individualundead

she/her 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈 utdr/p5r/tshd/gachiakuta/bg3/stardew/etc pls talk to me about shuake but know that I will cry

[woodwool]

severely deficient in whatever vitamin makes u a person

[snnxnr]

[individualundead]

Little cross stitch on crochet for his birthday as well!

That’s the last thing I did for his birthday. Anyway, here’s a shuake playlist I made. It’s all my own music taste so if there’s something that would have fit and isn’t there it’s just because I haven’t heard of it (and I only spent like 15 minutes on this)

you’re honor, they’re gay and doomed

you’re honor, they’re gay and doomed

[individualundead]

Birthday breakfast for our evil little pancake boy

[individualundead]

Happy birthday Goro Akechi, we didn’t forget you.

I haven’t drawn anything serious in forever but nothing like a hyperfixation to make you lock in. I did some other stuff for his birthday but I’m just posting this as the clock ticks over to June 2nd and I’m about to go to bed. I messed around with gradient maps after I was done and I liked these versions too so here you go

Also! Here’s a shuake fic I’ve been working on for a bit. It’s not done in time for his bday but I update pretty often. I’d love if you checked it out!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[individualundead]

I’m rewatching mob psycho with my family and the season 2 finale has a lot in common with Akechi’s storyline, someone needs to make an animatic. Sho’s conversation with Suzuki has a lot of parallels with Shido and Akechi. The whole ‘power of bonds’ thing that Mob and Suzuki argue about too is so basically exactly the reason Joker is triumphant over Akechi in the end. Suzuki even has a little final moments revelation like Akechi in the boiler room. I feel like these conversations from the show would be peak for them if I ever learned to animate

[straptainamerica]

happy pride! to celebrate i’m replaying persona 5 royal this month and thinking about joker and akechi’s weird homoerotic relationship!

[slushee143]

another akechi rant:(

akechi’s mementos dialogue in royal actually destroys me because he is CONSTANTLY trying to make conversation in the most awkward, sideways, emotionally constipated way imaginable. like after the reveal, after the masks are off (ha.) ,, he suddenly starts talking more casually and it’s SO noticeable because for the first time he’s not performing as the Detective Prince (or breaking down like in the boiler room) but he still doesn’t know how to connect with people directly. every conversation sounds like he’s testing the waters. like he’s trying to figure out how the others see him without outright asking.

“you think i’m frightening when i fight? well. i’m afraid you’re just going to have to accept it.”

RAGHHHHHH THAT IS LITERALLY HIM ASKING “do you think i’m scary?” except he can’t ask it normally so he wraps it in sarcasm and arrogance instead. everything with akechi has to be hidden behind a façade even when he’s trying to be genuine.

and then: “do you prefer my previous outfit or this one?”

SIR 😭😭😭

why are you asking them which version of yourself they like better. why are you trying to see if this “real” version of you is acceptable. he keeps tossing out these little indirect questions because he wants reassurance SO badly but would rather die than ask for it openly.

even “you may not like working with me, but i’m counting on your assistance until our goal is achieved” is him projecting his own fears first before anyone else can say them out loud. if he acknowledges the rejection possibility first, then it can’t hurt him as much. except it obviously still does.

and the NORMAL conversations make me even sadder somehow???

“i enjoy spending time in kichijoji. it’s not very big, but there are plenty of trendy shops.” “i’m getting a bit hungry. i should’ve eaten beforehand.” “riding in the car may beat walking, but it doesn’t stop my legs from growing stiff and sore…”

HE’S JUST TRYING TO TALK 😭 he’s trying so hard to participate in normal group conversation like a regular teenager and it feels painfully obvious that he’s never really had this before. no wonder half his dialogue sounds slightly stiff,,,, he genuinely does not know how to do casual friendship naturally.

and “this place is immense. if there weren’t train tracks everywhere, i’d bring my bike here.”

HELLO????? that line kills me actually because it’s such a small normal thought. like you can so easily picture a world where akechi had friends to ride bikes with. where he got to be a normal kid saying dumb little comments to people he trusted instead of becoming… all of this.

even his gratitude sounds careful: “i meant to tell you, regarding shido… thank you for keeping your promise.”

there’s something so restrained about it. he almost sounds surprised someone actually kept their word to him.

akechi spends basically the entire game (his life, really) constructing versions of himself for other people to consume, so royal letting him awkwardly ramble in mementos feels weirdly intimate?? if that makes sense?? he’s still guarded, still deflecting, still hiding behind sarcasm, but underneath all of it there’s this desperate desire to be known. not admired. not idolized. just… understood. underneath all the anger and ugliness and performance, there’s still a lonely kid trying to figure out how to talk to people. i love him so much. i hate him dearly. ugh.

