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Entry tags:
prismatica app
▶ PLAYER
HANDLE: Sara
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
eigaon
OVER 18? yes
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: none
▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Goro Akechi
CANON: Persona 5 Royal
CANON POINT: mid-January
AGE: 17
BACKGROUND: History. In short, Akechi is a boy born into sad circumstances and lives out of pure spite for his deadbeat dad and spends his young life setting up said deadbeat dad for a major public fall. Things do not go as planned.
Major developmental events in his life
Goro Akechi is born from an affair involving a rising politician and a sex worker. The societal disapproval of births outside of wedlock is bad in Japan, adding on top of that that while his mother is waiting for Shido's return - and is ultimately heartbroken by his refusal to have anything to do with his child - she is broken and then shamed by society into committing suicide while Akechi is very young. Akechi is then put into the foster care system. For one reason or another he never finds a home that wants to take him on, so several things happen: Akechi develops an intense hatred of his father, Masayoshi Shido, and blames him entirely for his mother's death, he becomes isolated from adults and peers alike as he is passed around from household to household and consequently he becomes entirely self-reliant, and finally, he nurses an absurd grudge against Shido and has approximately zero power to realize it.
Two years before the events of Persona 5 and under unknown circumstances, Akechi receives the power of the Wild Card, which is a supernatural power granted by Persona series mainstays, usually to the protagonists of the games in question. In this case, since Akechi is granted the power but given no guidance, he uses his newfound access to a separate world called the Metaverse. The Metaverse is under study by a scientific field called "cognitive psicence", as it appears to allow someone with the potential (i.e. Persona users) to invade cognitive worlds within people and enact change that carries through to the real world. Think Inception, except that Akechi discovers that he has the unique ability to remove the chains on people's hearts, causing them to go berserk. If this happens, for example, in a bus driver, the bus driver's ensuing rampage would very likely result in many deaths. Akechi seems aware of this power's effects, but doesn't understand the link between the Metaverse and changing people's hearts for the better. But he approaches a high-ranking politician... named Masayoshi Shido, offering his services through the Metaverse to aid his climb up the political ladder.
Note: it's unclear whether he was already aware that killing a person's Shadow - a reflection of themselves - in the Metaverse would mentally shut down or kill a person in the real world at this juncture. But the first known mental shutdown was a prominent cognitive psience researcher named Wakaba Isshiki. Shido then seized her research and used it to ensure protection against other potentials like Akechi.
At the start of the game, Akechi has become something of a minor celebrity because of his work as a high school-age detective, much like Naoto Shirogane from Persona 4. This coincides with the recent swell of mental shutdown cases and incidents of public rampages that result in injury and death - incidents which have been the shady doings of Shido and his co-conspirators, who use Akechi's access to the Metaverse to remove political opponents and silence otherwise threatening individuals. Akechi solves the cases himself and garners public renown. With the appearance of the Phantom Thieves comes a challenge to Akechi's heretofore unfettered use of the Metaverse, and as their vigilante work to bring the corrupt to justice grows Akechi is assigned to keep tabs on them and attend to Shido's interests in the Metaverse - i.e. tie off necessary loose ends.
Makes contact with the leader of the Phantom Thieves [insert name of varying canon relevancy here] and starts an odd friendship with him. To start with they are both trying to glean information out of one another, but as time passes Akechi is taken aback by his opinions and sharp observations and begins unintentionally spilling more of his life story. He reiterates that the protagonist is intriguing and conversations with him always leave Akechi with a lot of food for thought, even as in secret Akechi is almost certainly aware that he is a Phantom Thief. In spite of himself they get closer, and though Akechi works against the Phantom Thieves and in the end sets them up for a major public fall, in private Akechi continues to share intimate details with the protagonist, even beginning to hint at the situation in which he has entrapped himself by making himself Shido's tool, with no clear motivation as to why he would tip his hand to the protagonist. He cares nothing for the rest of the Thieves, and is even willing to sacrifice this friendship with the protagonist along with his life in service of his revenge against Shido. So dropping hints is actively working against his own interests.
