#suguru the bane of my existence save me...

[sscarletvenus]

yes suguru's plans to exterminate a vast majority of humanity is undeniably evil, but to say that he is murderous from the very start, cruel for the sake of being so, or lacks compassion or any emotional nuance is a gross disservice to his character's writing.

suguru is a case study of a romantic idealist and self-sacrificial saviour whose absurdly rigid, quixotic ideals are shattered brutally by reality intervening. the intense hatred he has for humanity is born out of, is an inverse of, the intense love he once possessesed for it. this is also why even though satoru is portrayed as brash and selfish and arrogant in the hidden inventory arc, it is suguru that turns "villainous."

suguru places his faith in the goodness of humanity, believes the duty of shamans is to protect the weak, their existence solely hinged upon saving the lives of non-sorcerers, and for that he is disappointed so tremendously, betrayed to an extent that makes it impossible for him to recover his ideals and past self.

ultimately there are also more than one reasons why satoru doesn't become "evil" : 1) "protecting humanity" was never his cause to begin with. he hardly cared about preserving human life, as is evident in his intentions to kill the cultists who cheered on riko's death, and 2) he had someone shielding his inner self : suguru. for it is suguru that tells him the duty of shamans is to protect non-shamans and the weak, suguru who asks him to sympathise with riko, suguru who persuades him to not kill meaninglessly.

satoru is indeed attached to riko, as well. he is the one who decides not to hand riko over to tengen if she wishes to return home, and tries to enliven her last days as a lucid person. it would thus not surpass one’s expectations if satoru turned to villainy post riko's demise, since he never even liked non-shamans to begin with. and yet, he doesn't. suguru protects his heart, which is a part of why he is able to steadily process his grief and anguish over riko's death.

suguru doesn't have anyone to do that for him, he is strong in his own right but not the "strongest", nobody notices how deep of an abyss his soul has sunken in, and he succumbs to the lethal loneliness, falters in this marathon of sorcery.

suguru is brimming with love and compassion: it is what drives his heroism in youth and villainy as a cult leader. he is able to protect gojo's heart but not his own. he fluctuates between two polar extremes : utter distaste of humanity Vs. a duty to protect it despite its horrors. three things serve as final nails to the metaphorical coffin : yuki's words, haibara's death, miminana's abuse. he describes imbibing curses for curse manipulation is "like eating a rag used to clean vomit". how macabre, how grotesque, how enlightening - who is he doing all this for? the humans who killed riko? it was these humans haibara died serving, these same humans violently mistreated miminana.

toji and sonoda encapsulate evil very blatantly, and aren't enough to shake suguru's belief in humanity. but the turning point is the non-shaman cultists rejoicing : suguru is thus forced to confront the banality of evil.

and suguru responds by rejecting what he once loved, embraces the darkness plaguing him. believes the only way to eradicate curses is to uproot their source : humanity. humans, for as long as they will live, will give rise to curses born out of their negative emotions. there is no one to tell him any better, or protect his self-identity. he loses himself to his own sense of empathy, his own ideals.

he isn't indifferent at all, cannot pick and choose whom he loves and doesn't. his love and hatred is collective, in both he gives his all. even amidst his hatred, he doesn't lose his love.

who does he choose to target first, once amassing enough money, power, and reputation? sonoda, the man who ordered riko's assassination. someone who lies in wait to enact vengeance does it out of love. if he was nothing more than a corrupt tyrant, he wouldn't remember the circumstances of riko's demise or care enough about them. suguru's rise as a hero and his subsequent fall as a villain has always been about love. and it seems, to me, up until his death, he prioritizes satoru over himself. doesn't see satoru as a weapon at all, or he would have directly asked satoru to join his cause. instead he poses to satoru a question, presents him with a choice - which in turn makes satoru shaken enough to question his identity, his place in the system, becoming a teacher and dedicating his all to a fitting reformist centrism from an isolated and dare i say, individualistic person such as himself, who stands on the pinnacle of power. but he wouldn't have come to such a conclusion without suguru's experiences shaping his worldview (he himself apologizes to riko during his fight with toji because rather than feeling depressed over her death, he feels the pure pleasure of the world in that moment. killing toji endows him with a sense of duty towards megumi, and riko's death but obviously impacts him, but the change from full apathy, to neutral indifference except in the case of his students, was losing suguru.)

as evil as suguru becomes, he is not a hypocrite. that he kills his own parents is to show the seriousness and conviction he has in his ideals. his code of operation is consistent, even when it turns from pro-human to pro-shaman.

reminds you of what mahito tells yuuji: does yuuji ever consider how many curses he kills? so why should mahito account for how many humans he kills? suguru geto presents us with a possible answer : someone has to care about how many shamans are killed.

you can condemn him for his use of collective punishment, but suguru is a villain!

you can criticize his killing of innocents, but jjk conveys the carefully crafted narrative of a villain who once held staunch traditional and moral ideals.

suguru is evil for proposing collective punishment, but it is incredibly consistent with how emotional he is. he is empathetic because he cares about a girl like riko, doomed by the actions of the rest of the world, forgotten in her misery. he cares and it drives him to the deepest pits of despair, where life loses all color and meaning, despite only knowing her for so long and haibara as well, he enshrines haibara in his memory, when no one other than nanami does. hardly anyone remembers riko's existence, haibara's laughing face, but he does! and for that he spends each moment sinking in the quagmire of his grief and torment. his empathy is a sword of damocles hanging over his neck! to say that he is cruel and unfeeling is to contradict the very agony that drives his (wrongful?) actions. and he is indeed wrong for externalizing this indelible pain, wanting to inflict it upon innocents. but suguru is a villain! has been set up as such!

mahito raises this question to junpei,"is the opposite of love really indifference?" to satoru, it is. but to suguru, it is hatred which is the opposite of love.

