are out there that enjoy media that i like especially since they were so scarce and far between (other fandoms showed up more frequently). would i go again? dunno, depends on what im into by the time next year rolls around. but i’m glad that i went this year, for sure 💙

[justiceburst]

Moral Alignment Test

Goro is 18.3% good, tied between chaotic and lawful, making him true neutral.

[orcelito]

honestly there's smth rly nice about fellow creators who r obsessed with the same fictional character. how our interpretations are all slightly different. but we r just nodding at each other like Good Portrayal, my dude

idk, it's nice

[kroosluvr]

aftermath

ERMMM this takes place after long winter au third semester.... it could honestly vary but i think sometime btwn 5-10 yrs. sumire is abroad, akira moved back to tokyo after finishing hs/college, goro is. around

SORRY ITS 5am again so ill make this quick . again

QUICK DISCLAIMER this is kinda like a lot of me projecting LMFAOSDOGKJSDHFK@#)40 so like dont read into this tooooo much bc idk royaltrio cld be insnanely ooc here but. YEA.

started thinking abt akira constantly calling up goro and sumire even after 1) goro dies (so they think) and 2) sumire distances herself post-third sem. i elaborate on this on my shusumi fic........ sorry subtle shilling

^ tldr i think these 3 kinda drift apart after the snowglobe world crumbles, that false reality that ironically brought them so close together..... back in reality, things feel Different (but this is Our reality right? why does it feel so strange now?) and so. well its just not the same, no amtter what

the. the “the love was there. it didnt change anything. it didnt save anyone. there were just too many forces against it. but it still matters that the love was there” tumblr post

even though they loved each other and knew it too, there was also some sort of looming feeling that it won't last - but it does, still. it exists, in some meaningful sense-

akira sees and thinks about sumire and goro in everything he does, his day to day life, worries about them, wants to tell them about all he's doing, wants to hear about what they're up to. so he does so by leaving voicemails (although in this case sumire changed her number LMFAO. he does it anyway)

in the same vein, sumire thinks about all the things she'd like to tell goro, but with no address to send it to, it's useless. but she writes them anyway - more and more as a solace to herself, conversing with the memory of goro in her head, making him live on in that sense. and with akira i think it's a little more subtle. here she's trying to find a coffee shop that measures up to lebalnc, and of course she doesn't. there's only one leblanc and only one akira. but yeah like in sumire's case she kinda goes these "roundabout" ways in her Missing Them. theres also the added thing of her wanting to be more independent (from goro and akira and kasumi and tokyo and etc etc etc. also elaborated on in said fic)

goro! i think there's smth so poignant about visiting your own grave (i wrote sumire doing htis in another fic. thats an aside) hair cut, mask on, no gloves, he's a different sort of goro akechi but not really in any meaningful sense either. he's just different. sumire leaves the scarf (i think w sumire, she learns from goro like. omg im blanking on the word. LIKE reliability..? thinking realistically? smth like that.) so shes subconsciously thinks oh ill get him something useful like a scarf to keep warm (and a lil more subtle on the love aspect). akira gets him a lovely bouquet, straightforward and honest w his love/adoration, never afraid to spell it out. smth abt goro needing to live a new life now but also he keeps looking back - but this time, there's love when he looks back. there's still love

a kind of "youll always have home with me" sentiment btwn these 3. even if we never return there, youll still have a place in my heart

like "i dont think ill ever have that kind of love again. but i had it once. and even if i couldnt keep it, its still important." THIS IS HARD TO EXPLAIN

anyway tldr theres just some sentiment w royaltrio w Wanting to move on but also holding onto your past, and learning how to reconcile with the horrible parts but also the tender and lovely parts. sometimes there's stuff you gotta leave behind and grow past, grow around, even if it's good. even if it's good, you still have to push forward. <- a lesson that i'm trying to teach myself currently so thats why this is very. projecting. LMFAODSJKHJKSDKW sorry im crnge goodnight

these notes are horrible dont read these.

[worstcharacterpoll]

[Image description: A tournament bracket of 32 contenders, labeled "Tumblr's most hated." The matchups on the left are Vriska vs. Pearl from SU; Rex from Victorious vs. Rick Sanchez; Ansem the Wise vs. Gul Dukat; Kylo Ren vs. Kokichi Ouma; Scrappy Doo vs. Sheldon Cooper; Pierre from Stardew vs. Mort from Madagascar; Seraphine from League vs. Heimskr; and Jurgen Leitner vs. Andre Glacier. The matchups on the right are Walter White vs. Light Yagami; Buck Cluck vs. Ross Geller; Bramblestar vs. Starlight Glimmer; Goro Akechi vs. Pariston Hill; Katsuki Bakugo vs. Berdly; Angel Dust vs. the Impostor; Olaf from Frozen vs. Hooty; and Zenos viator Galvus vs. Tony Stark. The bracket is red on a black background. End ID]

Here is the official bracket for the most Hated Character on Tumblr! Each round will last 24 hours, with a 12 hour break in between. Round 1 should start Feb 9, 2023 at 9:00 AM CST.

As a reminder, this tournament is for the characters that you hate the most, so always vote for your least favorite of the two options. The winner will be publicly executed.

FAQ under cut:

Q: Why did you put in x character and not y character? Aren't there more hateable characters from that franchise?

