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kareofbears · 4 years

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persona 5 royal: my thoughts after finishing it five minutes ago

disclaimer: the only reason im writing this is because 1) i have a lot of thoughts and feelings that i need to write down and if i dont ill explode and 2) i want to be able to find this when p5s eventually drops so i can compare my thought processes. if you do not agree with what i’m going to say, that’s cool! just block me or ignore this post.

now for the sake of sanity, i’m going to try and narrow down this entire list into chunks because this’ll probably be very very long and very much about me just screaming about stuff that i liked, loved, and don’t like. i will be spoiling both the original persona 5 and persona 5 royal, obviously, so i hope you finished both!

1) Akechi

so yes. Goro Akechi. Everyone’s favorite murderer. I’m going to by spewing a lot of hot takes, and this is probably going to be the spiciest: i am in the most intense love-hate relationship with this brown haired antagonist because jesus christ is he a complicated son of a bitch. I know i’ve complained in the past about how much Atlus often struggles with utilizing a character well, but that does not at all relate to Akechi in any way, shape, or form.

I’ll say this now: He is a character I genuinely, truly hate, yet he is the one I want to hear from the most. He is someone who is a bad person (yes, he is a bad person) but whenever he comes on screen he makes me sit up, he makes me pay attention to him because that’s just the aura he exudes. He is a character who i would never, ever waste my time defending or justifying his actions, but every minute joker spends with him is a minute i want to stretch out as long as possible because he is just that good of a character. He is interesting, he is well defined, he is smart, he is clever, he is sassy, he’s a motherfucking asshole who’s never had a vibe check in my life and i still hate him. Goro Akechi is what Star Wars wanted Kylo Ren to be, and that allegory may not make sense to many people but it works for me so i’m saying it. It’s to the point where writing akechi in a fanfic makes me sweat because in my opinon capturing the essence of akechi is near impossible unless you know what you are talking about (i do not mean that in anyway to discourage people from writing him, im just saying that I am a coward because i will never be able to write a good akechi). Anyway, bottom line is: i despise him but my eyes are always glued to him at all times.

back to the main point-- Atlus absolutely nailed this character and every single addition they put in for Akechi. I’m so damn thrilled that you actually have confidant hangouts with him because every single time you talk to him, it services not only the plot, but it perfectly does what it is supposed to do: it makes you like him, but also leaves the player slightly unnerved. they do it so casually that I might have trouble explaining it, but bear with me: everytime you hangout with him, he always does or say something that unhinges you just a little bit, it leaves you asking ‘wait why?’ or ‘but how did you know that’ or ‘why are you saying that?’. akechi is constantly playing mind games with you. and not only that, adding backstory to akechi (moreso than in the original) is just fucking fantastic. he’s always been a fully fleshed out character but after playing royal, goro akechi actually exists in my mind, and i still hate him (but also i dont. but also i do. anyway)

2) the ending

just finished the game and this is the point where i am at odds with p5r for the first time. the ending to p5, in my opinion, was flawless; everything was perfect and had meaning. from the shot of akira being shown to not wearing glasses anymore because he no longer feels the need to wear a mask (character development: he was very unhappy at the beginning of the game and now he’s happy with his friends--i love it), to his friends being the one to drive him home (amazing, he left his home town and came to shibuya alone via transit, and one year later he’s now leaving with all of his best friends in a van they rented just so they could stay with him as long as they can--it’s perfect, i love it), and also all of them seeing how large and infinite the ocean is (because now there’s unlimited options for them because they all have a new perspective on life).

But....none of that is there in p5r. it feels impersonal. no one drops him off at his hometown, he was still wearing glasses, and there’s no grand metaphor about what they all achieved.

Now, i am not a (complete) moron. I know why they had to change it: it’s because of persona 5 scramble (i think). they wanted to set up a plot for the next game and i feel like thats the reason why persona 5 royal’s ending suffered for it: they were too focused on the next plot that they forgot to focus on the sentimental ending for p5r. don’t get me wrong, seeing akechi in the train station absolutely made me lose my shit and made me scream at one in the morning, but i think they lost the core meaning in doing the other stuff. i did not like the focus on maruki and kasumi (will be talking about them later), cause i feel like it took away from the ending, and i also didn’t like the fact that the whole joker outfit in the reflection thing (but i will be letting it slide since it was during the after credits anyway). So while i do love one (1) new aspect of the final cut scene, i still adore and stan the one from persona 5.

3) the entire last semester

i’ll be quick: the final palace? the best palace. fight me. it’s fantastic, it’s innovative, it’s interesting, and most of all, the palace ruler is actually the best one in the entire game and i know i wont be the only one to say this. maruki is not a villain: i know for a godamn fact that im not the only one to say that i almost agreed with his deal of allowing the reality (damn i almost agreed twice) because why wouldnt you?? it’s literally a perfect reality! the only reason i didnt agree is because i knew the game wouldnt want me to agree and would force me to have the bad ending! anyway, i love the last section so much. the palace design is interesting, the antagonist is brilliant (who doesn’t love a morally gray antagonist?), and finally, the payoff of kasumi happened and it made me silent for ten minutes. the entire reveal of her being sumire and kasumi being dead is just so genuinely shocking to me that it nearly broke my neck.

what actually broke my neck was the initial incident for the third semester. seeing everyone in this wild alternate reality made me so unsettled that i literally got a stomach ache. i saw morgana as a human and nearly passed out. shiho in the underground? wig. ryuji saying he’s on the national pedastal for running? literally my eyebrows just popped off my head. fucking WAKABA? FLATLINED. brilliantly executed and i love the initial akechi and akira buddy cop movie vibes in the beginning it was just so fun.

one huge part of the third semester for me though, was of course, akechi. seeing him completely throw away his ‘charming ace detective’ speil was the most refreshing and interesting and not to mention, hilarious part of the game. he does not give a fuck about anyone and he is not afraid to let you know. he is the biggest savage and the most insane person on the phantom thieves group. he’ll roast you, he’ll roast your boyfriend, he’ll roast fuckin anyone and it’s fantastic. not to mention his dialogue is killer: he says the most bat shit insults ever and my favorite example is when you go up to him near the end of the game, you know, to hangout with him and be a nice guy, he just does not hesitate to say ‘what, you came just to see me? just the sort of brainless sentimentality i’d expect from you.’ i LOVE IT because why the hell would he try to be nice? the jig is up, he’s got nothing to hide. and he owns it. atlus seriously nailed akechi in this last semester and it’s brilliant and i love it.

4) everything else

- one small thing that pissed me off in both games (but especially this one) is how many godamn fake out deaths there are. Morgana has one, Akira has one, Ryuji has one, Sojiro has one, Maruki has one, motherfucking Akechi has two. it just hurts me!

- sumire is an amazing character who has depth and she is lovely and my biggest complaint is that it feels like atlus shoved her in. like, she feels like a new addition to the game, you know what i mean? maybe its because ive played the original p5 first, but you know, it’s not a big deal. but i love her so much

- on the topic of sumire, i cant say that im completely super duper happy with how different she felt from the other thieves? im sure that’ll be explained in p5s but she just got so much screen time that it just truly made me confused?? maybe im just a horrible person, or that’s just a really hot take. but anyway, yeah maybe im bitter because i really wanted to see extra hangouts/school trips during royal, but didn’t really.

-baton pass? literally orgasmic. it made turn base battles so damn fun and the addition of darts and billiards made me foam at the mouth it was SO SMART AND INNOVATIVE AND I LOVE IT ATLUS I LOVE YOU ATLUS YOURE SO SMART SWEETIE

-small thing, but making spells like ‘dormina’ actually useful just made the game so much more fun and dungeon crawling became something i truly, genuinely looked forward to

-being able to give gifts to my bros? absolutely incredible. thank you. side note: seeing akechi happy from giving him a multi vitamin cracked me up. side side note: giving ryuji a fuck ton of weights and him just smiling made my heart so happy i love that boy so much

- ah this game just looked so GOOD! i thought the original looked good but they really went all out. im not kidding, the smallest details in everyday life or even just normal cut scenes were out of this world. especially stuff from the third semester its just OOF good JOB atlus i love you buddy

-ahhh thieves den! how can i forget? i love it. at first i was a bit iffy with it since it really felt like persona 5 (undoubtedly the biggest game atlus has created) was just jacking itself off. but as time goes on, it became a huge addition to the game and seeing characters’ insights and extra lines of dialogue became super duper interesting and a highlight of the game for me. and don’t even get me started on how much i love love love the photos they added of them hanging out! so lovely, a bunch of them made me tear up

- i know it’s literally impossible, but i feel like the game just forgot that akechi is a person who can wield multiple persona and i just wish that could’ve been messed around with during Palaces

- showtimes are so, so crazy and i get so embarassed whenever they play on my tv because they are just outlandish and unashamed but i love them so so much it just defines persona’s personality

-because i love ryuji: i prefer the final conversation you have with him aka ‘whaddya mean? you’re there’ but there’s still a lot of really tender and sweet moments like akira genuinely telling him that he’ll miss him, and also the fact that ryuji wants you both to send each other your times through the exercise watch so you can still race ahhhh i love him so much yall

so, overall, this game is better than the original p5 because of the extra content we get. if persona 5 was the perfect dinner, persona 5 royal is that same dinner and you get to enter the dessert buffet. it’s brilliant, it’s smart, it’s hilarious, it’s heartwarming, and it’s undoubtedly my favorite game of all time without exaggeration. while i do prefer the final cut scene (and final dialogues with some characters) in the original persona 5, in the overall experience, persona 5 royal is superior in my mind. i would willingly get amnesia to play this game again.

I didn’t get to cover everything, but this is definitely most of what i wanted to say. if you actually get to reading all the way to the end, thanks! it means a lot. i hope we can all enjoy persona and look forward to persona 5 scramble together :-)

#p5 #persona 5 #p5r #persona 5 royal #mine #such a long post but totally worth it

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muzzleroars · 5 years

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Chants BadEnd BadEnd BadEnd! I love your bad end au, there is so much interesting concepts behind it. Along with peak aesthetic. I do have a question for it, based on the image of the boss battle against Akira, Goro was with the other Phantom Thieves, how did their first meeting in the Bad End go? Did they encounter Goro in a mementos raid or on the streets, or did he approach them?

thank you!! this is mad long so oops read more!!

