i'm the loser nonbinary girlboyfriend

I really love Sumire having mixed feelings on Maruki as an adult and her both resenting and being appreciative of what he tried to do for her, if that makes sense? Of course, that doesn't justify his actions---nor in the canon or the AU---but I feel like there's something very human in personally coming to terms with how you've been hurt as you grow up and recognizing that the ways you've been hurt are very human, and oftentimes rooted in a sense of just...no one knowing truly how to fix a difficult situation. Sumire doesn't speak with Maruki anymore in this AU but she respects that he's changed and grown in the background of her life into someone who has found better ways to support trans kids in sports (this isn't really something I address in the fic itself, but I have strong feelings about Maruki being able to change and improve as an adult, even as he did wrong by students as it stands, and his choice to leave behind one vocation where he fucked up always speaks to me as him being someone invested in actually ensuring he doesn't make the same mistakes. It's something I appreciate about P5 if I'm being honest, because I think adults and children both can recover from failures and do what they can to restore injustices done by choosing to live in better ways). That's off topic but I do think about it...if I ever get around to a sequel, I might actually involve Maruki a little bit more honestly (and Sumire of course will continue to be vital to the narrative as one of Akechi's closest friends and Akira's greatest failures).

I love Akechi and Sumire's friendship sssssso fucking much because even though canon doesn't really give a ton of space to delve into it, I think their personalities and issues bounce off each other really well? Because even though Sumire is a very melancholy person, she's also very resilient, and I love the notion of her being able to bounce of Akechi's bad moods. Her experiences with depersonalization make Akechi inclined toward her, but also Akechi will still turn up her nose and be an asshole. But at the end of the day, they both come back together weheheheh...Friends!

I'm glad that the gender fuckery is so good.

Re: BPD Akechi, I don't have any issue with the reading btw! I've had the diagnosis coercively attached to me in the past and it's a diagnosis that I personally disliked (I have huge issues with psychiatry as a field and loathe the way that so many diagnoses are used as weapons against patients, but that's neither here nor there), but I also feel like it's a worthwhile reading to get out of the text! I definitely tend to view Akechi as struggling with being bipolar, which is something I definitely add to the text as well because it's another diagnosis of mine that I personally get more out of than others. But the nature of splitting, the thinking in extremes, the severe issues with attachment---this is all stuff that Akechi is textually struggling with in canon and stuff I wanted to really understand even in the context of an AU removed from canon. She really latches onto Akira in so many ways that speak to her disordered way of thinking and her disordered forms of attachment that I think are vital to any understanding of her character.

I'm glad that the intro to Akira's first POV chapter was good for you!!! I've done a lot of reading into different kinds of institutions and other issues with coercive care for "troubled teens" in the past. If you haven't heard of Élan School, it was something that really informs how I think about the nature of how easy it is for teens to be hurt by systems put in place for "troubled teens". I've also done readings into juvenile detention generally and tried to get a picture of how it looks in Japan, though I wasn't able to put a ton of detail into it unfortunately in this fic itself. There's too many situations that kids and young adults are placed into which are "coercive" care environments made to warp them into very strict expectations and that's so much the issue with detention in many different situations.

Akechi wanting to quit dance being similar to a suicide note is really a big thing I was trying to kind of execute with the text. While Dance is something that is in many ways killing her, it's also her lifeline, and her attachment to the world that keeps her going. And everyone around her understands that she doesn't have a safety net, doesn't have alternatives, has had her life subsumed by dance, and so quitting without steps in place is something that just makes people worry. Even as she comes out into this situation of true womanhood and the acceptance of it, she also is forced to face the "death" of one huge aspect of her life, and that's terrifying. Again, though, this is vital stuff for exploration in a potential sequel haha.

The thing with "You're no one's son" is also in reference to the nature of the kanji of the name Goro 吾郎 which could be read as "my/our son". It's a highly gendered name. However, as you note, the intent is multilayered---Akira rejects the notion of Akechi being her father's "son" or anyone's "son". They insist upon her as the person she is, as being rooted first and foremost in her mother before anyone else in her personal history. Akechi's desire for closeness demands the sensation of being "Goro" to people's tongues, as you say, but also struggles because it's a fundamental denial of her ability to exist outside of the notion of being someone's "son" as well. The name given with love by her mother becoming a complicated cudgel, the final gift she has from her mother, and the thing she hates herself for struggling with.