The plan to kill the protagonist fails, and realizing that he's been tricked, Akechi infiltrates Shido's Palace to get in the way of the Thieves' attempt to steal Shido's heart. He has a full villainous breakdown before resolving to kill the Phantom Thieves, screaming about how he'd been an unwanted child, how he'd crafted everything about his public face and behavior, even his school grades, his job as an ace detective, and the company he kept, all so someone would decide that they wanted him around. His insane envy of the protagonist for getting everything that Akechi had wanted drove him to the brink, and when he is beaten by the Phantom Thieves and offered a place to go and defeat Shido together, he's stunned, uncomprehending of why anyone would bother with him weighing them down. By this point Akechi has killed both Futaba Sakura's mother and Haru Okumura's father, so being brought in seems an impossible ask. Shido's mental defenses turn out to be a cognitive version of himself, who threatens to kill Akechi unless he kills the Phantom Thieves on the spot. Akechi rebels, turning his gun on the cognitive Akechi, and then drops a barrier between him and the Thieves to keep them from being pursued by enemies. Akechi extracts a promise from the protagonist to end Shido's crimes, startled when the protagonist does and insists that he's waiting for a rematch fight with Akechi.
Akechi disappears until Christmas day, where he turns himself in in order to testify against Shido in court and allow the protagonist to go free. Not long after, Takuto Maruki's grip on reality solidifies and alters the memories of all people except the protagonist and Akechi. Akechi is insulted to hear that the protagonist would have thought he died from his wounds in Shido's Palace, and forms an alliance between equals with the protagonist to investigate what is going on with the world, why no one else has retained their memories, and resolve to end Maruki's influence on reality. Having spent years of his life under Shido's control, Akechi is fed up with other people controlling his life and is hard focused on being free, carving his own path even if it turns out he may not be real, and ending Maruki's reality may also mean the end of Akechi himself. He refuses to be controlled anymore, relying on the protagonist to share his goal and in doing so, sacrifice the happiness that he's always wanted because he rejects the premise of its delivery. If he is to be acknowledged and loved, he wants to earn it, not have a wish be granted that he never asked for.
PERSONALITY:
Charismatic
Akechi's strongest draw when he acts as the "Detective Prince" is not only his intelligence, but his effortless control of information and command of a room (when he demands it). Using a combination of his smarts, good looks, and humble facade, Akechi is adept at making himself seem harmless while disarming suspicion against him with charm and (false) humility. His ability to adapt on the fly and manipulate situations to his advantage is immense, owing to his strong understanding of human foibles, and he earns his place amongst the police force by using these skills to their full potential. Aside from the cases that he "solves", Akechi is shown to be genuinely smart and quick on the draw, often drawing correct conclusions based on the information he knows.
Strong sense of justice
Opposing what he describes as the Phantom Thieves' "selfish justice", Akechi is strongly against forcibly changing hearts. This is seemingly in line with his public persona, and further his dual-nature as someone who causes mental breakdowns and rampages via the Metaverse doesn't necessarily contradict this view of the Phantom Thieves, or of his distaste with society at large. His pragmatic approach to using his powers for his own gain (revenge) confronts the immorality of changing hearts and doesn't deny that it is wrong to do so, and though the Thieves are altruistic with their actions Akechi's experience with making hearts go psychotic bleeds into how he views the Thieves, staining them with the same brush that he uses to paint disasters of his own doing.
Vengeful
The driving force behind Akechi's actions is, by his own admission, an absurd and extremely personal grudge. Just when he was growing up he had no way of realizing his revenge, not until the damage had been done, so when he is suddenly granted a rare power his keen mind is bent on how he can use it to avenge his mother. Rather than choosing to help other victims, as the Phantom Thieves do, his quest for vengeance is singular, used as justification for the lives he impacts with impunity on his way to causing his own father's downfall.
Lonely
Linked closely to the previous point, Akechi's meandering and often painful time in the foster care system did immense damage to him emotionally, cultivating a deep, desperate desire to be wanted and accepted by anyone. Part of why Shido is able to get his hooks into Akechi despite him being the subject of his hatred is that he praises Akechi, using that to manipulate Akechi. That and the public's adulation of his detective skills can only fill the void at his core so much. Part of why Akechi's resolve crumbles in slow motion is the protagonist's genuine interest in him, the feeling of having an actual friend that explains the otherwise inexplicable infodumps of his life story because he feels at ease enough to be frank. The protagonist factors strongly into this loneliness as Akechi is also...
Envious
A large part of Akechi rails against the vulnerability that the protagonist seems to find in him, and in his full villainous breakdown is writ large the impact that the protagonist's presence has made in his life and the crippling degree to which he is aware that the protagonist was similarly dealt a terrible hand and yet has everything that Akechi wants: friends, acknowledgement, support. It proves to be a breaking point, and in a rage Akechi insists that he doesn't need friendship or a team to accomplish his goals, trying desperately to prove that his life has meaning as it is.