[soranihimawari]

flowers for a souless king

Word count: tbd

Rating: T/M (teen to mature for theme)

Pairing: geto suguru x reader (before the madness begins)

geto suguru has been your upstairs neighbor for the last six years. he is your dorm buddy, your late night case closing report editor, every boy (or girl)'s sexual awakening, or next heartbreak. not yours. and definitely not his best friend and bane of your gloomy existence, gojo satoru's. this topic of discussion came about after nanami came back from a trip. ok, a mission, with his close classmate. that being said, you were invited out to eat at the local fried chicken place because shoko said she'd spot you this time around.

"what happened to you?" gojo seemed aghast at the bags under your eyes.

"me? oh you mean the raccoon eyes?" you rub your temples before geto and shoko arrive with the trays of fried chicken. "i had to close several cases by 23:59 last night and a certain neighbor-geto-had brought home some date or whatever ya call fucking buddies these days."

shoko nearly chokes at my bluntness and gojo just laughs.

"nice going romeo," the ice blonde says and geto rolls off his shoulder.

"she has a name you know, yn."

"does it look like i care?" you bite into the chicken thigh and are carnivorous when devouring it. "any word on nanami-san?"

gojo shakes his head. "not yet, but ichiji-san is picking them up."

"ah, ok," you reply. "save him a bucket, shoko."

"way ahead of ya," shoko holds up a fourth bucket in a to-go bag.

you four continue eating and not once would you have noticed the way gojo and geto stare back and forth at each other. it's stares only best friends would exchange anyway. you and shoko do the same.

"i don't know what's going on in boy world over there, but you two better stop looking at yn-san like they’re a prize to win," shoko scolds them both on my behalf.

an hour goes by and we're still in the kfc before our phones go off.

"we lost another one," is all you say and we head out immediately.

gojo is not even on campus when he sends out a text saying that he needs to go finish what nanami and his partner had started in another city. shoko lights up a cigarette for her friend. geto and you head back to the morgue to pay your respects.

"geto, wait," you pull his shirt sleeve and force him to turn to face you. you study his features, you see a small light dim behind his eyes, you know why that girl upstairs bothered you. "the woman you were with, she was an orb, wasn't she?"

"what does it matter? our friend is dead," geto replies bitterly.

"geto," you assert your stance to be more rigid and form a block on the door. "sugu."

he softens his features at that nickname you gave him since second year. "sugu, you're spiraling."

"am not."

"are to."

"i'm not."

"suguru," your other hand touches his cheek furthest away from you and turn his face to lock eyes with you. "let me in, please? i won't hurt you. you know i can't..."

you give him a hopeful smirk before he turns away from your touch coldly saying you're wasting your time. you make a snap decision to hug him from behind firmly, tightening your hold on his torso when he reaches the door knob.

"not giving up," you whisper into his shoulder blades before loosening your hold and letting him walk inside.

some time later, you're in your room, rereading the case which lead nanami to become more interested in finance. you hear a knock on your door.

"shoko?" you open it and she looks at you confused. "where?"

"room 13, since nine am yesterday."

you push past her and she sits in your dorm, wondering if you can pull geto suguru out of his darkest pitfall yet.

"geto?" you knock on room 13's door. "geto, it's me."

"go away," he growls at you.

"you know how stubborn i am."

geto picks up a bar of soap and throws it at the door. the bang causes you to jump back.

"geto, please," you rest your forehead against the door. "we've known each other for better half of three? six years now..."

you let your technique bound by nature deliver wisteria blooms to ward off evil. it forms a pocket barrier and veil around you and him. you're no longer visible to the prying eyes of a certain family clan. geto is familiar with this domain. it's the first one you showed him you could do successfully at 14 years old. coincidentally, it's the same rose tinted hue which telegraphed how you felt about him. tonight? it was a lilac color: in sweetness there is strength. and when he emerges from the room, he rests his weary head on your shoulders, arms that were once so strong, hold you so tight you can barely breathe.

you run your hands through his unwashed hair, doing your best to not cause him anymore pain when your fingers find the knots.

"it's so, so meaningless," he mumbles into your shirt.

"what is?" you nudge him to tell you, kissing his temple with a soft expression of affection.

"what we do. what is the point if we can't even protect our own kind?"

"...the death of one versus the many, geto. you know yaga will be like that too. however, you have no time to grieve. so come with me and we can grieve our friend together."

five days later, i wake in his bed, curled into a little ball wearing his jacket. geto must have left me after he kissed me over and over again to remind himself good things can happen to balance out the darkness brewing within himself. his flower crown of sunflowers and vines rests on my head, a note on his pillow follows.

"to the one who loved a soulless king,

have courage & be resilient.

the worst is yet to come when a good man loses his mind to war."

later that same evening, the news plays on all tvs: "2000 people dead in the mountain village off the coast of okinawa. only 3 survivors and one of them, is the son of the geto family."

years go by, i stay the same. public enemy number one is still geto, yet i know this isn't him. his body was stolen by another powerful curse i wish would lay the man to rest. gojo tells me to head east to find nanami in shibuya with their shared pink and navy-haired proteges.

"it's not too late to join the fight," nanami tells me over the phone the night before 31st october.

"i'll see you in shibuya. it's a call to arms, nanami," i sigh, brandishing my spear. "gojo and shoko called me too. i'll be on the east side. be safe."

"come back alive, yn."

be safe. come back alive. survive the darkness. save our old friend's soul and let the ghost of our youth rest. <- famous last words spoken by nanami, myself, shoko, and the last bit came from the strongest of us all.