A: I wanted to keep the competition light-hearted, funny, and interesting. I intentionally avoided most shitty parent characters, dictators, characters who were meant to be hated, etc., as well as characters heavily associated with bigotry and sexual assault, and gravitated towards characters that were more divisive in fandom. Exceptions were only made for characters I am familiar enough with and can use my own judgement for. Using Zenos as an example: He is a villain who is very evil and meant to be hated, which I mostly avoided when taking suggestions for things I wasn't familiar with myself. However, he's very divisive between people who think he's a good interesting villain, people who don't think he's a good villain and don't like him in the story at all, and people who want him carnally. Walter White is also meant to be hated, but he has a meme status, and as a villain protagonist I think he's more interesting than most "meant to be hated" characters. Also, there are certain franchises that I simply didn't want to include. If JK Rowling wasn't such a real and horrible political presence, owing all her influence to Harry Potter, I would've definitely put Snape on the poll. As it stands, I don't really want to give HP any attention. TL;DR answer: Because it's funnier that way

Q: But I LIKE that character :(

A: As mentioned before, I specifically gravitated more towards characters who are more divisive rather than universally hated. They are usually more interesting, and there is more variety with those types of characters - you don't have shitty dad character #1 vs. shitty dad character #2. I actually looked for "anti-(character)" tags and discourse about that character when making decisions about who to include. lol If you actually like some of these characters (uh, my condolences), vote against them in their respective matchups.

Q: Is it too late to suggest a replacement?

A: Yes.

Q: Why are you doing this?

A: I feed off of hatred and violence. I want to see who tumblr users REALLY hate.

Q: Why Pearl?

A: It was quite a while ago now so I get it if people don't remember, but Pearl discourse used to be a big thing and people argued that she was irredeemable for many of the things she did early on in the show. If you remember the "Pearl hates the Irish" meme, that was a parody of how much people hated her

Q: Why Hooty?

A: I haven't seen the Owl House but I'm told many people think he's annoying. Also he's voiced by Alex Hirsch and fuck that guy he did my boy Ford so dirty I'm still mad about this

Q: Why Starlight Glimmer?

A: MLP:FiM is another show I didn't really watch but she was a villain who got redeemed and became a main character and a lot of people think her redemption arc was rushed and botched and she actually made a lot of people quit watching the show. One of my close friends really really really hates her and I don't think that's an isolated incident

Q: Why Berdly?

A: Annoying. Personally I think his arc of becoming less annoying was pretty fun but a lot of people still hate him.

Q: Why Bakugo (instead of Mineta)?

A: I actually debated this a lot and held a preliminary poll which Mineta actually won. But then I decided democracy is dead because Mineta really wouldn't be as interesting as Bakugo in this tournament because he's basically universally hated. Bakugo is more interesting because people who hate him REALLY hate him, while people who love him REALLY love him. Kind of like Vriska. I think. I never read Homestuck and I don't plan on ever doing so.

Q: Why Tony Stark?

A: He's a heavily divisive character because he's a war profiteer billionaire with a superiority complex, but the narrative treats him as a morally pure hero. Also, he's MCU Spider-Man's mentor and most of MCU Spider-Man is basically defined by Tony Stark and he's not allowed to be his own character. There's a bunch of other stuff but I didn't watch and I don't care about most of the MCU. Personally I'm a really big Spider-Man fan and I despise him for what he did to Peter Parker but I shall refrain from making this a long rant.

Q: Why did you include characters that you're not familiar with?

A: I didn't want to exclusively have characters from my interests. I wanted a bit of variety. Before the poll started, I accepted submissions for candidates, and basically trusted submitters to send in decent characters. Some of the characters I ended up with may go against the vague guidelines I set for myself, which kind of sucks, but that's how it is now.

Q: This bracket sucks.

A: Make your own tournament then. I'm just some guy making a tournament on tumblr dot com for free. Don't take it too seriously.

[killualoverr]

hellooo :D

I see you want some requests for a while and I really liked your dating hc w persona 5 girls

can you a do a same one but with goro Akechi and joker ? (fem reader)

please don't overwork yourself dear<3 Have a nice day<3

₊ ☆ ‧₊˚ → ren/joker and akechi general relationship hcs!

cw: fluff, slight angst in akechi’s part, mentions of shido (and therefore spoilers)

note: ahhhhh tysm, you’re so sweet! i’m glad you enjoyed my other dating hcs and hope you like these as well! ( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ )

- ren is a very flexible and accommodating boyfriend. it’s not that he changes his entire personality forcefully to fit your needs, it's just natural for him for some reason.

- he doesn’t mind some pda here and there

- he introduces you to his friends early on and you become part of their group pretty fast

- if you’re not a phantom thief he tries to not pull you into anything involving that sort of business just to avoid endangering you

- if you’re a phantom thief, in the metaverse he's always watching out for you.

- talking about watching out for you, he looks out for you in subtle ways, like walking on the side with the traffic, giving up an empty seat on the train for you, etc.

- he’s the type of boyfriend that wins the prize you want for you at an arcade (like after 7 tries but he still gets it nonetheless)

- sojiro is constantly giving you things on the house whenever you come to leblanc

- dates with him are practically anywhere, he just likes spending time with you.

- akechi doesn't want people knowing too much about his personal life as someone who's in the public eye. not only that, he wants to avoid getting you involved in any shido/phantom thief business.

- so your relationship is kept private for your safety. he’ll do anything to avoid putting you in harms way

- pda isn't common, however he makes lots of time for you! it’s a bit limited because of his occupation but he always makes sure to at least text you a few times throughout the day <3

- he adores quality time

- once he adjusts to literally one of the first healthy relationships in his life he's very sweet

- very very touch starved. at first he hates physical affection because it makes him feel vulnerable but after a bit of reassurance from you he eventually gets more comfortable with it.