POWERS/ABILITIES:
Personas
The namesake of the series. Personas are presented as the strength of heart needed to face hardship, and thus are usually rooted in facets of the character's personality. In the Metaverse this strength can be called upon and manifests as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure-like Stands that can then be use to defend oneself, usually limited to one per person except for a...
Wild Card
A Wild Card has the ability to wield multiple Personas at will, drawing upon the strength of the ties that that person has to others. As one might guess, Akechi has difficulty connecting to others, period, therefore his powers as a Wild Card are limited, reflecting his duality: one Persona is the heroic Robin Hood, representing his dedication to justice, while the other Persona is Loki, the Norse god of trickery, reflecting his duplicitous nature. Both are representative of his rejection of greater power structures.
Psychotic Breakdowns
His unique ability to "remove the chains" connected to the heart force even the mildest soul to slide headlong into a rage. This can also be used on himself to exponentially boost his already absurd raw strength as a Persona user, and appears to have control over how long the effect lasts as well.
Expert (pistol) Marksmanship
As he has functioned as a supernatural hitman, he is a crack shot and has even snuck into an underground police interrogation room to assassinate a target using a silenced pistol. These skills are displayed while playing a light gun game with the protagonist, and his aim and control are further established while playing games of darts with the protagonist, where he will hit nothing but bullseyes.
Mental Acuity
As a detective, Akechi's deduction and reasoning skills are very sharp, leaving him able to pick up inconsistencies in information and draw a number of hypotheses in close detail. Without a keen mind, it's doubtful that he would have been able to keep his public face intact while attempting to play all sides against the middle, and indeed while in the third semester added in Royal the fact that Akechi no longer has to hold up a righteous mask means that his raw intelligence and efficiency takes the stage, rivaled only by his brutality.
INVENTORY:
- Personas
Robin Hood specializes in light and dark magic, has moderate physical strength, and boasts supportive spells that can revive companions from unconsciousness. Weak to dark elemental magic.
Loki is extreme in all the ways that Robin Hood is balanced. It eschews variety for raw power, leaning hard into offense with high level dark magic, physical skills, and the ability to lower an enemy's attack, defense, and agility to leave them at their most vulnerable. Weak to light elemental magic.
- a silenced pistol
- a serrated sword (only for use in the Metaverse)
- a cellphone with the Metaverse Navigation App loaded onto it
MOONBLESSING: Sanguis
▶ SAMPLES
It was somewhere past where the boardwalk ended and the sandy beach began that Goro Akechi's exploration of Lunatia took a harder turn for the surreal.
The cognitive dissonance of having Crystal Beach's arms open in welcome cut sharply with the layer floating peacefully above the "second level", some contrast that surely would have been described as science fiction in reality. Perhaps an extraordinary and interplanetary mission undertaken on a new Featherman series; it had been years since the last space series, after all, and no idea was dead that still spat money out the more you beat it.
"Tch." His palm pressed to his forehead, shaking left and right briefly. "Think of something useful for a change."
Information was the goal, but so far this place tried what it could to hide the truth, whatever that might be. Even Akechi would admit to being grimly impressed with how much there was to examine, all to delay the discovery of why plucking him from yet another other-world was necessary aside form annoying him. This time he didn't even have the modest boon of suffering alongside someone he knew, and his winter clothing was suddenly sweltering in the artificial(?) heat.
Cutting a path toward the commercial end of the level instead, Akechi's comfort with being hailed by barkers with promotional coupons is evident in the firm, borderline disdainful glare that the majority of the barkers have the good sense not to encroach on. A majority, as one intrepid and relentlessly cheerful man with a deathwish steps into Akechi's way to draw attention to his sheaf of papers, sliding one away to offer it to the young man.
"Sir, please! I couldn't help but notice a new face around here."
Akechi nearly doesn't catch the eyeroll, but manages to keep his annoyance behind his teeth while his default vapid, polite mask slides into place. "Guilty as charged, I'm afraid. I just arrived in your city and -"
The man is bursting with the frankly nauseating desire to help, shoving his papers forward. "Then I've just the thing to put your mind at ease. A fresh moonblessed, yes? Come, come, we have a newcomer's discount, fifteen percent off the sauna!"
Akechi's gaze moves from the man to the papers, scanning the text quickly. "The same fifteen percent off you have ready for the exalted? Forgive me, I'm either in esteemed company or you wish to use anything at your disposal to secure my business."
