Guess I'll actually use tumblr by introducing my autism.
Hey so these are character designs for a thingie I'm working on called Thy Will Be Done: Saving Grace. It started as a fangan and rp with one of my friends but evolved into more of it's own thing that still has a ton of inspo from Danganronpa and other killing games that I'm rewriting the lore of atm. It's about sinners who have died and been reanimated to play a game of signing demon pacts in order to decide the fates of their souls. It's more of a psychological horror story with fourth-wall-breaking shit, multiple endings, and THE BIBLE??? Like...basically what would happen if Junko went to Catholic School and had religious trauma so she became Light Yagami instead.
From left to right we have Akiko Kamino, Rin Kusanagi (playing on her virtual pet toy Mr. Twinkles!) Eden Goodridge, and April Faust!
I drew Rin and April but Eden and Akiko were drawn by my friend @mintysmorz /mintysmorz.bsky.social on bluesky. I just drew over them to fit the art style with permission, so go follow her rn she's so good >:(
I'm mostly on bluesky myself as violetstarshine.bsky.social ✨️✌️😊
Randomly appearing back on tumblr to show a character redesign i made 💜!!
Ok so this is one of my favorite ocs! Her name is Akiko!!!
The ashes on her design have lore reasons thats a lot to get into tho 😭
I have extensive lore about her sooooo read on if you're interested 🥺
It's...a shit ton lol 😭, but hey if I love anything I love to yap ☝️
(Also little heads up her lore involves some sensitive topics including mental heath struggles, death and the afterlife, OCD and moral scrupulosity, brief mentions of WW2 history, car accidents, and disordered eating)
All under the cut 🫡
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✟ NAME: Akiko Kamino (上野 明子)
✟ AGE: 20
✟ BIRTHDATE: November 1st
✟ PRONOUNS + GENDER: she/her, cis female
✟ SEXUALITY: aroace
✟ OCCUPATION: Mortician/spirit medium
✟ FAMILY: Mother (Hotaru), father (Mahiru) and four younger brothers (Riku, Kai, Kinji, and Haruki)
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PERSONALITY
Akiko is a playful, light-hearted, and sarcastic young woman with a laid-back and hedonistic attitude: in particular, she has a penchant for eating absurd amounts of candy and making teasing morbid jokes. She is outwardly bold and confident, as a result of growing used to being judged for her family profession, instead acting indifferent and even proud of her unconventionality. She is passionate about helping run the Kamino Funeral Home, and is devoted to following in her parents’ footsteps. She has unwavering determination and a strong sense of right and wrong. She treasures life knowing firsthand how short it can be, and holds a strong disdain for anyone who thinks they have the right to control others'. Despite her typical calm and relaxed demeanor, as well as her high intelligence and cunning, logical thinking, she is a very opinionated person with a passionate, fiery temper when it comes to things that go against her beliefs and morals. It can get the best of her at times, and she can be extremely impulsive and hostile.
Akiko considers herself to be an optimist, choosing to look on the bright side of life and enjoy it to its fullest while it lasts, believing that the world will not get better if they don't at least try. She speaks extremely casually and informally, with a tendency to curse. Despite her occasional playful teasing, she knows when to get serious, and is a good listener who is always willing to let others vent about their problems. But, she also can be extremely judgemental, and holds grudges against those who she believes severely wrong her or others. Akiko is a rebel against corrupt authority, always standing up for what she believes in. She is very stubborn and is not afraid to break social norms and rules she sees as unfair. She's someone who never quits, even when the odds are stacked against her, but perhaps it is truly because the alternative idea is too frightening.
Akiko has a strong sense of justice and believes that life is sacred and should be respected and never taken for granted. She dislikes tedious things and feeling as if she is wasting her finite time doing things she doesn’t enjoy. She hates how people tend to not appreciate their lives, and fill the world with hatred, arbitrary rules, and judgment, constantly stifling love and self-expression. She says she has accepted the inevitability of death, and thinks that people might as well enjoy their lives to the best of their ability and help others do the same. She says that she is well-aware of the horrors that come with her job, but she believes it is worth it if it means lessening the pain of grieving families and helping guide spirits to the afterlife. Akiko claims that she refuses to grow completely numb, and never wants to forget that every single body she prepares once belonged to a living person with their own life, a unique soul with individual experiences, which should be respected.
In reality, Akiko's defiant personality is a front. She's not nearly as strong as she acts, and is terrified of losing everything dear to her. She has extreme trauma and a fear of death, which she berates herself for internally, believing she is meant to be a "spirit guide" that is supposed to be strong for others. She has a savior's complex and harbors deep guilt for her mistakes concerning Ameko Ueda, something that haunts her at every turn in her life, but she is too proud to admit the truth of what happened, instead insistent on trying to solve the problem herself.
She has a fear of cars and heights that she masks, as well as OCD, often manifesting in rituals and obsessions revolving around spiritual "cleanliness" and moral purity. Her snacking habits are really a manifestation of her lack of control in life in the form of binge-eating.
Akiko often reacts with stubborn denial and self-delusion when things don't go her way. She has a need to be "morally pure" and holds people to extreme standards, but doesn't do the same for herself. Despite her attempts to appear unyieldingly noble, Akiko has a tendency to make decisions that go against her moral code to ensure her safety, and then justify them to herself. Yet, she also is extremely hard on herself and afraid of showing her weaknesses, believing that she needs to be tough and accepting of death to deserve her title and live up to her family legacy.