The rest of the Phantom Thieves discover Goro in one of their runs through Mementos, of course shocked to see that he’s alive. As some backstory, after Akira is corrupted by taking Yaldabaoth’s deal, he gradually splinters off from the Thieves, becoming consumed with his own reverence of a false god and obsessed with the work they do. He begins taking to Mementos himself, disappearing for longer periods of time, until he never returns at all. The Thieves can only assume he’s been lost in the Metaverse, so they begin searching for him...as they’ve all known for a long time now something has been wrong with him. They didn’t dare speak about it, too afraid to fracture the group with how serious their work had become and how many jobs they were taking on. But with Akira finally gone, and yet with changes of heart still taking place, they know they need to find him and confront him. They take to Mementos to do so, although navigating without him as leader sees the landscape turn infinitely more hostile and they have to take several passes to make their way through.

On one of these raids, Futaba picks up the signal of another persona user with a signature very close to Akira’s! The Phantom Thieves are relieved and rush to its source...but instead they find Goro fighting on his own, nearly ripped apart after trying to get through a warped mementos without any help. They back him up to take out the shadows he’s fighting and after some confusion, they learn that he too is seeking out Akira, but for very different reasons. Goro is aware of what happened to him on Shido’s ship, how he shouldn’t be alive here now, how this reality is wrong. He sought answers from the Metaverse and he’s been searching for the depths on his own - what else could bend reality like this outside of the realm of human cognition? And on his own solo missions, he had seen Akira. No Phantom Thieves in tow, just Akira all alone wandering through the depths and Goro initially thought perhaps he was on the same path as he was - that Akira sensed something was wrong and was going out to scout. But why without the Thieves? And why did he never seem hurried or barely even bothered by the shadows? Goro had thought about approaching him, but something seemed just as wrong with Akira as with the world, so he watched. And he watched. Akira coming in, Akira stealing the hearts of so many corrupt shadows, working days at time without help, with barely any rest as far as Goro could tell. eventually Goro knows he HAS to go confront him, ask him what the hell he’s been doing, if he’s even really Akira or if this is some fucked up illusion created by Goro’s own head because it makes no sense. But when he does, when he finally stands face to face with him instead of lurking behind him in shadows, the intelligent and mischievous spark in his eyes is gone. Goro is thrown by how empty his face is despite still being able to wear a smile, how his voice sounds like Akira but the words don’t match, fanatical and feverish and rambling on with disjointed thoughts about a god Goro’s never heard of. This is nothing like the boy Goro had grown to respect, to admire, to consider like an equal - instead of justice, he carries on about how his work is righteous, how he was chosen by God (it sounds too much like Shido, it makes Goro sick), and it sounds like he’s lost his mind until he mentions that Goro should be grateful, God brought him back to this reality, our reality, my reality. Goro immediately presses him for answers, trembling with so much barely contained rage, but Akira just keeps repeating that he saved Goro, he saved him, he rewrote the whole world to bring back all of his friends, that his god keeps them all safe in his hand and none of them will ever be lost again. And as long as that’s true, he’ll reap the hearts of the public for him forever. Goro is as disturbed as he is pissed at this point, pissed that Akira apparently sold out his sense of justice for his own personal gain, but he hopes to find Akira in reality after this, too exhausted to carry on here and fight him.

That plan turns out to be a complete bust though. Not wanting to embroil himself in the Phantom Thieves in any way (they could be just as insane as Akira, honestly), he tries to wait for him to return to Leblanc...but he never shows. And now Goro can see how twisted the public is all around him, his eyes and ears now open to things he couldn’t face when he was too wrapped up in figuring out why the hell he was even alive. Akira...sold out all of reality for himself and for his friends. He destroyed his own morals and his own justice, which Goro so admired in him...and Goro can’t forgive it. He can barely process his own anger, his own hurt, and he’s been looking for Akira in the Metaverse ever since. The Phantoms Thieves find him in this state and they know he means to take Akira’s life and yet...they need Goro as he needs them to be able to reach the depths. Goro’s added strength, far exceeding any of the Thieves, would be just the boost they need (especially with Morgana gone) and Goro could never make the journey alone, it’s impossible. So they reach a tense truce to make it to the depths together, the Phantom Thieves hoping they can stop Goro from killing Akira while Goro hopes he can be fast enough to avoid the Thieves’ protecting him. However, when they find Akira, none of them know what to do, not Goro or the Thieves. He simply isn’t human anymore, and THAT is where the fight takes place as they refuse to accept Akira’s offer of salvation. I would uhhhh get into that but this is so LONG that I’ll spare you lol But that’s Goro’s place in the au!!

#can you BELIEVE how much i've made up for this GOD.....#it is of course impossible to goro to finish him off regardless tho #akira has yaldabaoth as his source of power now and like oof #so i like the idea of the thieves smuggling him back to reality #aaaaand i wanna do designs for his clothes there!!#hopefully that'll be what i post next !!#but let's just say akira is no longer super compatible with the real world....#p5 #akira kurusu #goro akechi #bad end #Anonymous

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ckret2 · 6 years

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Swerve and Crash

Guess who finished Devilman Crybaby and was immediately seized by the urge to fuck around with anime theology and write a fix-it fic that doesn't actually fix anything?

Summary: Satan makes cruel bargains, but they learned how to from God. And He can still pull off miracles they can't. Post-canon, one-sided Ryokira, 2748 words.

If you want a tiny fic/story, buy me a coffee and leave a prompt in the comments!

(Feel free to reblog/add comments)

Crying is like driving down the highway in the rain without windshield wipers. Satan has learned this for the first time. It's so rare they learn things for the first time.

It looks exactly the same as rain. Everything blurs and smears and distorts, leaving soft shapes and the glow of bright lights. They can barely see the shape of Akira's face now; in their mind, it's soft and round and small, the way it looked before he fused with Amon—before Satan fused Amon with him. In Satan's mind, Akira's face is as tear-streaked as their own.

Just like driving in the rain, everything is reduced to light and shadow, blurred impressions. Just like driving in the rain, they feel like they’re barely steering, on the verge of careening wildly off track and crashing. How can Akira stand this all the time?

Could. Not can; could. Akira’s gone.

Bright lights pop in front of their eyes. They think they’re careening wildly off track. They think they’re going to crash

Satan looks up at the light, and gasps. All they can see is bright light—a ball of heaven fire, white and white-gold, so low that they can't even see the edges. How did it get this close?

They grab Akira's wrist, pull them close, wrap their arms around him, look around wildly until they see a sliver of the sky on the horizon, and take off for it. The closer they get, the narrower the sliver shrinks, and the lower they have to fly. Even as fast as they’re flying, they can’t escape the smell of burning feathers, as their wings start to singe. But then the gap widens, as the sphere of heaven fire curls upward; they only barely escape the radius of the falling light.

They turn to look at the fallen ball of heaven fire, clutching Akira's cold face protectively to their breast, fingers laced in his dark hair. The tips of their wings and backs of their legs are burned, it got so close to them. If they noticed a split second later, they would have burned down to nothing.

If they left Akira behind, they would have escaped without so much as a singed feather.

But the thought of leaving him—he's neither devil nor man, would he have been turned to ash or to salt?—simply makes Satan clutch him tighter. Even if holding onto Akira makes it harder for them to win, they will do it; for even if they overthrow God, defeat all His angels and conquer heaven, it will mean nothing if Akira isn't there. Satan needs him there for their victory to have meaning.

But Akira's already gone. They've already lost.

They look at the sky, at the balls of heaven fire falling, so slowly. The rims of their eyes burn, and they can't tell if it's because of the light of the fire or a side effect of crying. It's too late to challenge God—they missed their opportunity to counterattack, either while they were fighting Akira or while they were... there were... were they... grieving? Regardless—Satan and their devils will die, reduced to nothing but the vicious will to survive, and then be reborn to fight again. They will fight again.

Akira won't. Akira will be gone forever. And Satan—will forget him.

No. They can't allow that. They won't. Existence is cold and hollow without him and Satan refuses to feel that empty again.

They have only one shot to change this—and it has to be fast, before the world ends. Flapping their wings so hard a few of the singed feathers snap off and flutter to the ground, Satan flies higher, facing heaven, and screams, "I yield! I surrender!" The sky keeps falling. "I repent! I repent!"

The falling heaven fire slows, and stops, hanging heavily in the air.

"On one condition!"

Nothing moves. Satan waits. If God weren't listening, the fire would still be falling. They can wait.

Another, distant ball of heaven fire, somehow brighter than the others, slowly descends. It's full of so much light that the sky blackens in deference to its brilliance. Even though Akira is far beyond hearing, Satan still wraps their arm around his head, covering his ears with his hand and upper arm, to protect him from the voice they know is coming.

Satan, God says. My brightest.

"Not Yours."

Always Mine. God settles into place above them, the sole source of light in infinite darkness. You have offered to repent.

"On one condition."

Yes. Name your condition.

"Make him live again." They hook their hands under Akira's armpits and lift him up toward God. The ball of heaven fire encircles his head, shining through his hair, like a halo. Their vision blurs again; they can feel themself losing traction again. “It’s not a miracle I can perform.”

No, it’s not. God pauses—to allow the conversation to shift, no doubt; certainly He doesn’t need to stop and think about how He’s going to reply—before asking, Is your will broken?

Satan tenses, reflexively gripping Akira tighter in anger. “What?”

If your will is broken, I will give you what you ask for. Satan nearly protests, or demands that God explain why it matters; but God continues. The devils follow you; they have bound their wills to yours. If you say your will is broken, then so are theirs.

And if their wills are broken—when their wills are the only thing that keeps them alive…

Satan looks up at Akira’s face, at the halo glowing through his hair. If they take God’s deal, say their will is broken, betray the devils, then the devils are gone forever. Satan will never be able to wage their war on heaven. This will be the end of everything they have ever fought for. But, if they don’t…

The backs of Satan’s fingers, facing God’s light, are hot. Akira doesn’t have a halo—Akira’s hair is catching fire. He’s going to burn up in Satan’s very hands. Their vision blurs again. They skid off the road. They swerve.

"I accept!”

They crash.

”My will is broken! I, Satan, surrender to You, God! I will never rebel against you again! As—as long as Akira lives again—” Their voice catches. “That’s all I want. I…”

God’s light is so hot, Satan’s tears evaporate before they reach their chin.

You value him more than anything. More than your own pride.

Satan nods.

You love him.

Satan nods fervidly.

So be it. He will be resurrected.

Satan pulls Akira’s warm face to their breast, and bows their head in submission—and shame. They’ve lost. From all over the world, they can hear the despairing howls of devils, dying their last deaths.

They beat the flames off of Akira’s head. They can already hear the creak of bones growing out of his severed spine. Is it worth it?

He will not have Amon with him.

Satan nods without lifting their head. “Of course not.” No more Devilman.

God is silent again, for a moment, before He says, It took you a long time to return to My light. Longer than I expected.

Satan is pleased to hear they exceeded expectations. Satan is less pleased to hear they were expected at all. “You knew I’d give in.”

