do you have any specific yandere headcanons for saito? i would looove to hear them if you do! I dig it
Hello yes sorry this took awhile, I've been busy with stuff and things. I tried to format and structure my Thoughts™️ in a way that made sense, not sure if I succeeded.
Anyways, let's get down to it.
Heavy spoilers for AI -The Somnium Files- incoming!
Some content warnings: sadistic yandere happenings, kidnapping, various forms of injury and torture briefly described and mentioned, Saito is probably a warning in and of himself.
Thoughts on yandere Saito Sejima
- I'd imagine Saito's interest in a particular someone-or-other would start during the original cyclops serial killings, perhaps a target that he and Rohan had been pursuing for days, maybe weeks on end before finally managing to corner them.
- I'd also imagine that just as he's about to land a killing blow, his mind does a complete 180, and he just stops dead in his tracks. The results of a simple flip of a switch in his head from "murder" to... well he isn't exactly sure of what the other track his thought train is running on, but it's an interesting one.
- so interesting, in fact, that the very next thought that goes through his head is kidnapping the poor soul who was just about to have their life insurance cancelled.
- So that's great for them- probably, maybe. Hey, they've avoided death and there isn't much worse than probably suffering in agony for who knows how long before passing on, right...?
- ...yeah there are some fates just a little worse than a painful, excruciating death, one of those fates being what amounts to the human equivalent of becoming a wild dog's favorite chew toy.
- actually that's a horrible comparison so it's best to just tell it like it is: Saito's fucked up, and with regards to whoever had the misfortune of catching his interest for reasons other than his homicidal tendencies, he's going to fuck THEM up in any and possibly every way that he can think of that comes short of killing them or permanently screwing over their mental state.
- y'know the frogs in a pot of boiling water thing? Just picture that, except it's an endless cycle. That's how Saito does things, there's a method to his sadistic insanity. He allows his kidnapee to build up a false sense of security, despite the relative anxiety that comes with living in a place they can't leave that most definitely isn't their home and the fact that the same man who tried to kill them not too long ago is constantly coming and going, leaving bits and pieces of his visits in his wake that last days or even weeks by the time he leaves.
- depending on the situation, either the underlying anxiety or the hubris of "safety" is left to fester to the point where they do something drastic. They're too panicked and afraid of him to think of doing anything else but try to avoid and find an escape from everything, they get cocky and think he couldn’t possibly do anything to really hurt them....
- and then the water boils over.
- In all honesty, framing it as a consequence of their own actions is just to give them more of a fathomable explanation as to why exactly he's causing such pain. It gives them a reason to why he's fracturing bones, why he's carving into flesh deeply enough to leave lasting scars, why he's left them completely isolated and essentially forced them to stare down the most horrific imaginings created in the darkest depths of their psyche. He would have done any of it regardless.
- But as I said, it's an endless cycle. Saito chooses to pull them back just when they're on the verge of shattering, be it in mind or in body.
- He gives them time to recover, though, time to cope with the pain and heal for awhile. He considers it an act of mercy, on his part.
- Contrary to the rush he gets from inflicting the grievous physical and/or mental injuries, Saito enjoys these recovery periods quite a bit for very different reasons. In times like those, the feeling of knowing just how much control he has over them starts to sink in.
- They're forced to rely on him for support. They have to lean on him if they want to move around more than a few feet because they can't risk opening the stitches in their leg, despite knowing that they were only needed because he cut too deep. After who knows how long they spent completely alone and unaware of everything except their maddening, horrendous thoughts, they can't do anything but cling to him for the sake of their sanity even though he'd been the one to deprive them of their senses and trap them in that torturous spiral.
- It gives him a power trip, simple as that. Actually, that feeling of control is essentially what started the cycle in the first place, it's similar to the sensation he gets from killing and inciting violence.
- That being said, it doesn't exactly work as a substitute for murder, so if you think Saito's fun and games with them are gonna keep him from continuing on with the whole serial killer thing, that's wrong.
- Also if you think it's just gonna drop off completely after he finds out about the psync machine and swaps consciousness with Falco that's also wrong, but like, half wrong.
- In the perspective of the person he's still got locked up in some more secluded or secure area of Tokyo, that just created the longest stretch of psychological torture that Saito has unwittingly enforced onto them.
- Finally having a chance to "breathe easy" also means that they have time to actually process the events of the past couple of months, and that reflection is probably going to happen whether they want it or not. The memory of the last call he made to them still scaring them stiff isn't going to help with that either. Who knew that just three simple words of parting could be enough to keep somebody practically paralyzed with fear for years on end?
- Speaking of which, fast forward six years later... nah, on second thought I'll save that for some other time.