Akiko loves music, especially alternative, indie, and rock music. She is a big fan of horror movies, enjoys playing board games with her family and is very competitive with it, and enjoys video games and anime. She is a big fan of puzzles and mystery and thriller media. She also likes collecting cute things like plushies and figurines. In addition to her spirit channeling, Akiko engages in other occult activites such as tarot-reading. She is also a fan on musical theatre, is pretty skilled at drawing and character design, and is a very opinionated person when it comes to writing and storytelling. As of late, however, Akiko feels like she hasn't truly been "living" her life, and has been neglecting her hobbies in favor of studying mortuary science and helping out at the funeral home as a medium in an attempt to "make up" for the Ameko situation.
Akiko is a mix of both open-minded and judgemental: she is open-minded when it comes to things like hearing out bizarre stories or the supernatural. This is due to her own experiences, as well as the belief that the universe sometimes works in ways that humans can’t fully understand. She also doesn’t judge people for things like their interests just being a bit strange, as a result of her own unconventionality. At the same time, she is very set in her views and critical of those who go against them, and tends to hypocritically make assumptions based on certain first impressions and holds grudges for a long time.
Akiko has become familiar with the reality of death ever since a young age, causing her to develop a “carpe diem” philosophy in order to cope with it. She can be hard on herself when she fails to live up to this perfect, unafraid persona that she invented, even though she knows that it isn't true and it's perfectly natural and normal to be scared of death despite knowing she has no control over it, which is something she hypocritically constantly reminds others.
Akiko is an empathetic person who believes strongly that all humans are born inherently equal in value. However, she believes that if you use your life to only harm other innocents, then you lose your right to live entirely.
Akiko vehemently hates the idea of people wasting their lives doing things that make them unhappy. She firmly hates doomerism and cynicism, along with social-darwinism/survival-of-the-fittest viewpoints and those who do kind things only for personal gain. Akiko is very aware of the fundamental structures of society that perpetuate suffering, and adamantly believes in fighting for a better world. She thinks that it's worth at least hoping and that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy to fall into defeatist worldviews. She choses to fight to believe that she has control over her own destiny despite the unfairness in the world, no matter what.
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BACKSTORY
Akiko comes from a family of spirit mediums who worked with the dead to guide them to the afterlife. They have a rich history and practiced a unique spirituality back in Japan for generations. Her family has rather unorthodox ideas regarding death, seeing it as something natural in life. They engage in purification rituals and specific steps to properly care for the deceased and send them to the afterlife, and work with spirits to help guide them directly.
Akiko's mother’s grandparents, Chiharu and Shohei, fled Japan to the United States during the Meiji restoration and Japan’s imperialism. After WW2 and Japanese internment caused them to lose everything they built for themselves in America, wanting to reconnect with their roots, they opened a funeral home/mediumship services to serve the people in their community based on their family's ancient traditions. The funeral home ironically served as a beacon of light. It prospered and they later passed the home down.
Akiko grew up learning how to properly care for the deceased. She had a good relationship with her parents and four younger brothers. She is well-respected in her larger extended family and is the heir to taking over the home.
Akiko expressed a natural talent for speaking with the deceased, and she always had a lot of empathy and strong views regarding death. She was adept at providing support for people through grief and her spirit-channeling, though criticized by disbelievers, brought hope to many people. She never had many close relationships with the living, though, often seen as an outcast as a child, but as she got older she found crowds of people she got along with and grew proud of who she was.
The first time Akiko channeled a spirit, she was 7 years old. It was the spirit of the wife of a widow who had no one besides her. Akiko learned the man had tried to serenade the woman when they first met with a corny song, which became the couple’s favorite song, and the woman, speaking through Akiko, said goodbye to her husband and sang the song, bringing tears to the man’s eyes. Connecting them and seeing the love that they shared was a formative moment in Akiko's life that inspired her to become devoted to the job of a spirit medium/mortician despite all of the hardships it could bring because she wanted to heal grieving families of loss and help people accept death and learn to make the most of their lives.
When Akiko was 17 she got frustrated her parents wouldn't let her help and see a particularly badly-mutilated body, believing that she ought to be able to because she'd channeled so many spirits before, and preparing bodies was meant to be part of her future job and she had to get used to this sort of thing. She went to see it anyway, where she saw the body of Ameko Ueda, a girl around her age who was brutally killed in a horrible car accident. The girl looked a lot like her and the experience was very traumatic, as despite working with corpses her entire life to the point death was a concept she was desensitized by, Akiko was horrified by how graphic the scene was and suddenly truly realized her own mortality. Akiko developed a fear of a sudden and violent death without getting to achieve her dreams. She felt ashamed of this fear (especially because of her family legacy) and masked it with her defiant and tough attitude, and developed a fear of things like heights and cars. She also cut her hair and dyed it shortly after this, in a subconscious attempt to distance her appearance from her.
Yet, Akiko was completely ashamed of her inability to channel Ameko, and lied to her parents as well as Ameko's family that she had brought her to peace because she couldn't accept it.
Akiko has been trying for the past few years, frequently visiting her grave, but still has not been able to contact her spirit and guide her to peace, and considers this her greatest failure. Her inability to confide this in anyone has made doing so almost impossible in the first place, as she is unable to communicate with a spirit while she is channeling it, but she is too stubborn to admit she needs help.