[individualundead]

Never gonna recover from this character

[afterthelambs]

When I say "shuake are soulmates" I'm not talking about Yaldobaoth choosing to pit them against each other. What I actually mean is that even before Joker and Akechi met, their souls (personas) already chose each other.

Robin Hood and Loki predate any of the phantom thieves' personas. What is Robin Hood? An honorable thief. Basically a counterpart to Arsene's gentleman thief.

Even more interesting is Loki. The rest of the Thieves only get their persona upgraded to a 'mythological trickster' upon their second awakening. From a purely gameplay perspective, you spend time with Joker's friends in order to give them stronger personas (grind and reward).

But Loki is known as a trickster god in Norse mythos. He is already a mythological trickster. From the beginning, Akechi was already what Joker needed him to be.

And then there's Arsene, who is so blatant that he's the reason I clocked shuake's soulmatism from the moment Joker awoke him (literally in kamoshida's palace I figured Joker would meet a detective rival in the story). Basic Arsene Lupin lore is that the character was written by author Maurice Leblanc as the 'French response' to Sherlock Holmes (for copyright reasons it's herlock sholmes).

Arsene exists because of Sherlock. So of course Joker is so obsessed with Akechi in-canon. That's literally what his soul is built for.

There's another layer to this.

The name "Goro Akechi" is inspired by the Japanese detective character "Kogoro Akechi" written by Japanese author Edogawa Ranpo (this is also the reason I clocked akechi as the rival the moment he introduced himself, I did my time in the BSD fandom). Kogoro Akechi is a detective character heavily inspired from Sherlock Holmes.

Edit: Forgot to mention that Kogoro Akechi's most infamous rival in the novels is named Kaijin or 'fiend/strange person' (originally Kaito Niju Menso, or Phantom Thief with Twenty Faces). Ranpo based that character on Arsene Lupin.

So Joker's soul is a thief character written to rival Sherlock Holmes, while Akechi's name comes from a detective character written to emulate Sherlock Holmes. Alone, they are incomplete. They've been searching for each other from the very beginning.

Joker and Akechi are fully soulmates, regardless of evil gods using them as pawns. No one else matches to the degree that they do, no one is as entwined as they are. Nothing had to trigger or evolve for this to happen either. They were just made for each other.

[individualundead]

Made a grid of Akechi’s Robin Hood mask if anyone else wants to use it!

[codeayla]

A Faint Memory

(Please tell me you get the vision or I'll start crying)

[cobaltfluff]

do you think maruki's reality has build a bear

[may-lutlone]

[may-lutlone]

mementos fight

[individualundead]

Akechi is great because he’s doomed by god, his own actions, the circumstances of his birth, and the narrative. God one is obvious, his actions are too, he only makes things worse for himself. Being in the foster system with no parents will ruin someone’s mental state and the chances of success after that are slim. And the narrative requires a foil for Joker, who will succeed because he’s the main character. That’s why he’s so interesting to me I think, and why I can’t get behind people innocent baby-ifying him. Removing one of those things wouldn’t change the outcome, you’d have to take them all away. And at that point it’s just not the same guy anymore. Akechi of Theseus or whatever

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I talk about them all the time. the trick is to find someone you’re comfortable with or someone who’s also not normal about the character.

or you can just be unapologetically crazy.

[denizenhardwick]

that missable text conversation gets funnier the more i think about it. "what if they weren't normal" haru knows what she's saying and then akechi gets defensive over it like "obviously they don't just kill for the fun of it they CLEARLY have some grand plan they're working on behind the scenes and also he is being controlled by someone" the way he switches pronouns in the middle from "they" to "he" because he's talking about himself dgdkdgj

[vashtijoy]

while this is hilarious I need to point out that Akechi doesn't use a pronoun in Japanese, lmao. He refers to the culprit throughout as 犯人 hannin—"the culprit", or, less prosaically, "the killer".

[TRIGGER WARNING below the cut for SA and SV]

Count on it, though, what Haru says does make Akechi defensive. The term he uses in reply is 快楽殺人者 kairaku satsujinsha—that is, someone who murders for pleasure, or thrills, or profit. The term appears to carry into English as "lust murderer", which gives you a suggestion of its meaning; while it does not exclusively mean killings with a sexual motive (some such killers, for instance, are children), it is strongly associated with them.

Akechi is not happy. He is, in fact, so unhappy that he becomes quite staccato:

Akechi 犯人は快楽殺人者だと? hannin wa kairaku satsujinsha da to? Are you implying they kill for the sheer pleasure of it? You think they get off on it?

Akechi has dropped the verb from his sentence—"[you're saying] the culprit murders for pleasure?" I've talked before about how he becomes laconic, when something touches him emotionally. As a rule, Akechi texts and speaks in full sentences; when that goes out of the window, you know something has got to him, and it was probably big.

But yes, this is how we get "the killer is likely being controlled". He cannot let that one lie.