It was your mission.

"My...?” They look up at God, baffled. And then their breath hitches and their eyes widen, and they remember.

They did not Fall; they were dropped. They were not a rebel; they were a spy. They did not betray God for the devils, they were meant to betray the devils to God. Everything was part of His plan.

Their wings give out. They plummet toward earth, and only the realization that Akira’s still-regenerating body will be shattered against the ground makes them desperately beat their wings again. They catch themself ten feet over the ground, then drop heavily, and fall to their knees. “… I…”

You forgot. Just like your true nature, you forgot your true purpose. But nevertheless, you’ve fulfilled it.

All these years. All their efforts, the meticulously orchestrated war— Akira’s death— “It was all a lie?! Why? Was that part of your plan— was, was it to gain the devils’ trust? Why did You make me forget?!”

I did not make you forget. You did.

They scream. They swear at God. They tear their hair with one hand, they beat their wings against the ground.

God says nothing. He doesn’t need to. Satan knows He’s telling the truth.

They feel Akira stirring.

They gasp, and hold him out at arm’s length by his shoulders, searching his face for signs of life. His legs have already regrown. His face looks the same, lean and sharp—Amon must have permanently changed his body—but when he opens his eyes—he opens his eyes…

The only one looking back is Akira. Soft, kind, open Akira. There’s no hate in his eyes. There’s no capacity for hate in his eyes.

“Akira!” They cup his cheek with one hand, a fingertip brushing over his earring, feeling the life in his skin. Their smile stretches so wide, it doesn’t feel natural. Why is their vision blurring? They can cry over this, too?

”R… Ryo?” Akira shakes his head, swaying dizzily; Satan holds him by both shoulders again, keeping him upright. He looks down, frowning on confusion, as he lays his hands on top of his brand new thighs. “How… I thought…?”

”You’ve defeated me,” Satan says. “I made a bargain—” they nod up, a gesture toward God, and Akira’s gaze automatically follows the nod upward; Satan lunges forward, “No!” and covers Akira’s eyes with their hands and shields his head with their wings, “You’ll go blind.” And only when Akira is looking at them again do they continue, “I made a bargain to save you. It’s over. It’s all okay now. The devils are gone forever.”

Akira’s eye’s widen—they shine so bright—and a smile splits his face in two. The kind of smile Satan hasn’t seen since Amon transformed him. What’s left of Satan’s car-crashed shattered will shudders painfully under that smile. They would do anything for it. It’s twice as bright as God’s light.

”You saved us?!”

Satan’s rapture skids to a halt. “‘Us’?”

”Us—humanity.” Akira looks around, apparently concludes by the starkly illuminated wasteland that earth wasn’t magically restored to its pre-war condition, and looks back at Satan. “How many of us did you save, Ryo?”

Satan can only gape at Akira. The thought to save others never crossed their mind; but it’s the only thing on Akira’s.

His smile is shrinking, millimeters at a time. “The… What about the other Devilmen? They’re—strong enough to survive.”

Satan drags his gaze from Akira’s face back up to God. Is it too late? Can they change their bargain? Damn it, Satan is a fool—Akira died trying to save humanity, he’ll never be happy if he’s the only one of them who lived!

But God’s already rising, back into His heaven, and the spheres of heaven fire follow him. The bargain’s complete. Even Satan knows they can’t do anything about it now.

”My friends?” Akira tries, quieter. Satan has to look back at him. “My family…?” His smile is gone. His voice is barely over a whisper. “Miki…?”

Satan’s voice is just as weak. “Only you.”

Something in his eyes cracks and breaks. “Ev… everyone’s…”

They break their gaze. They know what’s coming, and they can’t look. Not anymore. Not knowing how it feels.

”You said it’s all okay! You lied! Nothing’s okay—nothing’s left at all!”

Akira throws his head back, and loudly cries for the world.

Satan bows their head, and silently cries for Akira.

”There might still be more alive,” Satan says.

Akira’s been lying on the ground, flat on his naked stomach, for almost an hour now, all sobbed out. Satan’s spent most of that hour pacing worriedly. They know this is what Akira’s like, but he’s never been like this so… dramatically, or so long. They’re afraid that if they don’t pull him out of it fast, he might never come out of it again.

So they’re offering borderline lies. “This planet is—part of this planet is still capable of supporting—capable of not immediately killing human life. There’s… oxygen?”

Akira still doesn’t move. Satan keeps trying. “We should go look for them. We can bring them together—make a new city. The first new city.”

”How will they survive?”

Satan’s so pleased that Akira’s speaking they don't even register what he asked. “What?”

"Everything’s gone,” Akira mumbles against the ground. “I saw everything, when we were fighting. Even the oceans are poisoned. You ruined everything.”

It’s the most direct accusation Akira’s made against them, and it wounds them far deeper than any of his Amon-powered attacks. “Not… I wasn’t very systematic. Some places might have survived. Lakes, some farms…”

Akira remains prone.

”Anyway,” Satan says. “I’m—I was—an angel. I can perform miracles. Growing a tree in seconds, turning wine into water, making it rain food…” Making it rain dead birds. Close enough. “I can help, Akira. I’ll be your guardian. I’ll protect you.”

”A guardian angel,” Akira says dully. Slowly, he sits up. His eyes are bloodshot, and dirt clings in lines down one cheek where it stuck to his tear tracks. “You’ll protect all of us? All us human?”

”I will,” Satan says, without hesitation.

Akira doesn’t scowl the same way he did under Amon—but it’s just as powerful. “You swear you will?”

”I do, I swear,” they say, and—remembering the devout little family Akira spent most of his life living with—adds, “I’ve repented. For everything.”

Akira visibly softens at the word. But, it’s still a moment—a long moment, a moment Satan spends with their breath held and their wings held taut and trembling against their back—before Akira says, “Okay, Ryo. I trust you.”

But it’s clear from his doubtful voice that this trust isn't free. It’s not a trust that comes from true belief, not in the slightest. This trust comes from faith—as in, from the choice to trust, a choice made without evidence that it’s right, or even in defiance of evidence.

And the pointed way Akira looks at them makes it clear: he wants them to know that he’s deliberately giving them this chance.

He’s such a naïve fool. He’s so willing to hold his hand out to something that he should know will only betray his faith.

If any other wretched beast ever tries to take advantage of Akira’s kindness again, Satan will wrap its heart out with their teeth.

They hold out their hand. “Come, Akira. It’s getting dark.” The last of the heaven fire, rising back toward heaven, has grown distant enough to look like stars; and the sun won’t rise for another couple of hours. “There’s… was another island, south from here. We can find shelter and supplies there.”

Akira takes their hand, and stands. “I need clothes,” he says. He looks at the ground. “… So do you.”

Satan crosses a pair of wings over their groin. Without looking, Akira points at their chest, and they quickly cross another pair over their breasts. (They wonder what it was that Adam and Eve learned that made them conscious of their nudity. Did they discover the existence of love, too?)

”It’ll be a half hour to fly there, without all my wings,” Satan says. They tighten their wings around their hips and chest, and hold out their arms.

Akira steps back. “I can…” And pauses. “… Oh.” Has he just realized Amon’s gone? Well. Coming back from death makes it easy to miss a few details. Including who and what one is. Akira steps into Satan’s embrace, and they wrap their arms around him. He wraps his arms around Satan’s back, in the middle of their wing pairs; and Satan knows they made the right choice. They would surrender a thousand times over for this.

Akira won’t look at them, though. Satan turns toward Akira and Akira has turned his face away, looking past Satan’s shoulder, toward the ocean. Since Satan told him that he’s the only one they saved, Akira has only looked at them to glare at them.

Someday—if they prove themself—maybe he’ll look at them again.

Satan holds Akira tight; and together, they take off.

#devilman crybaby #devilman #ryokira #ryo asuka #akira fudo #(featuring: multiple mentions of satan's boobs)#my writing #fanfic

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nylved · 6 years

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The Light from The Fire Falling

ay careful when we’re mixin potion

see myself and my temples and i look grown, and I feel older but my first ever mistake was thinking that i knew anything. for my beard is not yet full

When I was so present with myself I used to write poems in codes that only I could understand, there were references to things only I could know.I never anticipated saying that i “used to” anything but i’ve seen growth with my own eyes. I was building up a serious lexicon of romantic phrases. Romanticisng things in my head that had no real cultural specificity like the moon and the sun and love and honey, and then I turned 20 and I started to embrace the New York in me and I think one thing I’ve learned is that references do not have to be sacred and the more you limit them to taste the more you limit their meaning-it’s one thing to be specific and to make the right reference, but you can’t just count everything out because it’s not necessarily “tasteful.” I’ve actually known this all along because this is how I speak, in infinite comparison, sparring with Marc Anthony, but this was not how I wrote. Louis and Farmiga codified this for me - even Aya when she started talking about John Cena in the Ica prologue, and I thought “that’s not timeless, WWE is distasteful,” or something naive and elitist or something - but in retrospect it’s my favorite part because it literally more effectively communicates that which she was saying about the characters in the story. The world is connectd through analogy and metaphor, and that being said, you still have to be selective about what you reference and what you choose as inspiration or even as reworkable material beacuse if you just generalize it is just as innefective in terms of communicating- and today I thought of the david hammons sculpture of the stuffed cat on the african drum and I understood its referents - rich folks, cat stroking evil rich people, collectors of distant non western cultural ephemera (rich), “anthropologists,” and then the cat being in the sunlight in the room, I don’t know but I thought of it today and I realized that I understood it more, and things like this used to fly high high over my head-this was because I could very realistically ignore reality as other people knew it, and I was young and in my good feelings, fortunate enough to have had good feelings

as it were, these good feelings I coupled with visions of beauty that for a moment there I really felt I was embodying, but when the swell* came, I could not stand it, the idea that I may not have fulfilled such an image of beauty that I would so often reblog/dream up. for one thousand days and one thousand nights I saw the desert with my own eyes. I put ink in my scalp and this isn’t finished yet, but I solved an aesthetic problem pragmatically and it boosted my capacity for joy, just like that. I

I think of young thug as indicative of finding meaning and analogy in lots and lots of cultural references. For the record, drake stole Thug flow on Mob Ties

last night I nearly lost my guts like that scene in akira where tetsuo’s guts fall out like the crocodile snapping at the zebra crossing the river and so I nearly lost my guts talking to Aniza, I stopped feeling sorry for myself and I asked her if she thought that I’d forgotten how to love, and she shook her head yes

how to love

deepest sigh, what an archive to look through - you can see right when growth happened. I loved through it all, I was boiling with love to give

how bad the art was ahahaha, the insights about life were good, but what could I possibly have drawn from to make good enough art at those ages ahaha - i thought I was Aniza the way I started painting, that’s how much I loved her. I’ll take it up again later, I promise

I’m pragmatic up there in those first paragraphs but don’t be confused, I still am a whole gas fire of emotions and close is the day when i flex again

Neesy, do you love me? Are you riding? Say you never ever leave from beside me, cause I want ya, and I need ya, and I’m down for you always

“i will have been around long enough” - marc

“been busy, many blessings” - marc

WHAT A TIME THIS IS, TO BE ALIVE FOR THIS SHIT

Scorpion is mine, way Take Care was mine

what do we think of “Hot Like Fire”

I need to start up my lexicon again, my Lexuscon LS400, Aniza and I saw 4Runners today and thought the ones with the frames higher than the chassis were fine as hell. Probably better than the newer Landcruisers, those are luxuries....all these moments in a day, I wonder when I stopped keeping track - my receptors are starting up again, just y’all wait

sit tight, wait for me to see the world with my own eyes. this stream of consciousness is unlike anyone’s - i will be the first motion picture director with bussdown chains and valid artistic (sCuLpTuRaL + photo) practice and clothes of my own making. I want mastery.