- that being said, akechi has a very complicated past that affected him in more ways than one, so reassurance plays a big role in your relationship with him.

- he also values communication. whether you're going through something or on a rare occasion that you had an argument, talk to him and tell him what you need/want.

- dates will happen at akechi's apartment or at your house. if you guys are outdoors, it would be at a somewhere like a restaurant most of the time.

[senblades]

Hi :)

I love your art and your writing, and you have such a great grasp of these characters that I was wondering if you have any fic recs? Rating doesn't matter ;)

boy do I! (and ty for the compliment <3 <3 <3)

[cracks knuckles] alrighty:

The Dissapearence of Goro Akechi by Kupowonders - Probably my favourite fic ever, honestly- it's like. derailing the plot of persona 5 post-medjed thanks to the persona 4 accomplice ending years prior. (So, spoilers for p4 in that, too) it's. very good.

Marigolds by Colbub - Akechi gets ng+'ed to right when he started working for Shido, and has to take a good look at the future to come and be like "Aight how the fuck do I fix this". Fun times!

Daredevil, You've hit the wall by ez_cookie. Essentially, p5 Strikers but Sumire and Goro get to be in on the fun, too. And, there's a direct sequel currently being updated that's a similar premise for p5 Tactica. very very good stuff

A Tale of Two Tricksters by Zoe2k8 - Murder boyfriends! ...sort of? Angst! Angst and murder boyfriends! An oversimplification, obviously, but I'm not kidding when I say this fic is amazing and is also over a million words holy shit-

Throw away your mask by MollyPollyKinz - Another ng+ situation for Akechi, but this time the poor guy gets thrown all the way to 2009. You can imagine how well that goes (For the audience, less so for Akechi himself.)

The Crow Cries at Midnight by Dorked. hehe this one is very fun. Basically, a series of coincedencs causes Akechi to get thrown into the plot of persona 4. No time travel here! Just a grumpy 12/13 year-old Akechi trying to solve a murder mystery

The entire Tales of Chaos series by Eternalmomentss (The first one is called Like sand between your fingers) Very very good stuff! Something of a character study, I would say, of Ren and Goro. Plus, all the funky plot stuff that comes from trickster-typical bad luck and poor descision making. I really love this series hehe

uhh this post is getting very long I need to make this less wordy- lightning round?

Hunger for a life by Leonawriter - do you like vampires? I sure do! Mix that and the p5 plot and you get shenanigins. [evil laughter] a lot of shenanigins

Fishbowl by KivaEmber - Akechi has a terrible time in Maruki's reality. And I mean a terrible time

You have a beautiful smile underneath that mask by Saposaki - Akechi has a crush on Akira and Joker has a crush on Crow. No one is aware of the other's secret identity. Dramatic irony and hilarity ensues.

MASTERMiND by StumblingBlock - No Metaverse au where Akira really doesn't want to follow in the footsteps of his crime family, and fails miserably

Rose and Rot by SixteenJuniper - Read this!! I'm serious!! "A fun fantasy adventure" don't listen to Juniper. You'll be in tears by chapter two. (/pos, of course) (Seriously this fic is incredible)

Redressing the Balance by Convocated - ...almost a ng+? Ng+, in the sense that shuake are getting funky visions that are very quickly derailing the standard plot of p5r. This causes problems of the "Someone get the popcorn and maybe the tissues" variety

She's got a heartbeat full of lead (And she's aiming straight for the head) by Dots - This fic haunts me, often. In the best way possible, of course; but seriously, read it

Cracked into by SydneyHorses - Ren makes bad descisions and it becomes Akechi's problem. 2/2 timeloop, perhaps most notably featuring HaruGoro friendship! Love love love this fic

Okay that wasn't as "less wordy" as I intended but it'll do

Aaaand that's a wrap! Sorry for the long post.. and this is by no means all of the fics that I've ever loved (nor are the ones here in any particular order) but I swear we'll be here all week if I keep going HAHA

ty for the ask (and again for the kind words), anon! Hope this was helpful and to your tastes! (I... hope you like Shuake HAHA it's present in most of these- I assume you do, since you came to me (points at literally everything shuake I've made) of all people, but uh. Some of these fics are gen if it's not to your liking?)

[manias-wordcount]

Hi I wanted to say I adore your blog and a lot of your content. I was wondering if I could please get headcanons of Joker, Akechi, Mello, Denki, Kirishima and Link receiving a bouquet of flowers from their partner as an act of affection and gratitude towards them and how they’d react. Men deserve receiving flowers too! I’d love to see their reactions! Thank you ❤️

Giving Him Flowers HCs (Akira Kurusu, Goro Akechi, Mello, Denki Kaminari, Eijiro Kirishima)

𝗔/𝗡: 𝗶 𝗱𝗶𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝘀𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝘅 𝗶 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗛𝗖. 𝗛𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆 𝗶𝘁 𝗲𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝘆!

𝙒𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚? ⇒ 𝙈𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩

𝙟𝙤𝙞𝙣 𝙢𝙮 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙙 𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙫𝙚𝙧?

𝙗𝙪𝙮 𝙢𝙚 𝙖 𝙘𝙤𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙚?

Akira Kurusu

He’s so charmed by you LMAO

Like it’s so cute and he’s really happy !!!

