something about apathy

Here, I primarily talk about the Sejima family, make analyses, ramble about my AUs, post fic snippets, and make jokes only I find funny.

I follow from @deepgrounded.

NOTABLE POSTS:

“I KILLED HER FOR AI-NALYSIS”

B-Set’s final twitter thread.

ABIS Investigator Saito gets a depression screener! (FIC)

The Sejimas do not hate each other, actually.

Thank you so much for the lovely ask! It makes me really happy to hear that you enjoyed my posts that much, and I am so glad they had that impact on you! I really, truly love the Sejimas.

I’ve actually been meaning to make a proper essay on this subject for a while, however I kept putting it off and not finishing the damn thing because I kept getting distracted with everything else going on in my life. But I’ll certainly try and lay out my thoughts the best I can here!

We don’t get to see a lot on their dynamic as we don’t see them properly interacting face to face, but what we do see speaks volumes about how they regard each other (I may have mentioned it in the past, but it fascinates me how rather than going for the route of these two awful murderers having a buddy buddy relationship, their dynamic is rather… unpleasantly tense).

First off, we know that Saito didn’t figure out that Falco was in Rohan’s body the second they made eye contact- it was his horrible acting that clued him in on something being off -and based off that we can tell that Saito isn’t necessarily enthusiastic to see him despite knowing that Rohan visiting typically means he gets the chance to kill (though he doesn’t show him the contempt he does towards the likes of Date or Ota, just seeming… bored. Like he typically would feel, I believe. Even with how things are between them, Saito seems to regard him with a sort of neutrality).

Then, the one piece of dialogue that really clues us in on their dynamic comes in this same conversation;

“Hold on. Could you not refer to us like that? […] I told you, it’s very old-fashioned.”

“But that’s our name.”

“A name you decided. You even sent that letter without my permission. You said it would throw off their investigation. I don't know how effective it was.”

It is, admittedly, funny. I got a chuckle out of it and chuckled even more when I saw in jp Saito is calling it lame instead (how childish of him!), but it lets us know a few important things. One, Rohan came up with the Cyclops Killer name on his own. Two, he did not care what Saito thought of it, he did not consider his input on sending a potentially incriminating letter— rather, he knew that Saito didn’t like it and didn’t want him to do any of that but Rohan did not care. He just acted completely on his own for something that was a pretty big deal IMO.

When we hear what Rohan has to say about him and how he reacts to Saito’s return, there’s also some pretty interesting things about that. Rohan appears to be excited for one reason or another that Saito’s back— I’d argue that the aforementioned one reason or another is both him being eager to have his ticket out of prison, and the other being that he wants to go back to committing crimes with Saito. I like to poke fun at him with friends and say that he’s just super excited to see his one-sided bestie again, but that isn’t what I actually believe. In that one essay I was trying to write, I ended up stating that I think it’s best to describe Rohan’s view of Saito as his favorite wrench. Your favorite wrench gets the job done, it’s a sturdy tool and you’re happy you bought it. But you don’t view it as a person or a pet or anything like that— it’s something that’s good at getting the job done. Rohan had only reached out with the offer to help him kill people out of purely selfish reasons (as if murdering innocent women could ever be selfless, but you get what I mean) rather than ever once seeing Saito as someone to genuinely bond with.

(If you ask me, Saito is likely aware of this fact and that he’s more of a vehicle for Rohan’s eye obsession rather than a person, but… he doesn’t have anyone else who’d give him validation and “acceptance” towards the ugly, violent parts of him, does he? It doesn’t help that Rohan is an older man while Saito wants attention from his father, either…)

Which gets us to what I was specifically referencing when I said Rohan talks weirdly about him— it’s the joke he makes about the two of them being in a physical relationship. Regardless of whether or not that’s true, it always struck me as being rather disrespectful and strange, especially given everything I mentioned prior. Sure, yeah, he’s trying to dance around this interrogation in order to get what he wants, but it’s still an example of him not caring about what Saito would personally think. Maybe it’s conjecture on my end, but bare minimum I think Saito would be displeased to hear that comment. I doubt that would be something he’d find funny.

Tangentially, something I find curious is how Rohan is portrayed in Saito’s mind— a red silhouette. It’s a stark contrast to his blue-purple, and stands out from the purple theming of Date and So (who is a more dull purple-blue). It shows off the disconnect between them and how Rohan doesn’t exactly fit in on either side of the extreme hate and love spectrum for Saito.