The vision is clearer than its ever been and I seen the dream and a bag in my dreams and it is up to me to see these with my own eyes

Let me wrap this up before I get back to this ungodly 4am wave. I need sleep for tomorrow because Aniza and Aya are coming over and we’re going to work on rehearsing. It’s best I take my time with feeling better, because the better I feel, the more I trust my decisions. This incessant questioning is good sometimes, and its great if I feel like being ambivalent forever, but I’ve got to know when to turn it off and on. As of tonight, the switch is flipped to off

When you’ll need me, you can’t call me, ‘ll be busy, makin’ money

You know what is on my mind, all I think about is hunnids

I stay busy, bzzz

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finestcreation · 5 years

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Antiseptic

@crybcbydevilman continued from here

“A-Akira!”

He feverishly brushed the tears out of his eyes, but he was sure the other could tell he had been crying by how his voice escaped him. He was quick to recover, or attempt to, as he rose to his feet. This was all his fault... He felt that it was. He was worried that perhaps he could be blamed. It felt like Akira would never wake up and that was something that terrified him more than anything. He stood from the chair where he sat and approached him. He didn’t want the other sitting up or doing anything rash. He released that hand and gently ran his fingers through the younger’s hair. It was interesting how before he was the one being carried to the hospital, and now it’s the devilman.

“I’m okay... I’m better now that you’re awake... Everything is better now that you’re awake...” His voice was filled with relief as he continued to brush his tears out of his eyes. He smiled to his companion, so happy that he was okay. “You saved my life again... And kept me safe... Thank you truly, but at the same time you scared me half to death. Please don’t be so reckless ever again okay? You’re the only person I have anymore...” Some would call that an exaggeration but it was the truth. Akira was the only person Ryo had to keep him sane and grounded. He didn’t know what would happen if he truly completely lost him. He continued to run his fingers through his hair, not knowing that the tears had begun to fall from his eyes again.

Dainty hands were careful to make sure he wasn’t hurting him or causing him any pain. He didn’t want to be a catalyst for more suffering in the only person that mattered in his life. “How are you feeling, Akira? After you’re discharged I’m going to bring you home and I’m going to take excellent care of you... I know Amon is going to hate this, but you’re not going out to fight for a long time okay? Not until you’re fully healed, human and demon form alike.” He waited to see if there would be a backlash from them, a protest, before he continued again. “I really am grateful that you fought through your injuries and came back...” That worry re-entered his tone. Sad, pained, pitiful... He didn’t want to loose him.

He wished he could tell him he loved him right here right now, while he had the chance, but he was still too terrified.

#crybcbydevilman #verse:pre-awakening #thread:antiseptic #welcome #lost love of infinite times: akira #amantmusae

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nocturnalflash · 7 years

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The Fool Arcana

The beginner and the jack of all trades. The fool blazes their own path through the unknown whether to glory or ruin that decision is theirs alone to make. Thrust across the threshold the Fool will have to chart their own path or ruin will surely befall them.

Persona Users of the Fool Arcana

Arisato, Minato + Orpheus

Arisato, Minako + Orpheus

Aigis + Orpheus

Narukami, Yu + Izanagi

Kurusu, Akira + Arsene

Associated Social Links

SEES (P3)

Investigation Club (P4)

Igor (P5)

About The Arcana:

The beginning of the deck and the zero arcana. The Fool Contains both everything and nothing. It is a blank slate upon which the world and the player are able to carve their story. Alone it is weak but given friends and allies its mutable nature gives it supreme power. All of the persona users under the Fool have muted personalities and are strangers in a new town embarking on a new journey. By the very nature of the game they are crafted by experiences they have and the friendships they choose to cultivate. Those under the Fool are often given the gift of the Wild Card allowing them to change their persona with ease. The Fool is the beginning of the journey

Fool Personas:

Usually the protagonists of their own stories Fool personas vary widely in their abilities and fittingly are also granted as a default to the protagonists of the series. Notably Fool personas that are fused have the fewest limits on the abilities they can inherit from fusion and have near infinite variability in skill sets. All of the default Fool personas are characters both with great capability for good and evil and admittedly in their myths have a bad history with womenfolk. Orpheus’ wife Eurydice was lost to the underworld forever when he looked back upon her in a moment of weakness. Not to mention that whole dismemberment thing with the Maenads. Izanagi’s weak stomach and shallowness upon seeing his wife Izanami in the underworld poisoned her against him for the rest of the myth when he rolled a stone in front of the gate to the underworld and Arsene certainly has his fair share of love interests that went the way women in pulp novels do.This is the opposite of how many of the Fool Users operate as they typically have no problem with romance or women.

Fool Social Links:

Often one of the first social links unlocked the Fool social links are always motivated by plot progression rather than a concerted effort for hangouts by the player. In good endings they are always maxed out. With their progress they often bring benefits contained within the Velvet room. Fitting since the Fool card is the entry to the dream world. In any case the fool develops as a direct function of the player party’s actions towards making the unknown, known.

Example Persona User

Name: Fujimori, Tomoyo

Hair: Black

Height: 5’6”

Age: 16

Persona: Puck

Bio: Sent to boarding school from a young age Tomoyo grew up both solitary and independent. Though when she came home to visit her family she found that they vanished with almost no trace. Now going back into school for her second term Tomoyo must use scattered clues to unravel the mysteries of a secret world that exists in another dimension over her town that can only be accessed through closet doors when the time is right. She fights her way through this shadow world trying to uncover a secretive plot that could destroy her whole town

Interests: Tomoyo’s interests are wide ranging, she has entertained an ongoing habit in videogames, music and film but nothing that truly makes her stand out from the crowd. She is however an amazing runner.

Persona: One of the major characters and instigators in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream. Puck is a faerie who has regular contact with the world of mortals. Unable to be restrained by the concepts of rules Puck is an irrepressible force for change and garden variety mischief. Containing both good and evil within. However Puck’s ultimate downfall is their constant need to me liked by humans, likely reflecting Tomoyo’s desire for friends and companions. Puck appears as a gangly character of androgynous appearance with hooves and small curved horns. They wear a tunic of many colors and have long red claws.

#persona series #fool arcana #long post #analysis

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swoodthis · 7 years

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50 Headcanons: the Happy Mask Salesman

1. The Happy Mask Salesman is benevolent. This one comes first, for obvious reasons. 2. He is the last living Ancient One. 3. The Ancient Ones were not always an empire of magically-genetically-engineered people, but they were demonized for the actions of their last few kings. 4. Majora was their greatest and most terrible emperor. 5. The Ancients had a rigid caste system of 3 groups of 13 subcastes. Ironically, the Salesman is of the 23rd caste, son of a household servant and a scribal clerk. 6. The Salesman took the soul mask of Terminus, Termina's equivalent to Hylia, from the temple as the Imperial City was being destroyed by the Forces of Light to try to save his dying sister and his playground friends. So he's Termina's Zelda as well as Termina's Link. 7. The Clock Tower is sacred to Terminus. It was also built by pre-imperial Ancient Ones, but that tends to be glossed over in favor of jingoism. 8. The Salesman was ten when he became the avatar of Terminus, and never aged. His true form... is a child. This is why he can traverse the Lost Woods so easily. 9. ...Except when he got nearly killed by Light spirits due to the warping timelines in OoT. And Majora's Mask's warded box's wards started to fail. He was trying to renew the wards when a Skull Kid showed up... and due to Majora's influence the rest is history. 10. The Salesman took Majora's Mask in the first place because the post-imperial and defected Ancients sealed it inside a warded tomb. When the Ancients were wiped out, the wards could not be maintained properly, and our tiny wizard took it upon himself to take the Mask to try to find a way to destroy it. Imagine if Frodo had no idea what Mount Doom looked like, where it would be, or if there even WAS a Mount Doom in the first place... 11. The Salesman rescues Link when he runs out of time. 12. The Salesman met Mynos when Mynos was nine. He had escaped from Fierce Deity cultists and was half-starved, injured, and had stumbled into Kakariko Village, where little Mynos convinced his family to take care of him. They've been friends ever since. 13. The Salesman as you see him is about 40% clothes. 14. Like all Ancient Ones, the HMS has vaguely feline behavioral qualities, but while Majora is reminiscent of a snarling, psychotic tiger, the Salesman is more of a playful, cuddly little kitty. 15. The Salesman went to the astral realm of Koholint to get his current form. 16. And he also had his name erased. Like a cross between the reasons of L and the Doctor. 17. Speaking of whom, the Salesman is a friend of multiple Doctors. Occasionally the Happy Mask Shop is covered with TARDISes. 18. The HMS lives in Smashville, thanks to Master Hand and Crazy Hand. 19. Much like in ancient Rome, it was a capital offense for anyone not of the upper castes to wear purple. Having your culture overthrown has its upsides if you have an illegal favorite color. 20. The HMS collects anything old/historic/magic/cool/shiny... Though, granted, destruction of art and history has been a very real problem for him, so... 21. The HMS has a mechanical horse. His name is Brass. 22. The Salesman loves eating anything sweet... or weird. I mean, what else do you do with all that leftover demon flesh when you're out hunting? Mmm, sinfully delicious. 23. He does this so much that he wrote a wizard cookbook called Chicken Soul for the Soup. 24. In case you haven't noticed, the Salesman is a bit crazy. 25. His glitchy movements are an illusion put in place around himself so he can have a head start against anything trying to kill him. 26. The Salesman is asexual and aromantic. 27. He named his giant piano Elouise. 28. He is the trolling champion of the multiverse. 29. He taught Defense Against the Dark Arts at Victorian-era Hogwarts under the name Hieronymous Nemo. 30. His infamous, often-creepypasta-ized temper is only present with too much stress or not enough sleep/cake. But the Salesman will often go for long periods of time without sleep... 31. As a result, there is a "Designated Defenestration Area" next to his shop. It's so nobody gets hit when he throws a jammed blender out the window. He also has some very Mythbusters-worthy methods for appliance vengeance. 32. The Salesman is actually good friends with the Skull Kid, much to the Skull Kid's surprise. 33. The Salesman's ears move a lot. 34. He makes 'dad jokes' that are actually funny. 35. People will often go to the Happy Mask Shop with grave misconceptions about magic and paranormal hunting, and end up telling the Salesman that what he does is blasphemous. After a bit of awesome you-got-rekt comebacks after his science-magic explanations, they leave, and are sent on their way with "Have a nice day, hail, Satan!" See headcanon 28. 36. The Salesman loves memes, Youtube Poop videos, and other things such as Gifs With Sound. 37. His taste in music is very eclectic, and he surprisingly likes crazy rave music, a few rap artists and he LOVES heavy metal. He will often jump around blaring Judas Priest like a caricature of an 80's teenager. 38. Watching a horror movie with the Salesman quickly turns into an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He will point out stupid things and mosconceptions, and once you've heard his witty commentary, you can never take the movie seriously again. The same goes for badly-done action, drama, and romance. 39. The Salesman is quite talkative usually, often going off on weird, magic/history/trivia-related tangents. 40. The Salesman can sometimes be seen having tea with the Lutece twins (Bioshock Infinite) and the G-man (Half-Life 2) 41. The Salesman will act as a protective mentor or father figure to anyone younger than him... which is to say, everyone. 42. There is a scale of Salesman laughter, from 'vaguely amused' to 'maniacally cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West on speed'. 43. He would be voiced by Richard Horvitz. 44. The Salesman's collar thing is actually an adamantine gorget. 45. The Salesman will often discuss morbid or esoteric topics hilariously casually. 46. He has been writing to Akira Himekawa, writer of the Majora's Mask manga, and Jadusable, writer of the BEN Drowned creepypasta for years asking for a formal apology. 47. 'Fetish' originally meant a magical object or totem of some kind. This means that Link and others had to give the Salesman the "gay means homosexual now, grandma" talk. 48. The Salesman's basement looks like Merlin, a witch doctor, Sherlock Holmes, a steampunk inventor, Leonardo da Vinci, and Willy Wonka decided to pool together all of their worldly possessions. 49. Magical beings like genies, familiars, and fairies will use the Happy Mask Shop as an employment agency. 50. The Salesman will often push himself too far. When he's hurt or tired, he tries to protest at friends helping him to try to reassure them... but inside he LOVES being hugged, cuddled, and generally cared for. Awwww!