The second you hand him the flowers he’s wrapping his arms around you all tight and giving you like a thousand forehead kisses

Probably just holds you a long time too as if you’re about to leave him for a while (because you were totally not just  about to go upstairs to take a nap in his room while you wait for him to finish covering for Sojiro)

Since moving to Tokyo, he’s been able to develop a lot of good relationships with others so he has plenty of good people in his life

But you showing up with flowers for him so randomly really just made his feel so fuzzy and warm inside

(Especially because he was having a particularly hard day but hadn’t told you about it yet)

Chances are, the flowers stay down in Leblanc because the attic is too dirty and dark

But he doesn’t shy away to from telling everyone who exactly gave him those flowers

Because for him, it’s not the flowers themselves that make him feel happy- it’s the fact that it’s a simple, beautiful, and meaningful gift coming from you <3

Goro Akechi

He’s a little hesitant to accept at first

(He probably is with all forms of affection but that’s neither here nor there)

He admits he’s a bit surprised but pleased when you randomly bring him a bouquet and say you were thinking of him and wanted to surprise him

But he really didn’t think that flowers were something that men would get randomly from their S/o

But you know him all too well, so you’re able to ease him into the idea that he deserves gifts and surprises like random flowers because he’s a great boyfriend and everyone should receive flowers every now and then - even him

So he does end up accepting the flowers after getting just a tad bit emotional and raw with his feelings

Eventually, he ends up taking it to work with him after you suggested it might brighten up his office!

Of course, the flowers bring a lot of attention to him because ‘Whaaat?? What do you mean the teen detective is dating someone??? Since when??’

And of course, he has to start explaining bits and pieces of his relationship to his coworkers which he doesn’t love

But if he has to talk to these people about anything, he’s a bit glad it’s just bragging about you

Mello

Maaannnn Mello is such a huge asshole - imo nobody should get this bitch flowers smh

But chances are, your gift of flowers is either 

A) immediately getting knocked out of your hands or B) immediately getting tossed in the trash (IN FRONT OF YOU)

He’s probably a little smug about seeing your little quiver and you grow upset about what happened but he doesn’t do anything more than that except laugh along with his lil crew

It takes finally being alone for a little bit to reflect on how what he did being fucked up to you

So by the next day, the flowers are gone from where they were originally left, and in his bedroom with plenty of water and tons of light and flower food bc he feels so bad

And chances are, you have a bunch of your favorite candy or treats being delivered to your door because no way is he gonna apologize in person (mans got a reputation to uphold)

So a guy like Mello  doesn’t deserve flowers, but he definitely doesn’t deserve you either

But he knows better than to make a similar mistake in the future

 You are the only one who always believed he was number one at everything - even when no one else did 

Denki Kaminari

He’s probably weirded out at first because????

Because what guy gets flowers??? Girls get flowers lol, not tough guys like him 

But once you started telling him why you wanted to get him flowers and why you think it’s dumb that only girls get flowers because boys deserve to get pretty things and to feel special too he started smiling like a big idiot

You just seriously made him so so happy and feel so lucky that of all the people he tried his luck with, the one person he really wanted wanted him back lol

That said, giving him flowers (and no written instructions or reminders) was a bad idea lol

Probably because he doesn’t know what to do with them LMAO

Like totally forget to give them water until it’s almost too late

And then immediately almost overwaters them

But hey! He’s happy and he’s trying lol

And he’s always remember the fact that you did this for him <3

Eijiro Kirishima

Takes it like a king LMAO

Though it probably helps that you got him a bouquet that was similar to one Crimson Riot was awarded at a banquet one time

And that you added a couple of flowers that all had “manly” meanings

So he feels sooooo honored- especially since these flowers were sprung on him on the blue

Probably accidentally gives you a poke with one of his spikes when he comes in for a hug LOL

Either way, this moment was a big form of reassurance

Not just as your boyfriend, but as a hero and a person

Of course, you gave him endless compliments when you presented him with the flowers

But it just felt like proof that he was really improving and coming so far compared to the person that he used to be!

And proof of how much you love and adore him of course!

[cinnamonest]

how do you think goro would feel about a childhood friend!darling?

Goro Akechi has a lot of hate in that heart of his, but other than the man he hates more than anything, there are two other things he hates the most: lack of control, and vulnerability.

He needs control over situations, over people, and when he can manage it, over the course of fate itself. The Metaverse and years of hard effort into a public persona he wears so flawlessly have granted him the sort of control he desires, for the most part.

He hates to be vulnerable, hates his own weaknesses, hates them being perceived by others.

You present both.

It’s been a long time since you’ve seen him. Really, up until the point you saw his name on screen one day, you admittedly remembered him as ‘that sad boy at school I was nice to when we were little,’ and your memories of him had all but faded into the background of your life, never thinking of him much after that until he pops back into your life.

At first, you think it can’t be the same person, surely. At least until the familiar — albeit aged a bit older than in your memories — face comes on the screen. It feels quite surreal. A drastic shift from the little boy you remember angrily sulking on the playground all by himself away from the other kids, whom you admittedly talked to mostly out of pity. Still, you felt like you bonded in the end, before he got whisked away when the relatives fostering him decided to dump him off onto someone else, thus forcing him to transfer schools.

You’re happy for him. He looks very happy now, you think, his situation must have improved. He’s even living in the city now apparently, just like you.

The positive coincidences stack atop each other when you actually get to see him.

Completely by chance, not seeking him out or anything, you just so happen to be walking home on an uncrowded street, and he just so happened to be coming back from a hit, now as normalized and mundane to him as any other work-related task — and you just so happen to meet right as you each turn a corner, perfectly scenic, as if ordained by fate.