The man's smile doesn't budge. "An honest day's work is its own reward."
"So the ends justify the means."
"Do you care or are you trying to give me a hard time?"
There's a sharp huff of laughter that escapes Akechi in spite of himself, something genuine peeking out from behind the curtain. "The latter, sadly."
"Then you wouldn't mind making it up to me and perhaps feeling better in the process?"
The coupon is waved temptingly - a bathhouse just across the rest of the thoroughfare. Akechi looks upon it with a hot mix of nostalgia and longing, caught squarely between recent memory and ancient pain. He takes the paper, shedding the remaining hostility from his system. For the moment.
"A convincing pitch, sir."
HANDLE: Sara
CONTACT:
OVER 18? yes
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: none
▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Goro Akechi
CANON: Persona 5 Royal
CANON POINT: mid-January
AGE: 17
BACKGROUND: History. In short, Akechi is a boy born into sad circumstances and lives out of pure spite for his deadbeat dad and spends his young life setting up said deadbeat dad for a major public fall. Things do not go as planned.
Major developmental events in his life
Note: it's unclear whether he was already aware that killing a person's Shadow - a reflection of themselves - in the Metaverse would mentally shut down or kill a person in the real world at this juncture. But the first known mental shutdown was a prominent cognitive psience researcher named Wakaba Isshiki. Shido then seized her research and used it to ensure protection against other potentials like Akechi.
PERSONALITY:
Charismatic
Akechi's strongest draw when he acts as the "Detective Prince" is not only his intelligence, but his effortless control of information and command of a room (when he demands it). Using a combination of his smarts, good looks, and humble facade, Akechi is adept at making himself seem harmless while disarming suspicion against him with charm and (false) humility. His ability to adapt on the fly and manipulate situations to his advantage is immense, owing to his strong understanding of human foibles, and he earns his place amongst the police force by using these skills to their full potential. Aside from the cases that he "solves", Akechi is shown to be genuinely smart and quick on the draw, often drawing correct conclusions based on the information he knows.
Strong sense of justice
Opposing what he describes as the Phantom Thieves' "selfish justice", Akechi is strongly against forcibly changing hearts. This is seemingly in line with his public persona, and further his dual-nature as someone who causes mental breakdowns and rampages via the Metaverse doesn't necessarily contradict this view of the Phantom Thieves, or of his distaste with society at large. His pragmatic approach to using his powers for his own gain (revenge) confronts the immorality of changing hearts and doesn't deny that it is wrong to do so, and though the Thieves are altruistic with their actions Akechi's experience with making hearts go psychotic bleeds into how he views the Thieves, staining them with the same brush that he uses to paint disasters of his own doing.
Vengeful
The driving force behind Akechi's actions is, by his own admission, an absurd and extremely personal grudge. Just when he was growing up he had no way of realizing his revenge, not until the damage had been done, so when he is suddenly granted a rare power his keen mind is bent on how he can use it to avenge his mother. Rather than choosing to help other victims, as the Phantom Thieves do, his quest for vengeance is singular, used as justification for the lives he impacts with impunity on his way to causing his own father's downfall.
Lonely
Linked closely to the previous point, Akechi's meandering and often painful time in the foster care system did immense damage to him emotionally, cultivating a deep, desperate desire to be wanted and accepted by anyone. Part of why Shido is able to get his hooks into Akechi despite him being the subject of his hatred is that he praises Akechi, using that to manipulate Akechi. That and the public's adulation of his detective skills can only fill the void at his core so much. Part of why Akechi's resolve crumbles in slow motion is the protagonist's genuine interest in him, the feeling of having an actual friend that explains the otherwise inexplicable infodumps of his life story because he feels at ease enough to be frank. The protagonist factors strongly into this loneliness as Akechi is also...
Envious
A large part of Akechi rails against the vulnerability that the protagonist seems to find in him, and in his full villainous breakdown is writ large the impact that the protagonist's presence has made in his life and the crippling degree to which he is aware that the protagonist was similarly dealt a terrible hand and yet has everything that Akechi wants: friends, acknowledgement, support. It proves to be a breaking point, and in a rage Akechi insists that he doesn't need friendship or a team to accomplish his goals, trying desperately to prove that his life has meaning as it is.
POWERS/ABILITIES:
Personas
The namesake of the series. Personas are presented as the strength of heart needed to face hardship, and thus are usually rooted in facets of the character's personality. In the Metaverse this strength can be called upon and manifests as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure-like Stands that can then be use to defend oneself, usually limited to one per person except for a...