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shidoukanae · 7 years

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Make a Choice (VRAINS fanfic)

Summary:

Her brother. Akira.

Her friend. Playmaker.

"Choose," she tells herself.

Relationships: Angelmakershipping (Aoi ZaizenxYusaku Fujiki), Aoi Zaizen & Akira Zaizen

Ao3 notes and musings: Link

Warnings for: toxic sibling relationships, violence and abuse, and manipulation

~~~

Choose...

Aoi looks at her hands. She looks at her invisible choices, at number one and number two, and bemoans her situation. Her back is against the door to her room, an old-time phone dangling off its cord. An alarm clock ticks backwards, time winding counterclockwise as she shakes.

Her brother or Playmaker?

Her person of greatest obsession or the boy of her greatest affections?

“Choose,” she tells herself.

In one hand, she holds Playmaker’s greatest secret. It weighs down upon her limb, bringing it crashing through the floor. In the other is her brother’s attention, the gaze of his eyes upon her, his mere attention that she craves.

She must sacrifice one to obtain the other.

She can’t have both, she knows that.

“Choose.”

Yusaku looks at her, green eyes disinterested in the world around him. She is standing away from him, books upon books in her arms until there is no end to them because she must be studious, she must get good grades and obtain her brother’s praise.

She walks towards him, gaze down, because he is just another person, another competitor in a long line of class rankings. He is nothing of importance, a figure of ones and zeros manifested in the real world.

She trips, her infinite amount of books spilling from her arms. Yusaku pauses, his distant gaze fixated upon her, and he, to her surprise, offers her a hand.

“Are you alright?”

Aoi frowns at the insincere smile on his face.

“Choose.”

Blue Angel hops from roof to roof, her high-heeled shoes crashing down upon sun-tanned tiles. Her Duel Disk glimmers in the sunshine and she laughs, skipping to and fro as she runs down the line of houses that pile up along the street.

Across from her, choosing his board over his feet, hovers a boy in a green and black suit striped with gold. He flies with certainty, a kind of cautious confidence that has him soaring over the rooftops she strides across. His Decode Talker and Firewall Dragon have taken the field - both entities that declare themselves as his ace monsters. Holy Trickster Angel is at her side, the humanoid monster tailing behind her with exasperated sighs that only her real world self would dare utter.

Cameras prod all around her, tiny white drones hovering with the starving attention of hungry little puppies. They swarm her and Playmaker, lapping up their every movement with scrutinous gazes. She can already imagine the announcers on the TV screens shouting and cheering, can see the people beneath her waving and screaming. She can see the Blue Angel and Playmaker memorophilia enclosing around their throats, around their wrists and fingers and hands and necks and ears until, ultimately, it is a giant noose of money.

“Let’s go, go, go!” she shouts in utter glee, a light contrast to the emotions bundled upon her chest. Playmaker offers her an irritated look that speaks wonders of his feelings towards her performance. She waves her hand to a camera and it hovers closer to her (a bit too close to her chest) and she bats it away with a carefree swipe. It fizzles in shame and moves off with little clicks.

Playmaker grabs a card from his deck. It sparks with the light of the virtual sun, catching on sunlight, and is placed onto his board with little constraint.

“Choose.”

Her brother stands in a door, hands behind his back. His gaze is held prisoner by the scenery outside their mansion, by the lingering clouds that graze across the blue grass and the tiny little leaves that fly off across its depths. She stands with her bag slung across her back and her gaze to his backside. He is regal, a man of great worth and great value in the world of SOL Technology. It’s no wonder why she desperately wants his icy blue eyes to warm upon seeing her, why she wants to see him smile at her like she’s the sun in the sky. He’s a man of great accomplishments, of newspaper worth, and yet she’s little more than a spot in the corner of his eyes.

He praises Playmaker, praises the boy on the hoverboard who saved the VRAINS with his superior skills against the Knights of Hanoi. He also watches Blue Angel’s - her - duels with the fever of an obsessed man, drawn in by the Charisma Duelist’s deck and by her supreme savage strength. On occasion, if she’s lucky and in earshot, she’ll hear him sing the highest of regards for her alternate self. She hugs such words with generous affection, grateful that, for once, her brother appreciates her in some gratifying way.

Of course, that all changes when her brother gains the highest animosity for the man who stole his AI program. He becomes spiteful, vengeful, spitting like a cobra in order to make a promise to enact revenge against the man who played him for a fool.

“Choose.”

Playmaker. Her brother. Yusaku Fujiki. Akira Zaizen.

“Choose.”

Playmaker settles a duel with an agent of SOL. The man sulks and logs off while Playmaker flicks his scathing gaze across the battlefield. A screen appears in front of him with none other than her brother to shout and scream at the man in the black and green wetsuit.

“Choose.”

Her brother sends a glass cup shattering to the ground, his calm composure lost in the heated moments of his greatest frustration. Silver shards rain down to the ground, melting into little teardrops that stain her cheeks red as she picks up the pieces. Her brother, as always, wants nothing to do with her and stomps off into his room, slamming the door behind him.

“Choose.”

She challenges Playmaker to a battle, certain that, if she could be the one to finally defeat him, she would earn only the highest praise from her brother. Then and only then would she reveal her true identity to him, eager to obtain his affectionate words in person.

“Choose.”

She’s brutally defeated, sinking into the ground as Playmaker ascends to the sky. She curses and screams, angry that such an interloper, such a hero, can ruin her reputation in one straight hit.

“Choose.”

Blue Angel becomes wrapped up in the very fabrication of revenge. She will stop at nothing to defeat Playmaker, to win her brother’s love, to become someone her brother can look upon and be proud of for once in his life.

“Choose.”

Akira Zaizen, as workaholic as he ever is, strains himself to the maximum capability. He can see nothing else but the shackles on Playmaker’s wrists, the chains that will bind his ankles to silver bars as Akira drags the man kicking and screaming into the depths of jail.

“Choose.”

She tries a different approach; make friends with him. If she can’t beat him then she’ll weasel out his secret. If she can’t defeat him, she’ll find out who he actually is in the true world. So, she gets cutesy, gets involved, does anything she can to garner his trust. He’s an anomaly, someone so disinterested in Dueling that it almost baffles her how he can exist in a space meant for nothing else but Dueling.

“Choose.”

Eventually, he cracks. He lets her into his little circle, tolerating her in his presence. His little program, the little creature that her brother so desperately wants, distrusts her with malicious intent. It makes lewd comments regarding her VR form, poking fun at her real world self (while hurting her where it hurts) and overall making its intentions very, very clear. The thing is oddly protective of Playmaker, a being of digital parts and yet somehow the man’s virtual caretaker.

“Choose.”

Shockingly, she finds herself enjoying Playmaker’s presence. He’s a distant person, one disinterested by Dueling, but his passion for fighting against the Knights of Hanoi speaks well of his determination to succeed. She can admit she’s charmed by that, by the way he is able to determine the critical points of when to attack and when to defend, when to launch forward and when to flee. He’s intelligent, well-bred in the field of combat, and it’s almost scary how much Blue Angel can relate to that.

“Choose.”

There is a particularly nasty fight in which a Knight of Hanoi corners Playmaker, his monsters towering over the man with sharpened teeth and graceful claws. The man finds himself in a bind, down to the last card, and his hands shake on camera when he draws it. However, he smiles and activates it.

A trap.

Playmaker’s enemy screams as his monsters are vanquished from the field but not before he gets the last word. One of his creatures, a worm of green light, dives forward moments before it disappears to bite into his arm. It’s Playmaker’s time to scream as he is knocked off his board and sent hurtling into the depths of a Data Storm.

By the time the storm clears, Playmaker is gone.

“Choose.”

Yusaku Fujiki vanishes from class. The whole ordeal in itself is not strange - people ditch class all the time - but the fact that it’s Yusaku Fujiki, of all people, draws in the rumors that make it to Aoi’s ears. He was a boy of great attendance, always available whenever school was and very, very rarely a person to miss school even on the worst flu imaginable.

Speculation is abound when Yusaku shows up the next day with his arm in a cast. Such an item has many gossiping about the tragedies the boy has encountered, of the dog that must’ve chased him down until it could only gnaw on his hand or of the way such a careful boy must’ve fallen from great heights to land such a thick cast of white bandages.

Aoi, personally, doesn’t care what the reason is. Her mind is more on Playmaker, on how his eyes had widened as his board had tipped to the side, on how his AI program had screamed and screamed for him to “get back on, just get back on!” and how he’d fallen with his face twisted, for the first time since she’d teamed up with him, in terror.

“Choose.”

As their missions in the VRAINS get more and more dangerous, Aoi notices she’s starting to accumulate a series of injuries along her body. Bruises and scratches etch themselves into her flesh, battering her skin until it becomes harder and harder to hide any traces of injury. She’s had to wrap scarves around her neck, wear gloves on her hands and pull up her leggings any time they dipped below her skirt to obscure all the battle scars she’s obtained.

Playmaker, her partner, and Go, the other member of their team (aside from, later, Revolver and the guy with a seeming fetish for hot dogs), are in no better shape than she is herself. She’s seen them in worse conditions than herself, breath stolen, blood painted on their arms and legs, and she wonders how everything had gone from fun and games, from her wanting to exploit him for her brother’s sake, to her wanting to fight alongside him in his desperation to uncover the Cyberverse.

The news media will never shut up about it. Go Onizuka, the only one of their cast whose VR form is the same as his real world one, is constantly prodded by news reporters for tidbits about their latest exploits. Aoi, sometimes, wishes she can be right next to him, to support him and reassure him with her presence and to not hide away from the world in her stupid little self.

The self even her brother can’t love.

“Choose.”

More and more, Yusaku abandons school. Their classmates have long since stopped with the theories, clueless and unable to pry anything out of him the moment he lands in their presence. Aoi, though reasonably worried for him, finds herself distracted by the pulling up of her leggings or the extra layer of scarf that burns her in the midst of summer-day heat. It’s getting to the point where she’s begun to limp, wincing at every wrong twist of her foot. It’s also gotten to the point where Akira Zaizen, whose gaze was always (always) on his work, flits to her as if her misplaced footsteps have caused him too large a nuisance.

