𝙞 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙢𝙮𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙙.

𝗢𝗣𝗘𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦   *   —   a   priv.   &   sel.   multimuse. featuring  vincent  valentine  of  final  fantasy  vii.   as   imagined   by   sinna / sidonie.

𝙖𝙣 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙣 :      the willingness to kill  &  die for your ideals,    an eternity of loneliness,    living between two deaths,    imperfect victimhood, atonement in excess,    girls against god,    the body as prison,    but also as playground,    antigone's legacy, self - made messiahs,    false prophets  &  the pains of loving them.

𝙞.   𝗱𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗲𝗿     𝙞𝙞.   𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘁𝘀     𝙞𝙞𝙞.   𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁

                                                        blogroll : @serapime & @manipulation

mobile  friendly  roster  &  rules  under  cut.

on akira & the issue of the rpg self - insert : any portrayal of her has to contend with the disease of the self - insert, of the supplication that goes both ways— she must anticipate the exact thing that the people around her want to hear, want her to do, and she must do it, otherwise she will not be loved, and in turn she becomes an object of obsession; she can do no wrong, she is perfect and personal and intimate in exactly the way they want. she is everything you want. but who is she?

the player is punished for answering things honestly; you must consult guides or know the characters well enough to respond “ perfectly ” so that you may deepen your relationships faster, and i use scare quotes because there is no real perfection in these sorts of conversations, there is just what the developers and writers want you to think is correct. relationships are min - maxed, gameified. the point of these relationships is not to get to know the characters better but to see how quickly you can reach their conclusion, how fast you can fix them or the problem that comes to define them, but even worse, to see what they can do for you. (people like ohya are seen as useless because her confidant benefits are bad, gameplay - wise. your relationships only matter if they are beneficial, transactional.)

in this way, akira is inherently manipulative. she does not mean to be, does not act this way maliciously. but she is rarely telling the truth when interacting with others, because she is so caught up in the act of performing. she must know what people want and must give it to them. it doesn’t matter what she really thinks, and anyway, does she really think anything? what she knows: she wants to be wanted. and she will get this by any means, even if it means making others reliant on her, or at least the idea of her that they hold in their heads.

she’ll do or say anything if it means that someone will love her for it. she divines what a person wants and embodies it, or pushes them towards it, reifying their biases or the little voices in their heads that they otherwise ignore. i think of the exchange between her and yusuke in the church: “ spending time with you has helped me discover new aspects of myself […] you are perhaps … a mirror of sorts. ” ; or yoshida, “ just talking with you always helps me make up my mind [...] it’s as if my heart is being manipulated. ” these things are said as if they are compliments, and akira takes them as such, but are they, really? they are plainly telling the player that she is purely reflexive and a bit of a user. she doesn’t care, she just wants to hear that she is needed.

being chosen by god is not a blessing. i think it is significant that yaldabaoth embodies control. its chosen do, too, but the control they exert is mostly towards themselves. they aggressively self - police in order to create the versions of themselves that are consumable. akechi doesn’t know who he is and it destroys him, because he cleaves himself in two, and his performance fails both times. akira doesn’t know who she is but doesn’t really care. she is always successful. all her relationships serve her, her friends are her power but it is not because they enrich her as a person, but because they do tangible, easily measured things for her. everyone believes the play she puts on. she is exerting her own kind of control, not just over herself, but the cost— the blood price— that’s all hers.

𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝗳𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. planted there by human hands, the morningstar has watched over the gentler species for ages upon ages, mesmerized by their day - to - day, by their capacity for cruelty, and for destruction. left to their own devices, a human can raze whole swaths of the planet. they are the vector for disease, famine - bringer. man is the locust. louis first read of these conquests in books with crumbling binding, pages full of foxing and reeking of the damp. then, he began to observe it directly. this was done with religious vigor. it is as though these things were their god.

dew makes soft the saint - juste curls crowning their lovely skull and gathers in pearl - colored raiments which fail to completely obscure the body beneath. there is a delicate balance between them. two animals hold one another at arm’s length: louis sits in her designated place, shoulders squared, never looking away from the other for more than a single breath. how many times can they reenact this dance? draw close, then pull away again. make no concessions. there is no shaking vergil’s commitment to whatever it is that he has determined is his only way forward; she, too, refuses to falter. pink - rimmed,  eyes like the shards of smashed china bear into vergil. she will not flinch. son of sparda or no,  he bows to none.

“ tell me one,  then. ” though flat, without much affect to speak of, there is a certain childishness to louis’s demands. an absent smile makes the lower half of their face precious as the cherub. “ and make it good,  won’t you?  i tire of stories of knights and princesses. ”   there is,  to her,  no room for this,  not anymore. the time for fairytales has long passed. his hands fold neatly in his lap with an unnatural stillness, as if the rest of her body were stone and only the arms from the wrist down possess any life.