And while Goro Akechi has spent a very long time by now perfecting the art of composure, what he sees takes him so far aback that even he lets the mask momentarily slip — completely freezing up, slack-jawed and stiff with shock and disbelief. There’s a moment where only silence passes, he looks at you like he’s seeing a ghost, an expression almost like horror managing to escape his automatic efforts to keep a straight face.

You don’t notice that part. You’re too caught up in the surprise and elation, gasping and smiling and rambling on about what a coincidence it is, and—

Do you remember me…?

The shock only lasts a split second. The composure is back, the mask pushed back into place, and with practiced mastery of charm, he bounces back near instantly.

Even in spite of the sudden onslaught of emotions and memories that feels like his very soul is being stabbed at, he manages to keep up the usual Prince-Charming act of his. Says the lines expected of him, so standard you could probably guess them before they come out of his mouth — wow, long time no see, what a coincidence, it’s good to see you, how have you been, all the generic phrases and lines one should say, just like the ones you provide in return. A back-and-forth dialogue predetermined by conventions and standards of normalcy and expectation as composed by a given social framework in which all humans live. You do mention that you’ve seen him on TV — for some reason, it makes his stomach feel like its twisting, but he gives you a humble-sounding reply all the same.

All as his heart pounds so heavily it feels like it’s going to burst though is chest. Adrenaline surges thought his veins and every nerve on his body feels like it’s frozen over, an ice-cold chill that runs through his blood, a ringing in his ears, even a lightheadedness that begins to take hold, his entire body reacting in shock and panic.

You fetch a piece of paper from your bag, scribble something down, hand it over to him — his own hand moves reflexively, as if out of his control, to take it. A series of numbers — oh. Your contact. You’re smiling now, saying something about how you would love to catch up sometime. Your voice sounds far away, his head feels like it’s spinning, but he still manages his signature soft smile and voice as he gives you yet another generic reply.

Sure, that would be wonderful.

A few more lines back-and-forth that he doesn’t even remember by the end of the day, his brain essentially giving replies on an auto-pilot means of conversation. He manages to make some excuse about work, churns out a farewell, briskly walks off with a noticeably deliberate fast pace.

You feel a little embarrassed, as you walk home. He seemed in a hurry to end the conversation. Perhaps it was presumptuous to give him a contact. He probably couldn’t care less. He’s a big, important person now, someone like that has no time for someone like yourself.

…

Your suspicions are more or less validated. He doesn’t contact you.

In fact, from the moment he gets home that day, he tries to forget the interaction entirely.

There’s multiple reasons why. For one, you present a potential obstacle, a burden, a risk. He can’t afford to have you complicating things, getting in his way. It takes some time for his heart to stop racing, and that alone irritates him — why do you get to have such a reaction from him, beyond his control?

Moreover, the emotions that hit him when he saw you were too much. Dangerously intense, something he can’t allow to weigh on him, doesn’t have the time to focus on.

To be frank, those emotions were largely negative anyway. The mere sight of your face stirs up all sorts of memories from that era of his life, most of which were deeply unpleasant. There’s a deep-rooted bitterness that rises up in his stomach, old emotions he’s worked so long to suppress, and you came and dug them up in just a few brief minutes. In truth, he thought about you very often back then — he never really got to say goodbye to you (even if, he often bitterly thought, you never cared that much about him anyway), and he had to force himself to forget you over time, and yet you’ve come and undone his efforts.

And finally — the thought of you makes him feel a new emotion, one he does not like. Something like anxiousness, fear, and in turn, anger at himself and you alike for inducing such a feeling. You stand as a sort of weakness, a single unstable factor in a world where he feels like he has some degree of a grasp of control on nearly everything — you feel uncertain, unsteady, out of his reach… no, it’s not just that. You feel unsafe. You have knowledge and memories of him that no one else does, you have seen him at his weakest, and that makes him feel far more vulnerable then he can stand.

And yet, he saves your number to his phone all the same. Lets it sit there.

Most of the time, it’s easy to ignore. He is a busy person, he can keep himself distracted. Sometimes, though, in the odd hours of the night when his emotions are at their peak, he types a message, two, a dozen, he loses count — only to shake his head and come to his senses, huffing in frustration and holding the backspace down until it’s all deleted, cursing himself internally for even coming close to doing something so foolish.

You keep coming up in his thoughts, an emotion he can’t pretend is anything but yearning feels like a knot in his chest, yet the very thought of you makes him feel sick to his stomach. The conflict between the emotions is unbearable, makes him lose sleep, makes him lose focus.

You who knew him when he was this quiet, sullen, embittered child — you were nice to him, one of the only people who showed him genuine kindness back then — you who certainly knows that the charming act in front of the cameras is merely that, an act, a mask, a lie. It feels as if playing a game with one’s own cards facing outwards towards the opponent, completely exposed, laid bare. The act can’t work on you when you know what he’s really like, know his pains and vulnerabilities, have the potential to strike at the weakest parts of him.

Nor do you fall under his realm of control. The means he has for control relies on his ability to enforce it — means to kill and ruin lives. What he wants from you, though — at least, what he wanted from you back then, he won’t let himself even consider the matter now — falls entirely out of the realm of how he likes to control people, the usual purpose for which he desires the manipulation of others — power, advancement in his goals, to snake his way inside to strike.