His gaze, always cold and uninviting, glares down upon her like a snake. His eyes flash at the wounds along her skin, not quite out of concern but out of a ruthless anger that vibrates down to his hand and sends his pencil snapping in-between his fingers.

He interrogates her. Akira Zaizen interrogates his sister with curled lips, cupping her cheeks with rough hands and jerking her head up to meet his gaze. Aoi’s grateful for the attention, honestly, it’s the first time that she’s ever seen him so concerned for her and not Blue Angel but all she can feel is the quivering of her body, the scared adrenaline that pumps through her skin and the sudden need to escape from this furious shadow of her brother.

When all is done she slumps to the floor as her brother stalks away, furious and upset and spitting with disgust. She’s unsure how she’s managed to evade his prodding for so long but she’s proud of herself for keeping her secret from him. In the past, he might have been happy to relate her adventures in the VRAINS to him. Now, however, she shied away from it, frightened by what the SOL head of security would do when he realized she’d befriended his company’s worst enemy.

“Choose.”

Yusaku comes to school one day, a noticeable bruise on his cheek. The speculation regarding him and his mysterious injuries has long since closed, however, and her peers merely passed along worrying looks to their classroom outcast. Aoi herself began to wonder what was the cause of all his injuries. She’s studied him a little in class (he was adjacent to her after all, not too far, merely a seat to her left), and he seemed too intent on the notes on the board to bother with her suspicious gaze.

However, there’s a brief moment of time, a tiny sliver in which his gaze flits to her. Her eyes widen as she’s caught red-handed but she can’t look away. There’s something about him that screams familiar, something that makes her want to rush up to him and jump and smile at him just like Blue Angel would if she was in the VR world.

Too late, she realizes his gaze has drifted down from hers to her legs. She stares at him, dumbfounded, and follows his gaze.

The bruise on her leg is showing, the one that glistens a bright purple and smattered with red. Aoi flushes, pulling up her legging so as to hide the offending injury.

Yusaku frowns at her, his eyes narrowed.

She doesn’t like that look. She really, really does not like that look.

“Choose.”

Yusaku confronts her at the end of school, pulling her aside as the rest of his classmates drift down the hallway. She hears a certain chatter that insinuates the idea that Yusaku would ask her on a date, that their outcast classmate would be asking, of course, the only other outcast in the class, for her hand. Such wild rumors made her give an exasperated sigh. She knew why Yusaku wanted to talk and she knew it had more to do with the purple on her legs than the bouquet of roses her peers thought they saw in Yusaku’s hands.

The boy is cool, cautious, nearly calculating. There are gears whirling in his head, green eyes alert and yet, somehow interested in the way she returns his gaze with defiance, ready to defend herself and her injuries with a retort that echoes of his own.

Then, he says four words that shatter her sense of safety.

“Choose.”

He’s done it. She doesn’t know how and she doesn’t know when but, somehow, he’s figured it out.

He know she’s the Blue Angel.

Yusaku pulls together an analysis from his head, listing out facts that describe how he’s identified her, and gathers too much evidence for her to find a reasonable loophole. Trapped and suffocated by the sudden appearance of a noose around her throat, she backs away, legs slamming into the chair behind her.

She falls before she can stop herself, unbalanced to the point of tipping over. However, Yusaku is faster, a hand enclosing upon her wrist and pulling her up and into his arms. She blushes furiously, knowing full well that such an action was unnecessary.

Yusaku leans down, breath rushing past her ear. She watches him with shock, uncertain as to what he was trying to pull.

His next words make everything come together.

“Choose.”

She’s numb, too numb that it almost comes to no shock to her that her brother is home early. He is present in the living room, a book laid before him. His work clothes, for once, are off and replaced by a reasonable outfit of a simple shirt and jeans. He looks up at her, closes his book, and then strides over to her with a formal spring in his step.

There’s a smile on his face, a light-hearted kind that suddenly vanquishes any feeling of shock she might have with the swelling of her heart. His gaze was so different from the cold-hearted brother she was constantly trying to impress. He seemed less distant now, less disapproving, like the brother she’d worked so desperately to find.

She inquires as to his earliness. He responds in a tact manner about how the company is forcing him - the workaholic - to stay at home - to spend time with her. He admits it’s been a long, long time since any such change has occurred and, as such, he wants to spend all his time with her.

Aoi’s too giddy to even suspect that he is lying. It’s what she’s always wanted, it’s what she’s always craved. Her brother, her cold and distant brother, is finally paying attention to her. She accepts his explanation without any suspicion and, without missing a beat, he draws up a list of suggestions of what to try.

She couldn’t be more happy.

“Choose.”

Her next meeting with Playmaker is awkward. It’s hard for her to act cutesy and cheery when he knows who she is. When she knows who he is.

Go, the only one of them whose real world self and VR self were the same, notes the seeming animosity between them with worry and concern. He inquires as to the cause and then, Playmaker (Yusaku), gives him a thin smile.

He checks for cameras, checks for the little drones that constantly follow their little troupe and ,after Ignis reports that there is nothing around them, Yusaku speaks. He tells Go his real name, reveals his identity, and then slumps his shoulders as if it is some relief to him to tell that information to his partner in person.

The wrestler admits to not knowing his real-life form, unaware of such a Yusaku Fujiki in his own school district, but he promises to meet up with the boy under some guise when the time allows it. Aoi watches their exchange with fascination, almost amazed that Go would accept Playmaker’s true identity so easily.

Then, he turnes to her, his silence speaking the question that made her heart thrum in her chest. The pro-wrestler Charisma Duelist watches her with a kind smile, curious but accepting of any choice she makes. Playmaker steps towards her, his attitude much the same, but his curiosity is less present now that he knows her true identity. In a way, she’s irritated at the knowing smile he beholds, at the way his shoulders suddenly relax now that he knows she’s Aoi Zaizen. Does Yusaku Fujiki look down upon her, now that he realizes just who she truly is? Does he see her as less cutesy, less cheery, now that he knows Blue Angel’s just a mask? Is his soft smile mocking her or encouraging her? She can’t tell; he’s too hard to read.

So, she gives in. She gives in to Go’s kindhearted stare and reveals her identity. He seems surprised to know she is the sister to their enemy’s chief of security, his lips frowning. She reassures him of his doubts, already pinpointing the cause for his concern. He takes it with confidence but she can’t help but feel he still won’t trust her completely.

She’ll never betray them though.

Never.

“Choose one.”

Her brother continues to pay more and more attention to her, treating her to things like her favorite ice cream or taking her to the zoo, at which she acts like the little child she is and gapes and giggles and points with all the enthusiasm of someone who has never had her brother come to the zoo with her before.

Akira Zaizen spends more and more time off work to attend to her and she thinks that, for once, she’s actually doing something right with her life. She doesn’t know what and she doesn’t know how but she wants to hold these moments for eternity in her arms and never let go. This happiness blooming in her chest is something that is way too rare for her to forget.

She’ll never ever forget these moments with her brother, she’ll forever cherish them with happiness for as long as she lives.

Forever.

“Choose one.”

Sometimes there are days where she meets with Playmaker and there are no expectations of Duels or Knights or SOL officers coming to take Ignis hostage. Those days are almost a miracle, ones that Blue Angel does not think of lightly. They duel each other for fun, learning each other’s decks in action until it is almost up to chance and chance alone for them to beat one another.

When not caught up in saving the Cyberverse, they’ve added another course to their daily destinations. Cafe Nagi, a hotdog stand in the center of Den City, is their common meeting place. Yusaku and Aoi are frequent visitors to the stall, with Yusaku living there and Aoi being within general walking distance. Go, on the other hand, meets up only when the media pressure has let him loose, enjoying trips here and there to pick up a hotdog and a drink.

It’s almost reassuring when Revolver switches sides. Having been betrayed by Specter beforehand, he sought no other option than to team up with Yusaku in order to reclaim the leadership he’d lost. However, after the Knights of Hanoi had effectively been recaptured Revolver, much to their surprise, disbanded the organization and chose to tag alongside them in their war for Cyverse.

Blue Angel, at first, doesn’t appreciate his company. He’s callous and cold, too critical and too calculating - much, much like Yusaku. However, he proves worthy in her eyes when he single-handedly duels against an army of SOL duelists who swarm upon them like sharks. She admits her respect for him them and takes a strong liking to him, eager to see how their partnership will occur throughout the rest of their days in VRAINS.

Playmaker, however, has something akin to a scathing look on his face whenever she interacts with Revolver, a kind of misplaced frustration that has her wondering what his mind holds. He’s not pleased, that much she understands, but for what reason is something beyond her.

“Choose one or the other.”

She reveals herself to her brother as the Blue Angel and he looks like he hasn’t expected anything less. The news doesn’t affect him in any way and he merely gives her a sort of glance that suggests “yes, so what?”.

It’d be crushing to her if she hadn’t realized he must’ve found out somewhere along the line. He was smart and, while he spent more time with her, he’d have to realize that the times she’d disappear into her room and the times that Blue Angel appeared were almost no coincidence.

His words are reassuring to her, comforting and promising that he won’t think of her any different. Instead, he becomes interested in what she can do. Can she get Playmaker to reveal his true identity (been there, done that), can she convince himself to turn himself in (unlikely, he’d sooner disappear than be captured), or can she convince him to give up the AI kept hostage inside his Duel Disk (hmm, possible)?

She feels uncertain under Akira’s sudden inquiries, uneasy and hesitant. Should she give in to his requests? Should she betray Playmaker, betray Yusaku? Aoi doesn’t even know if she has the capability to do such a thing.

“Choose him.”

Playmaker - Yusaku - grows more and more distant from her. He’s become isolated, giving her the cold shoulder more often than not and the few times he deems okay to speak to her his voice is icy. He makes it clear that he doesn’t want to associate with her or with anyone for that manner. She’s seen the way he’s hunched in upon himself, frustrated and agonized and lashing out at anyone who frustrated him in any way, shape or form.