Wild Card
A Wild Card has the ability to wield multiple Personas at will, drawing upon the strength of the ties that that person has to others. As one might guess, Akechi has difficulty connecting to others, period, therefore his powers as a Wild Card are limited, reflecting his duality: one Persona is the heroic Robin Hood, representing his dedication to justice, while the other Persona is Loki, the Norse god of trickery, reflecting his duplicitous nature. Both are representative of his rejection of greater power structures.
Psychotic Breakdowns
His unique ability to "remove the chains" connected to the heart force even the mildest soul to slide headlong into a rage. This can also be used on himself to exponentially boost his already absurd raw strength as a Persona user, and appears to have control over how long the effect lasts as well.
Expert (pistol) Marksmanship
As he has functioned as a supernatural hitman, he is a crack shot and has even snuck into an underground police interrogation room to assassinate a target using a silenced pistol. These skills are displayed while playing a light gun game with the protagonist, and his aim and control are further established while playing games of darts with the protagonist, where he will hit nothing but bullseyes.
Mental Acuity
As a detective, Akechi's deduction and reasoning skills are very sharp, leaving him able to pick up inconsistencies in information and draw a number of hypotheses in close detail. Without a keen mind, it's doubtful that he would have been able to keep his public face intact while attempting to play all sides against the middle, and indeed while in the third semester added in Royal the fact that Akechi no longer has to hold up a righteous mask means that his raw intelligence and efficiency takes the stage, rivaled only by his brutality.
INVENTORY:
- Personas
- a silenced pistol
- a serrated sword (only for use in the Metaverse)
- a cellphone with the Metaverse Navigation App loaded onto it
MOONBLESSING: Sanguis
▶ SAMPLES
It was somewhere past where the boardwalk ended and the sandy beach began that Goro Akechi's exploration of Lunatia took a harder turn for the surreal.
The cognitive dissonance of having Crystal Beach's arms open in welcome cut sharply with the layer floating peacefully above the "second level", some contrast that surely would have been described as science fiction in reality. Perhaps an extraordinary and interplanetary mission undertaken on a new Featherman series; it had been years since the last space series, after all, and no idea was dead that still spat money out the more you beat it.
"Tch." His palm pressed to his forehead, shaking left and right briefly. "Think of something useful for a change."
Information was the goal, but so far this place tried what it could to hide the truth, whatever that might be. Even Akechi would admit to being grimly impressed with how much there was to examine, all to delay the discovery of why plucking him from yet another other-world was necessary aside form annoying him. This time he didn't even have the modest boon of suffering alongside someone he knew, and his winter clothing was suddenly sweltering in the artificial(?) heat.
Cutting a path toward the commercial end of the level instead, Akechi's comfort with being hailed by barkers with promotional coupons is evident in the firm, borderline disdainful glare that the majority of the barkers have the good sense not to encroach on. A majority, as one intrepid and relentlessly cheerful man with a deathwish steps into Akechi's way to draw attention to his sheaf of papers, sliding one away to offer it to the young man.
"Sir, please! I couldn't help but notice a new face around here."
Akechi nearly doesn't catch the eyeroll, but manages to keep his annoyance behind his teeth while his default vapid, polite mask slides into place. "Guilty as charged, I'm afraid. I just arrived in your city and -"
The man is bursting with the frankly nauseating desire to help, shoving his papers forward. "Then I've just the thing to put your mind at ease. A fresh moonblessed, yes? Come, come, we have a newcomer's discount, fifteen percent off the sauna!"
Akechi's gaze moves from the man to the papers, scanning the text quickly. "The same fifteen percent off you have ready for the exalted? Forgive me, I'm either in esteemed company or you wish to use anything at your disposal to secure my business."
The man's smile doesn't budge. "An honest day's work is its own reward."
"So the ends justify the means."
"Do you care or are you trying to give me a hard time?"
There's a sharp huff of laughter that escapes Akechi in spite of himself, something genuine peeking out from behind the curtain. "The latter, sadly."
"Then you wouldn't mind making it up to me and perhaps feeling better in the process?"
The coupon is waved temptingly - a bathhouse just across the rest of the thoroughfare. Akechi looks upon it with a hot mix of nostalgia and longing, caught squarely between recent memory and ancient pain. He takes the paper, shedding the remaining hostility from his system. For the moment.
"A convincing pitch, sir."