It's all confusing. Irritating. It's outside the realm of what he has an easy way to manipulate, and that means he's at a disadvantage, that you have an upper hand, and he can't stand for that.

Still, he wonders about you. Every time a camera faces his way, he wonders if you’ll see the filming. When he makes posts to the little page he runs that the fans eat up, he wonders if you visit it too, if you’re one of those thousands of faceless followers. He wonders how often you think about him. He wonders about the day the two of you ran into each other for the first time in so long — did you go home, and look him up online? How long did you spend doing so? What did you read? Did your view of him change, positively, negatively?

And of course, he thinks about you and your life. What have you been up to, since then? Where has your path in life taken you? You probably have friends. You probably have a partner too. You’re someone who always seemed to be loved by others — he still recalls perfectly the burning bitterness in his stomach when he saw your happiness, your family, your friends, the things you had that he did not. How he resented you for it — he still does, even if he tries to tell himself such emotions are childish. Sometimes he almost thinks he hates you, even if in the end he always finds that he can’t.

And worst of all, he finds that the mere thought of you changes how he behaves.

When he’s at a lower-end news outlet interview, he doesn’t put quite as much energy in… until it occurs to him that there’s always a chance you’ll see it, and he finds himself sitting up straighter, putting in more effort into being charming and witty for the camera.

He almost says something in another interview, but it occurs to him that he doesn’t know how you feel on the matter, and he finds himself taking what was originally a strongly-worded response in his head and neutralizing it as much as possible, to avoid upsetting you should you see it and disagree with him. He doesn't even realize it until the words are out of his mouth.

You do that to him. He who has come to think of himself as so far above others, and yet you — some child from long ago who just so happened to find him again and speak to him for no more than a few minutes — influence his actions, you consume his thoughts. You control him, and you don’t even know it, nor did you have any intention to. And even though he recognizes it, even though he tries to put it to rest and forget you entirely, he can’t bring himself to do it, can’t tap the screen to delete the contact.

It’s infuriating. He can’t stand it. The fact that you do what you do to him so effortlessly leaves him seething and stewing in a rage you probably don’t even realize he’s capable of. And that much he’s acutely aware of as well. You know more of the “real” him than anyone else, you saw him in a phase when he was always pouty and melancholic — yet even then, you don’t know the half of it, don’t realize just how much malice and fury rests beneath the calm outward surface, nor how deep it runs.

He’s not a delusional sort, he’s very self-aware, and he knows how ridiculous the thoughts he’s having are — yet he has them anyway. It’s what, three in the morning, and here he is sitting on the edge of is bed, hunched over in the dark with his face in his hands, stewing in bitterness because he just can’t stop thinking about you. Yes, he knows the thought is absurd, yet he allows it anyway — allows himself to blame you, to resent you for it as if it were an intentional act on your end, to think of you as audacious, having committed some grand transgression against him.

He’s a celebrity, a genius, he has powers unfathomable to the average person — and here you are, you’re nobody, making him think about you. The more he gives in and allows himself to slip into that way of thinking, regardless of how nonsensical he knows it is, the angrier and angrier he gets, the greater the malice that swells in his chest—

—and the darker his thoughts become on what to do with you.

If he forces himself to think it through reasonably, of course, he realizes that you’ve done nothing wrong, that you’ve been nothing but kind to him, and maybe, just maybe, a part of him even feels guilty for any unwholesome, sinister thoughts run through his head — you don’t deserve anything bad to happen to you, and he’s being embarrassingly childish for such boorish, overly-simplistic thoughts like keeping you and taking you away and hurting you and making you pay. Particularly the last — you’ve done nothing wrong, nothing to deserve any harm, and in the rational part of his mind, he knows this.

But if he were to allow those petulant feelings to take over…

If he let the irrational resentment and yearning and attachment and bitterness take over, if he stopped being rational about it, if he just acted on impulses and feelings alone, then he would have something to make you pay for. To make you the object of all the negative emotions that plague him, make you an outlet for his crippling desperation and rage and affection and covet and pain and misery and yearning — yes, he could put all those emotions into you, unload that burden and force you to take it off his shoulders, force you to be something for him to have to himself and use for his own desires and ease of his pain like he always wanted back then.

Maybe he never stopped wanting that, even if he forced every thought of you to the back of his mind for so many years. It was easier to deny the yearning when he could tell himself he would never see you again. He doesn't have that to hold him back anymore — he stares at the screen of his phone that burns his eyes in the darkness, knowing contact with you is a few mere taps away.

But even back then, he wasn’t so stupid as to not realize you interacted with him because he was pitiful and pathetic and obviously troubled and you were the sort of sweet person that went out of your way to be nice to such other children. He was acutely aware of that fact, it irritated him then, it irritates him now. Yet he latched on like a leech anyway, a fact that makes his face feel hot with embarrassment when he recalls how his child self clung to you so strongly, so pathetically. He couldn’t help it. He was so weak, back then.

But here he is, spending hours of his time thinking about you — can he really say he’s less weak to you now?

It’s not as if it’s the first time he had dark thoughts regarding you. Of course, he envied your life back then, but far more than that, he envied you. To have you to himself, as if an object from which he derived happiness that should be just for him. How upset he was when you were kind to people who weren’t him, spent time with others. Even back then, as a child, you have no idea the sort of things he crafted in his head, elaborate fantasies where everyone important to you died off somehow so he could have you all to himself. Fantasies that soothed both his bitterness for you and his desire for you — let you feel pain like he had felt, make sure you couldn’t think yourself better than him, while still ending up something all for him alone to have and enjoy for himself, ensure your kindness was just for him.