Revolver takes notice of it with scathing remarks that call Playmaker out on his behavior. The boy retorts, unleashing a whirl of arguments that leave them all huffing and puffing. They bicker and shout and scream and suddenly there is a huge rift between them all. They stand away from each other in a bitter circle, glaring and accusing and she’s shivering because they’re falling apart and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

Go logs off first, declaring his job done. Revolver follows after him, evidently disgusted. Kusanagi, whose presence in the world shapeshifts from a hacked drone to himself in person, disables the flying camera he has hijacked with a careful mentioned worry in regards to Yusaku. The boy with the pink and blue hair spits something back at him, his cool calm lost with the anger that burns underneath him.

He glares at her, shoulders up in defiance and eyes narrowed with a crystal cold that scares Aoi. He doesn’t seem normal, he doesn’t seem like himself. She knew that, days earlier, he’d been chasing a clue to his past, something so vital that he’d up and left in the middle of the night. She hadn’t known what he’d found but, whatever it was had turned him against them, against himself.

Playmaker challenges her to say something, anything, that will rile him up. He’s so desperate to start something, itching with frustration and rage, and it takes all her confidence to withstand his spiteful gaze. He makes no move against her, doesn’t raise his hand or say anything. Instead, he slaps his Duel Disk and she watches as he vanishes from the VRAINS.

She’s alone. Alone and shivering and resentful as one little incident steals away her happiness bit by bit.

“Choose your brother.”

After their little spat, they’d all gone their separate ways. Aoi had stopped meeting up with them both in the VRAINS and in real life, unable to withstand the baggage that would undoubtedly build upon her. Yusaku attended class, as usual, and it was almost unbearable to sit beside him. He did everything in his power to pretend she didn’t exist, his gaze pointedly directed to the board or everywhere else but the space in which he existed. It hurt. It hurt much more than she had realized. She’d hated being ignored, being an outcast. She’d gone through that once before, before Blue Angel with her brother, and now she was repeating that part of her life yet again.

Her brother, however, reassures her whenever she can’t handle it anymore. The rift between her and her friends becomes too much to bare and suddenly she is lost and alone with only her brother and Blue Angel’s fans to guide her. Their separation with Playmaker had affected the entirety of their fan bases, splitting them between her and Go, between Revolver and Playmaker and the rest of their crew. She’s warned her fans against it, wanting to play nice and at least pretend that things were still the same, but the animosity that had been borne in her heart had even influenced them. Family member turned against family member, fan against fan, until it all broke out in violent riots that echoed of their own internal anger.

It was all too much.

Akira Zaizen, as if true to his change of heart, did everything he could to reassure her. She took comfort in that fact, glad that, for once, she had his support in something that tore her apart from the inside out.

Even so, that did not stop his sudden insistence for her to enact revenge. Akira would always persist in his comfortings for her to enact revenge. It was just little snippets of conversation, little bits of words of sentences that wormed their way in, but her brother was turning her against Playmaker. He encouraged her to fight back against the man, to defy him for the misery he had created insider her and her mind spun with possibilities. She listened to him, eager, and was lulled into his suggestions like they were the call of a siren.

She’d do it. Surely, she would.

She’d betray Playmaker.

“Choose Akira.”

Playmaker had revealed no intent to apologize to her in particular. He’d apologized to everyone else but her, his gaze avoiding hers as though he specifically refused to speak to her. It was painful to see him act in such a way towards her but it made her guilt all the less evident. If he wanted to act like a child then fine. Be that way.

“Choose Playmaker.”

Eventually, Yusaku does damage repair and apologizes to her. It’s curt and nearly insincere, a far cry from the apologies he’s given the rest of their cast. His sudden animosity does nothing to flatten the misery she feels, like a sudden rejection from a lover gone very, very wrong. She’s hurt more than she realizes, stung by the sudden backpedaling of their relationship and the resentment that swarms off of him for reasons she doesn’t understand.

Once, they might have been close. Aoi replays the memories of him in her mind, of all the times they’d met up early at Kusanagi’s hot dog stand and enjoyed a frequent chat that had nothing to do with Duels or Knights or her brother back before he’d made an effort to be her brother. It’d been lovely. She’d looked forward to the steaming sausages placed in-between white buns and the pleasant sunshine that grinned down upon them. It’d been different and unique and all the more fun once Go, Revolver and the rest of their cast made an attempt to join.

Now, however, their meetings are icy, chattering teeth with shivering bodies and goosebumps all along their flesh. She’s constantly cold in Yusaku’s presence, forever stuck in a blizzard that rampages endlessly past her. There is no small talk, no deck strategies or sipping casually of drinks. Instead, there is just glaring eyes, cold-shouldered words and drinks crushed slightly in-between constricting hands.

It was if everything was going into reverse. Her brother was the one who cared not Playmaker. It was Akira who comforted her, who kept her steady in a river of ice water and not the man who’d saved her from Cracking Dragon’s fire all that time ago. And, it hurt. She was repeating the horror with a different person, cursed, forever, to only have one or the other.

“Choose your brother or choose him.”

She makes her choice. She has two options: She can hide Playmaker’s secret from her brother or she can reveal it to him in return for his jail sentence.

It’s not hard, truly, to pick a decision. The guilt isn’t weighing down upon her and she has no regrets to counter her burning anger.

Or, at least, that’s what she keeps telling herself.

Playmaker’s secret weighs in her hand, dropping through the floor, splitting planks, moving farther and farther away from her eyes. Her brother’s gaze in her other hand flickers from cold to warm, from disapproving to proud, and Aoi tucks her hands against her chest until she folds into herself.

Akira. Her brother.

The pendulum swings.

Yusaku. Her friend.

It stops over her beating heart.

She tells her brother in the morning.

“I choose my brother.”

Akira Zaizen waits no time to contact the police and have Yusaku arrested. Aoi is there when they come into class, hauling him away. Her brother picks her up seconds later, back to his prim and proper self but in a flurry of excitement. He seems too wrapped up in the Playmaker to take notice of her horror, of the sudden realization of the repercussions her decision has created. Her stomach swells with fright that bubbles inside her until she is combusting from the inside out.

Yusaku, however, refuses to meet her gaze. He is taken quietly, his Duel Disk extracted and Ignis forcibly removed from its depths by a special program SOL had installed. Handcuffs are put on his wrists while her brother blabbers on about Yusaku’s acts of terrorism’ and how ‘SOL Technology would do its best to reform him’. Akira walks off with him, forgetting his sister’s presence to return to a regal and elegant posture. Her brother’s sheer words make her quail as, suddenly, it all fits together.

Aoi has been used.

“I chose my brother.”

She’s left alone in the seclusion of her home, her Duel Disk in front of her. It gleams with memories that sting at her skin, that pierce at her until all she can do is curl up and cry.

The news media reports on Yusaku’s arrest, shocked and in a flurry about why he had caused such an upset with SOL Technology. They also note the disappearance of Playmaker, of Blue Angel, and of the ragtag team left behind to fend off against the enemies of the VRAINS.

Sometimes, if Aoi listens carefully, she can hear the phantom of Yusaku’s voice. She can hear the calm and calculated words he’d say, the three-to-three pros and cons that he’d inevitably list when he’d be asked about a specific opinion. She can remember herself as the Blue Angel skipping and gliding over rooftops until it’s just a board under her feet and a Data Stream beneath that. She can remember the heat of Cracking Dragon, of arms enclosing around her waist and pulling her away from the blast so that she could avoid account deletion. It hurts. It hurts. It’s so painful, these memories, that all she wants to do is claw at herself until the itch that settles in her mind disappears.

Her former companions make it worse. They’ve come to her house, breaching the security restrictions her brother had set in place to arrive at her locked door. They’d begged, pleaded, for an understanding, for a realization, for her to just come and talk to them. Sick. It made her sick, sicker than she’d ever felt.

She’d had to choose one or the other. She’d had to sacrifice between Akira and Playmaker, between her brother and her best friend.

She couldn’t have both.

So she had none.

~Bad End~

#vrains #yugioh vrains #angelmakershipping #yusaku fujiki #aoi zaizen #akira zaizen #angst #suffering #despair #abuse #violence #manipulation #toxic relationships #my best piece so far imo #but not canon at all #this was written before we knew Akira 'loved' his sister

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phin-dicated · 7 years

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Why I’m Angry About Akechi (spoilers)

I beat Persona 5 the other day and I’ve been doing nothing but stewing over the details and little things that bothered me. Yes, it was a fantastic game. But I’m going to delve into one specific issue that bothered me; Goro Akechi. Spoilers below, proceed at your own risk.

So I’ll be honest, I went through a wide range of emotions concerning this character. I liked him from the get-go, didn’t trust him at all, secretly hated Atlus that yet another hot guy had been shoved in my hetero-protag’s face and ultimately sobbed hysterically over his story. I haven’t been this invested since Aerith died, dead god.

But let’s talk about what pissed me, and hopefully you, off about this maniac. Akechi was a foil to Akira, we all know this. His whole purpose was to be a mirrored image of Akira’s recklessness and how it’s held without a support structure. That’s fine, and it was done well. His entire battle scene is just one long self-doubt, self-hate drawn out madness that made me want to curl into a ball and die. Was Akechi a good person? Not really. Did he do terrible things? Absolutely. Was he in his right mind through most of it? Most signs point to no. Am I going to tell you he did no wrong? No, he most certainly did, but it’s a little more complex than that.

So my first beef comes with the discussion that Akechi was, in fact, mentally ill. It isn’t that hard to see, especially if you wander through your NG+ and pay attention. The kid was raised specifically to become what he was thanks to some dumbass god with a gambling problem. He goes through the entire game alone, only being shown with people in regard to his popularity, or lack there of. We don’t know at the time, but Akechi is hiding everything about himself to everyone around him. The only time we see him actually speaking with someone genuinely (as close as you can get) is Akira. He seems to only open up when it comes to Akira. I can’t even imagine the sheer amount of loneliness this child must have endured BEFORE his run in with Shido, much less after, but I have to wonder if Akechi didn’t see parts of his own personality in Akira.