𝘀𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗶. haru puts herself to sleep in a too - big house, in a too - big bed, on a too - soft pillow. the air conditioning never lets up, so every room is cool, but even the central air can’t keep up with tokyo humidity, so there is an ambient dampness that is like being sealed inside something underground. everything echoes, too, like a cavern. her footsteps on the cool laminate floor go on for miles, so does the loud thump when she lets a door swing shut behind her rather than gently easing it closed. she is alone in this mausoleum and it is his fault. she should hate him. standing at the head of his table, tucked in the back of leblanc, where he maybe thinks no - one can see him, haru looks at his sleepless face and realizes that she cannot bring herself to, and this scares her.

blinking hard, it takes a minute to take everything in. is he a ghost? a trick of the light, maybe. sakura - san has not reacted to the boy and so she thinks that maybe she shouldn’t, either. some spirits excuse themselves if they are not acknowledged by the living. haru is frozen in place for what feels like an eternity as the waves of recognition wash over her and her face flickers with emotion; all of them, one - by - one. the years spent with her hands folded and lips sealed and dresses down to the knee and her head held just so— not so high that men think she is entitled, but not slouched, is that any way for a lady to hold herself?— pile up until haru can’t take it anymore, that passivity. he won’t get away from her this time.

the worn seat is hot under her thighs. it is run through with cracks like hairline fissures in bone, or thin sheets of ice over a body of water. a chipped saucer with a mismatched teacup is set down across from goro’s own mug and haru crosses her legs at the ankle, her hands pressed flat, palm - down, against the well - loved tabletop. there is a gaudy - looking flower printed on the teacup, a peony or a double tulip or something else bred for its beauty alone. she has always hated these. last week, she ripped up all the ornamental beds at the estate until all that was left were patches of clover and trefoils the groundskeepers missed and felt satisfaction curl up in her belly at the sight of the dying annuals heaped into a mound in the wheelbarrow, like a cat in a patch of sun.

today, black dirt is caked under her nails. if father saw this, he’d be furious. it wasn’t that long ago that this was a factor to be considered in every decision she made: what would father think if i wore this, if i went here, if this was someone i called my friend, if i speak this way or that? father rots like spoiled food in her mouth. dreadfully, she accepts it: he had to die. many girls come to this conclusion about their fathers only when it is too late. ‘ but he— ! ’

it tumbles out all at once, before she can refine it, make it less of an outburst. “ is this alright?  you—, ” a trembling inhale cuts haru off; anemic. “ you probably want to be alone. but—, ”

curls dance against her cheeks as haru shakes her head. a dark nail rubs against the side of her cup, still hot to the touch. the liquid inside is a warm, peachy brown. “ i think you wanted to be found. ”

𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 - 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. you could chalk this up to pure stupidity, or maybe a total lack of regard for human life. she’s reckless and ruled by impulse, and if she wasn’t, she never would’ve found herself in tokyo. akira is fond of the gun. she puts the barrel in her mouth but does not pull the trigger because someone else has his finger on it. it is through luck alone that she stands here now, the toes of her loafers wet from the little waves rocking the surface of the pond, the tip of her nose and the apples of her cheeks flushed. for may, it’s a cold evening, with a brisk wind that rolls off the water and bites at their exposed skin. the chill goes unnoticed as her eyes crease into small crescents, a hand half - covering her mouth, shoulders trembling with a laugh that she can’t hold back. really, he’s too self - serious.

the stars, hardly visible through the heavy pollution of the city, must have aligned: after a pregnant silence, his sentence cut short by her outburst, goro laughs, too. it’s an odd sound. odder still is his face, which lights up in a way she’s never seen, because his features are always pulled too taut, like someone’s fingers were physically forcing him to smile. usually, his laugh is fake. all of him is. akira knows this and still leans in, still presses a kiss to the upturned corner of goro’s mouth mid - laugh. somewhere across the pond, something breaks the surface of the water, maybe a carp or a fishing bird. everything else is worlds away from them. he is soft and lovely against her, so she goes in again, but this time, their lips slot together. she expects to taste plastic or something bitter, like the glue on the back of an envelope. instead, there’s a sweetness lingering on the flesh, she imagines he just had a piece of hard candy that he let melt under his tongue, coating the inside of his cruel, pretty mouth.

the short heel of her left shoe sinks into the soggy grass as akira pulls away, slow. her cheeks are ruddier than ever and her fingers flex into a fist, then relax, then curl back in again. vaguely, she thinks she shouldn’t have done that. they both lack trigger discipline. suddenly shy, a tiny shake of her head sends curls tumbling over her forehead, catching on the thick rims of her glasses, which keep threatening to fog over, though she’s not looking at goro anymore. her tongue is dry and useless in her mouth. a cricket hums now in the reedy undergrowth, punctuating the quiet.

“ it’s nice,  you know.  when you smile. ” she says finally, the remnants of a last laugh curling up the ends of her words. lit only by the halogen bulb of the streetlamp streaking the water, her eyes return to his, which are completely unreadable under his overgrown bangs. akira’s hands find his, warm in her own, her thumbs pressing down into the delicate bones of goro’s knuckles. the skin and ligaments shift slightly. she sticks a pin through an insect. now, she can observe him forever. they can never get away from one another. “ a real smile. ”

she won’t say ‘ i love you ’, because she probably doesn’t. still, her heart lurches and settles high in her throat. not even a small cough can dislodge it. akira tries, but it remains trapped. a hard swallow doesn’t scratch it, either. the smile that she offers him is tinged with pain, but still a bit shy, maybe because she can still taste him when her tongue unconsciously darts out to wet her lips. gripping his hands tighter, almost hard enough to hurt, her head tilts to the side.