Only back then, he had no power to act on such fantasies.

Now…

…

…

...And one night, his resistance finally breaks.

You know what? Maybe he does deserve that. After all the effort he’s put in, after all the things he’s endured, maybe he does deserve to have something all for himself, something he truly wants, something he can secure and know with certainty won’t ever leave his side — you can’t if you don’t have the option.

Maybe you’ll hate him for it. Maybe he’d deserve it if so. But if you do, well, he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.

His fingers move without having to really think much about it. Generic, typical lines, just like when he spoke with you. Apologizing for the delay, but surely you understand he’s busy and all, so on and so on. He only pays attention to the very last line, as his fingers slow down in their typing with nerves and anticipation.

>Would you still be up for getting together sometime?

[corviiids]

i loved your answer to the ooc question... penny for your thoughts on the Core of ren and goro? 👉👈🥺

rubbing my little bug hands together i dunno that i can capture all my whole... mental Akeshu Bible... in one post... but here are some notes on what i'd consider one of the most key points for each.

basically the way this works for me is ill have like a central piece of understanding sitting at the core of how i work with a character, and then let instinct guide their dialogue/behaviour from there.

i wrote a thesis again. two in fact. jesus christ

goro - sincerity is mystifying, dangerous, and impossible, but alluring.

can i talk about light yagami for a second. are we all going to be okay with it if i do that. that's going to make this easier for me to explain

i think light yagami and goro akechi have almost nothing in common once we get past the most obvious similarities - the cynicism borne of shattered once-upon-a-time idealism, the willingness to turn to radical action, the bad hair. anyway the difference i want to point out arises from another key similarity which i think only exists on the surface - the "evil underside true self" counterpart to the "pleasant preppy perfect boy" persona. looks the same. but the difference is that light never struggles with that falsehood, and akechi clearly does.

what i mean by that is i think to light, his perfect persona is nothing more than a simple disguise, albeit one he's been wearing a while without knowing why. he doesn't really have a fractured sense of self, because it's clear that the light yagami who is kira is the True self. the light yagami who is just a nice young man is mostly a falsehood to the point light sees him as a character to be played. (ok this is also an oversimplification but go with me for now. okay. that's the basic of it. just accept this for the sake of argument. this aint about him)

goro is very different. i think in the lead-up to the interrogation room, goro understands himself in a similar way, but after the interrogation room that perception is called into question. okay, i think about the interrogation room scene a lot, because i really didn't like goro's behaviour in that scene when i first played it, i thought it was a very cheap and superficial way to reveal his identity as the traitor by making him act as cartoonishly villainous as possible. and tbh i dont want to give atlus too much credit for creating a super nuanced scene there so what im about to propose is probably unintentional. but anyway, i eventually came around to it because i decided that that cartoonish villanousness must be a choice to goro. at that point in time, goro's perception of himself is akin to light's understanding of kira: black mask/shido's assassin/evil motherfucker is "the true goro", and pleasant boy detective prince is nothing but a mask.

and here i would like to bring up a complicating factor which makes light and goro very, very different. light wants to live. he refuses the shinigami eyes because he wants to exist in his new world to rule over it indefinitely. goro's plan on the other hand has a fixed timeline. goro is aware, and tells us in the engine room, that once his public reputation is shattered, he has nothing. goro's plan involves outing shido by outing himself. ergo, goro's plan is to take shido to the top and then torpedo them together, leaving them both with nothing.

what does this mean? light yagami's mask protects kira - light's true self and a man who wants to live. goro akechi's mask serves the black-masked assassin, but the black-masked assassin serves shido, a role which is just as deceptive as the detective prince. which means goro akechi's disguise protects a self that isn't real, either. it feels disingenuous to say that the version of akechi who exists to be shido's attack dog is his true self. so that goofy villainous smile in the interrogation room is, to me, goro convincing himself that that evil face is who he really is, not realising it's another facade he's playing up - but while the prince's audience is the public, the assassin's audience is goro himself. after that whole thing goes down, i think it becomes clearer that that evil face was goro pretending to himself that he's just a straight up villain who doesn't care about anything because that's easier than conceding that you might feel some complicated way about the self-loathing and bitterness you've been nurturing since childhood.

but wait, there's definitely also truth to the black mask. there's no way to deny that the akechi who attacks them in the engine room had a ton of truth to him that the detective prince lacked. but, wait. goro doesn't perfectly keep up the facade with the detective prince, either, because there are definitely times where he's being honest even when he's being the pleasant boy.

okay, where does that leave us? light has one layer of falsehood (light protects kira), but goro has at least two (detective prince protects black mask protects ???) so what the hell is goro hiding? where's the true self? is the version of akechi who showed up in the interrogation room the black mask, or is it shido's assassin? are those two different guys who overlap? does this mean everything the detective prince said is suspect? we don't know which one is true, but we know they're both lying.

okay. why? what's wrong with him? i should get to my actual fucking point maybe?

this is the central thesis of his shadows in palacefic btw. rather than being divided into a relatively clean true/false like light, goro's true self is split between his personae. every time you talk to any version of goro akechi, you're getting some lies but you're also getting some sincerity. i think goro doesnt know who he is because he doesn't see any particular use for having a real self at the end of the day, only masks he can use to achieve his ends.