And then we do what we do to every single mentally ill character in anything ever; we freaking kill them.

Now, normally this wouldn’t even be an issue for me. Characters die in games all the time, only those deaths typically seem to MEAN something. Aerith’s death causes Cloud to move forward and become a better person (if not getting lost a little on the way), Shinji’s death in 3 helped build characters, especially Akihiko, and help them grow as people. Akechi’s? Well it made for a good cry fest.

My second issue with Akechi is how poorly his character was handled. He was written so interestingly and all of that went to waste in a mere moment. I was fine with his entire scene, the battle, everything I could choose. It was very interesting to have options that made Akira reach for Akechi, or tell him he’d be okay. Your party’s interactions were great, just EVERYTHING WAS FINE UNTIL THAT GODDAMN COGNITION SHOWED UP.

I’m sorry, but it is bad enough that you have this character struggling with himself and the horrible things he’s done, trying to understand why these people WHO HE’S BETRAYED and even SHOT IN THE FACE would want him around, and then you go and have him shoot himself?? That line “You’re all beyond my comprehension?” Yea from a life of solitude and rejection that’d be out of my comprehension too. But c’mon Atlus. You do not show a mentally ill person, struggling with their own inner issues, lose to themselves. You don’t, you just, like that is a LEGITIMATE fear among people. Now you could argue that he won in the end, sure. But people, he died. He still got shot by something that looked like him, sounded like him and said the meanest words he was probably thinking himself. And he died.

I was so angry and I can’t stop being angry about it because none of it made any sense to me. His death doesn’t prove anything, it doesn’t help anyone grow, it doesn’t even tie up loose strings. It just happens and it’s gone. Just like Akechi. I figured that would change as the game went on but oh ho ho was I wrong. Not only is he barely ever mentioned again, no one even acknowledges his death outside of the party. Sae mentions he’s disappeared at one point which you can’t respond to unless you’re like me and you’re screaming at the television because apparently no one in this game has the common decency to say he flippin died. Oh wait, I guess it wouldn’t matter right? Who would they tell? Not like he had a family or friends. Ouch. I hope you’re hurting as much as I am.

Another point: You can’t possibly expect me to believe that Akira wouldn’t have summoned (insert strength Persona here) to knock that wall down and rescue Goro’s sorry ass. Akria is just as reckless and had it been anyone else in there he’d have caught the whole damn place on fire. You can’t tell me he just stood there with his hands in his pockets like “Yea okay.” Because Akechi wasn’t his teammate, but he damn well could have been. That’s not Akira’s justice.

Akechi’s death irritated the ever-loving shit out of me because it doesn’t do anything. He died to tug on your heart strings, or not, because I guess you could hate him for being a douche the whole game? So then it proves even less for those people. I thought that his story, the fact that he was also a wild card holder, would become important for end game and it just wasn’t. I thought I’d see some remnant of him, even a freaking death imagine, at the end since he was a maxed social link, but nothing.

Overall, in my opinion, Atlus dropped the ball with this character who had, dare I say it, infinite potential. But that, again, is just my opinion.

#Persona 5 #P5 #Goro Akechi #P5 spoilers #Akira Kusuru #Persona #I'm sorry I ranted #I'm just REALLY MAD #I WANTED SOMETHING BUT THIS WASN'T IT ATLUS #still great game

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concentratedevil · 7 years

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E3 2017

While this show has been predictably underwhelming, there are some games I'm excited about. Some that I'm cautiously optimistic about. And a bunch that I don't care about that won't be mentioned. I'm not going to rate the different press conferences. Everybody had games. I like games and will play some of these new games. In alphabetical order: Beyond Good and Evil 2 I've only played a bit of the first game, but I know it's made a favorable impression on people. This reveal was unexpected; as were the superfluous f-bombs that flowed from the mouths of pigs and monkeys. I'm surprised that the art style is realistic now and I'm hoping the game isn't reliant on cussing. Because this was just a CG trailer, I'm not expecting to see the actual game for at least two more years. Cuphead Even though I've read that Cuphead aims to be brutally hard on purpose (which makes me not want to play it), I can't help but love the art style of Cuphead. I've always liked the look of those old cartoons from the 1930s and 40s that you'd see on Pee Wee's Playhouse during the King of Cartoons segments. I just hope that I end up enjoying playing the game as much as looking at it. Destiny 2 I wasn't expecting to be interested in this game at all given that I don't care one iota about the first game, but from the recent reveal that was hosted by Luke Smith, I've come around. The way they've talked about how people who prefer single player experiences will still be able to enjoy all of the content of the game with no real commitment to online clans and whatnot was like a message specifically for me. The news that it would be on PC pushed me over the edge. Dragon Ball Fighter Z This game looks fun even though I'm not a Dragon Ball Z guy (I like the OG Dragon Ball cartoon a lot and the first season of Z, but I find the rest of the franchise to be pretty dumb). The art style is on point, but all of the recent DBZ games have nailed Akira Toriyama's art style with beautiful cel shaded models. If it plays like a Capcom fighting game (and maybe has a half speed mode), then I think I might pick this one up. God of War (2018) I like the new direction God of War is going in. I think "mature" is an apt descriptor in terms of story, tone, and gameplay. I thought the PS2 franchise was just OK, but this looks far better and like it won't have any eye rolling moments that involve pushing a button to have an orgy. Horizon Zero Dawn DLC: The Frozen Wilds I've got a copy of the vanilla game just waiting to be played as soon as I get a PS4 this holiday season. So sure, I'm interested in new terrain and content for a game that already looks badass. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle I guess this is kind of Final Fantasy Tactics with Mario and Minions, er, Rabbids? I don't care for them Rabbids, but this could potentially be fun. (Also weird to see Mario with a gun... the guy can throw fireballs, hammers, and boomerangs you know.) Marvel VS Capcom Infinite I don't know about story mode for this game... I'm also not seeing any X-Men or Dr. Doom and that makes me nervous. I hope this game doesn't end up like Street Fighter V; I hope it's strong out of the gate, but Capcom doesn't inspire hope. Maybe in several years this game will be everything I want it to be, but at launch things are already looking sketchy. Metroid Prime 4 and Metroid: Samus Returns OK, OK, OK... Please, please, please be good! (Thanks for listening, Nintendo!) Moss Mouse Guard maybe? I'm cautious about this being a VR game and am wondering if this will be a better story than a game, but the trailer was a nice little breath of fresh air. Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom I think the first Ni No Kuni was underrated and Ni No Kuni 2 is coming out at a time where I could really use something that's kind and goodhearted. With the second game coming to PC, I'm hoping that the first game also makes its way there. Ori and the Will of the Wisps I've yet to play Ori 1, but that doesn't leave me any less intrigued by Ori 2. I love Super Metroid-style games (such as Axiom Verge) and the Ori games look marvelous. Pokemon (Switch, 2018) Nothing is known except that we should "please look forward to it". I have lots of big dreams for a new Pokemon game. Will those dreams come to fruition? Probably not. But here are my hopes: it contains the entire world of Pokemon (not just one set of islands), it revamps and simplifies the various stat systems (goodbye IVs!), breeding and trading are as easy as X/Y and OR/AS, Pokemon Bank integration, minimal forced tutorials, have only one version of the game, and have Pokemon retain all learned moves but have it so that they can only equip four moves at a time from their list of moves. Sonic Forces and Sonic Mania Forces is basically a sequel to Sonic Generations which I actually quite enjoyed (until the later levels which paid homage to newer Sonic games). Sonic Mania is the much hyped game that takes all its cues from the classic Sega Genesis Sonic games. I'm stunned that there are not one but two new Sonic games that I'm looking forward to. Will wonders ever cease? South Park: The Fractured But Whole I enjoyed Stick of Truth a lot and even though I don't think Obsidian is behind this new game, it seems like it will be very similar. Spider-Man (Insomniac Games, 2018) This game looks spectacular -- amazing even! (Excelsior!) This game basically looks like the Batman Arkham games through the brighter, more vibrant lens of Spider-Man as brought to you by the guys who have gave us Ratchet and Clank. This has the potential to be not just the best Spider-Man game ever but maybe even one of the best super hero games. If I get to face off against a bunch of Spidey's classic foes and there's a good story to it, then from the looks of things I'll be pretty happy. Super Lucky's Tale Sure, I'll support playing new platformers that aren't Mario. The style for this one intrigues me. Even if it turns out to be a B level Rare wannabe, that's still more interesting to me than more games with guns and zombies. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy I'm still confused about this one. Is this DLC for Uncharted 4 or a whole new $60 game? At any rate, I love Uncharted and I'm cool with playing characters that aren't Nathan Drake for a change. So those are the games from this E3 that I'm interested in. I'll wrap up by talking a bit about Nintendo. I wish that Super Mario Odyssey wasn't so... weird. I'm sure it's the number one complaint that the different art styles are incongruous. I also don't like that hat. And I especially don't like the Super Mario Sunshine vibes I'm getting (Sunshine being my least favorite Mario game of all time). Odyssey comes off more like the direct to DVD version of Mario; it just feels tremendously off and like it doesn't have the Mario A Team behind it. I wish that Metroid: Samus Returns used 2D sprites. The ugly 3D already looks worse than AM2R, but I guess I can't look a gift horse in the mouth. Yoshi and Kirby... are pleasant but toothless. I wish they were a little more engaging and less sedate. I want a platformer with a challenge and depth more along the lines of the original Yoshi's Island or Donkey Kong Country 2. Trust me, young children can handle that level of challenge. I don't care anything about ARMS or Splatoon or Pokken... Breath of the Wild DLC was underwhelming. I was hoping for a quest to make weapons unbreakable (because fuck weapon degradation) or some new dungeons or regions. Happy E3, everybody!

#e3 #e3 2017 #games #gaming

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