god it’s been months since i finished 999 but i still think about how well-written and personal the sibling relationships were like. here have a rant from right after i finished the game
it is SO painfully beautifully obvious how much aoi loves akane and how much her death 9 years ago destroyed him and fucked him up inside. he makes lighthearted dry remarks and doesn’t give a fuck about a lot of things but it’s clear part of him is still hurt and fragile from it, when you take in how he doesn’t trust in pretty 4-leaf clover words anymore, when you take in how he carries a photo of akane in his pocket the entire game, when you take in how he puts a LOADED GUN to her head and pretends he doesn’t care about if she lives or not because she told him to do it.
He’d do anything for his sister. he DID do everything for his sister. even when considering his relationship to light and how he saved light from dying by ace’s hands through a bait and switch that involved knocking out one of his closest friends from the first game and changing their clothes, even that was at akane’s behest. aoi goes through every door with her. aoi chose his nickname to be santa not just as a number pun but even to discreetly show that he would give anything to her and do anything to fulfill her wishes, because “i’m her santa claus”.
and don’t get me fucking started on light and clover. they are the game’s kindest characters, and also the game’s most horrifying characters minus the real big bad if one or the other dies. literally for the first game light was kidnapped while he was out picking four leaf clovers in a field for clover because he wanted to give them to her for her birthday. and he tells all the other kids this! aoi and akane were right there listening to him talk about it, talk about his sister and how he believes in things like faith and hope and love and trust. when light was close to being killed when he was like FIFTEEN he still chose to trust and hope not blindly, despite him being literally blind, but because he truly genuinely believes in those tenants. and all of it goes out the window once clover is killed.
there is no hope or love for him. at that point, he’s accepted death. he gets shot SIX TIMES and still gets up and tackles ace in the incinerator and smugly snarls at him that they’re both going down TOGETHER if only to avenge clover’s death. he freaks out when she’s in danger. when ace taunts him by revealing in horrific, slow detail how he killed clover, light goes fucking ballistic. his mind breaks. he snaps. he’s going to kill him he’s going to kill him he’s going to kill him and then he just goes ahead.
and it’s arguably even WORSE on clover’s end, because when snake looks like he’s dead, when they’re in the route where nobody tells her that there was bone sticking out of the corpse’s left arm, where she has no clue what to believe or who to believe and knows simply that there are traitors who murdered her brother, her one and only brother who would NEVER leave her behind, and she herself breaks and hacks their arms off with an AXE to escape because there is quite literally nothing left for her.
these two are wildly more codependent than aoi and akane but they’re still close and it still hurts to see how easily their love for each other is used against them, used to kill them and turn them both into murderers despite their kindness and belief in love.
but even MORE beautiful is seeing how much they uplift each other, seeing how clover cries and hugs junpei when she DOES find out that her brother has to be alive and there’s zero doubt, how she tackles light nearly to the floor after seeing him get out of that coffin and just cries for her brother over and over because she’s so happy and overwhelmed. how they casually help each other. how light seems so much more at ease in general when he knows clover is alive. love is a wild card that can be used to save or to kill people, and light and clover easily show just how that can be done as much as aoi and akane do
just. fuck me. fuck this game fuck 999 i’m emotional as fuck these siblings are gonna be the death of me
annaxmalina
titsay
yousharknotpass
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
blakekathryn
baratheonpilled