except you can't actually kill your true self. it sticks around. so the most he can do is fragment it. but the consequence is the shards get stuck in his masks. every time he tries to put on a mask, a shred of truth peeks out. i think goro wants to not exist and not be known, but inside every mask he wears is a true part of him that desperately DOES want to be known, but can't allow it, but wants it, but is scared of it, but wants it, but hates it, but will die if it happens, but wants it.

what you end up with is a really self-contradictory guy where every time he talks, the things he's saying are simultaneously true and false. it's the worst with ren, because he's really interested in ren, but allowing ren to know him is suicide. light's really good at playing the part because he has no investment in the part, it's purely fake, and all his investment is in his true self. but goro is invested in each of his masks, because each of his masks contains part of him for real and there's no unified self to return to at the end of the day. so he struggles way more with the act than light does, because there's a part of him, however small, that really wants to drop the mask. but he can't, because there's nothing behind it, so there's nothing he can do

anyway when i write goro's dialogue and behaviour, it's not just writing a guy lying and playing a part because he needs the cover, it's goro injecting himself into mould after mould after mould and trying to keep a balance of how much he can reveal vs how much he needs to keep close to his chest. this is why he talks so fucking much, it's why his speech mannerisms aren't always perfectly polished, it's why the mask slips so often, it's why he's so cartoonishly evil at times, and it's why while light yagami is a popular guy who has everyone around him perfectly fooled, goro akechi is really only able to appeal to the subset of fans who are keen on his particular celebrity style while other people find him kind of annoying and disingenuous. when im writing akechi in xyz situation, it's a process of working out which mask he's wearing, what he wants to achieve, what he's hiding, how much he can or would slip, and what that slip might look like. i think this is heightened because of his circumstances, but i also think goro would be incredibly guarded and paranoid no matter what his circumstances were (although the murder might decrease a little).

tl;dr: goro akechi tries to do away with his sense of self but only succeeds in splitting it into a hundred million pieces covered in lies, each of which is desperate to be known but shies away with equal desperation

ren - in a distant relationship with the sense of self

idk that thats the right word but basically i think in true persona protag fashion, and as alluded to by beneath the mask / the power of the wild card / etc the relationship between ren's personae and his 'true self' is more complicated and detached than most of the other characters. i dont agree that the protags are true "blank slate" protagonists in the meta sense but i do think ren is a "blank slate" person in-text in that simultaneously he has extremely strong core values and beliefs which are absolutely immovable, and traits which shine through even in his limited speech, but the manifestation of his personality is a lot more malleable than say ryuji's is. ren is very flexible and wears a different mask depending on who he's talking to. i think that requires a level of detachment which manifests as basically centering his companion's character + needs in a given interaction over his own. this doesnt just come through in his dialogue but also in the way he internally reflects on what's happening.

the way this manifests most obviously in how i write him is that my ren (in texts especially but also in dialogue) has a tendency to omit his personal pronoun (in subject position).

that gives him kind of a laid-back vibe. he has a habit of omitting the first part of a sentence entirely.

he adds it back in when he's talking about something more serious, very alert, feeling uncomfortable, etc. it happens a lot when he talks to akechi because he needs to be very switched on during those conversations to keep up.

idk i know that for some people the joy of having a protagonist character is being able to make them into whoever you want them to be - so your ren might be extra flirty for example which i think is a really popular characterisation of him because it's fun and it has some basis in his dialogue, and it's a choice i went with for a while before i started shifting away from it. recently i've been way more interested in trying to reconcile this really strong-willed guy with a clearly rich and rebellious inner life with the quiet slouched character who says like 3 words every conversation and who really never reveals anything about himself. like, imagine he's a real person and not just a blank slate protagonist i can push and pull - how do i make his little mousy 8< self work with the fact that he's an international criminal without adding something on top that isn't already there in him? i think there's a way to do it and i think the way to do that is to have him internalise as much as possible. for everything he says, there are a billion things he doesn't say. that makes it really fucking difficult to actually portray him sometimes because his rich inner life can really only come through if we have access to his inner monologue, and if he's not the pov character we don't, but you know, i love a stupid fucking self imposed challenge. ren amamiya is like laying breadcrumb clues in his dumb ass 3 word dialogue options that im crawling over like weevils with a magnifying glass

but he DOES leave clues! so many of his dialogue options are sarcastic and dry or straight up goofy. so he's funny, he's deadpan, he can be impatient. but if you take that too far in dialogue, it gets overplayed, and he loses his taciturn charm, so you have to pull it back, because he's restrained, not overt. he's quippy, he's not wordy. he's a show-off, but in a self-assured way. he will never indicate in any way that he wants you to look at him. he'll just make sure he's so impressive that you can't look away. if he winks, it's like he's keeping a secret between you, not like he's putting on a show. he delivers one-liners only, not full jokes, and the setup and knockdown has to be in the same breath. if his thoughts can't be condensed into one sentence, two or three max, he doesn't say them, he keeps it to himself. whether his emotions show on his face depend on how well you can read him, and it depends who he's with, it depends how recently he's been joker, it depends if there's some extenuating factor in there that's going to make him crack. ren's more likely to crack if he's standing up for someone else.

his inner monologue is just as interesting to grapple with because my ren is pretty repressed. the more upset he is, the more he distances himself from how he's actually feeling. he's very good at deflecting people and he's also very good at deflecting himself - focus on someone else, focus on the environment around him, focus on some physical sensation, don't get too far into his own head, or else

tl;dr: ren handles himself with a mix of internalising and externalising by swallowing down everything he might want to say out loud but outsourcing and distancing from his sense of self to keep himself steady