Additionally, another display of their disconnect comes with the psync between Saito and Rohan body Date. Date is shown to be deeply incompatible on a mental level with Saito time and time again, but none of the psyncs that occur between them in the game have the same detrimental effects on Saito as that initial one. I truly believe that it’s just another display of how not-the-best things are between them if the combo of Rohan’s body and Date’s mind is enough to make Saito go through five years of amnesia and ego death. And while I do think that swapping with Date in his original body would also turn out horribly, we’re not talking about that here.

It is very much easy to joke about the vase. I know this because I am one of those who like to joke about it. However, there is actually a lot we can glean about Saito’s character and his relationship with So from it.

Within my essay about how the two of them do not hate each other, I do touch on the basics of the vase; So’s body had been shot in the head, dismembered, and sealed away with a metal covering within a vase. This vase, as stated by Saito, was already in the Sejima Residence prior to the murder, rather than it being something he just bought specifically for hiding the body. As gruesome as the other killings were, they all are meant to be on display, forcing Date to confront the violent acts those he knew suffered.

So’s body is inherently different from this in every single way. After all, it was personal, and Saito (mostly) didn’t consider Date’s reaction towards it. “Mostly” due to one thing only:

The video.

Saito recorded himself shooting Boss in So’s body, and left it behind in a location Date would eventually investigate. He even made a point out of posing for the camera, showing “Boss” smiling after committing murder. That was all he wanted Date to see, he wanted to shock and traumatize him with the apparent reality that one of his closest friends was the culprit behind the NCK all along. The fact that “So” died was secondary.

But never once was Date meant to find the actual body. As stated earlier, the vase had been so tightly sealed that Date (or any other) had no choice but to break it open and be confronted with So’s dismembered body. The vase itself was in the location it had typically been set in within the Sejima Residence, the only elements that made it wrong being the aforementioned metal seal and the fact that the room smelled like a corpse. There was no show intended for it, only this facade of normalcy.

Saito didn’t want Date or anyone else to see what remained of his father.

If I were Saito, I would brush off the “why” with his “It’s personal” line, but I am fortunately not him. The reasoning, as mentioned in my earlier link, can be summed up as a desire to experience immense amounts of love and happiness. Much of Saito’s motivations can be tied back to So and his desire to remain in their “happy lives” at home for as long as they are alive and then some. Saito killed Manaka for love, regarding her as an intruder that stole away his father, Saito wants to go to the home of his body and his literal home that allows him to murder without guilt nor consequence, Saito wants to go back to the body with the blood relation to So, Saito wants nobody to interfere with the status quo of the Sejima Residence. Not once does Saito show any desire to be anywhere but home with his neglectful father that failed at giving him an actually nice life. The vase is the culmination of that concept— So is at home, never to leave, never to move around without Saito at his side, never to talk to another, surrounded by (in the most literal way) expensive things that remind him of his wealth. He is home and it is normal. They can be happy like this.

Of course, there is how Saito’s deficiency would have impacted this act. As I have noted prior, So’s body is the only one who gets shot in the head during the NCK, Hitomi and Iris being threatened with a gun is more impulsive, with Date’s evolver being what was on hand at the time. If the evolver took the shape of a knife, Saito may have been a little sad that he couldn’t commemorate his return home with some fireworks, but he’d go ahead and stab them. Meanwhile, So was planned to be shot in the head from the very beginning, and I would even argue that this has been the case for a very, very long time.

In VaiN2, we have to “kill” each animal drawing in unique ways. While there are a couple others that intrigue me, the one I want to focus on in particular is the cat.

The cat is the final doodle that has to be killed. It, unlike its otherwise inexpressive brethren, is depicted as smiling, genuinely happy. This one, we have to shoot. If that were all to it, I wouldn’t really be discussing this. What makes it stand out is what surrounds it.

The gun- which happens to be the exact same model as the one Saito is depicted using in the video, albeit this one is more like a black silhouette of it -is present from the very start of the somnium. The oil drum that has its contents censored and completely hidden away once Aiba flinches leaves behind a pool of blood and several bullets. The insides of it are modeled, depicting what appears to be So’s limbs. Note: I intend to get the freecam mod for myself and take some screenshots of my own, I will update this post once I do so. When you shoot the cat, that is what brings us to the end cutscene of VaiN2.

This is all tied together, echoing everything about how Saito kills So’s body down to even the little detail of his subconscious trying to keep the truth of the oil drum censored and hidden away from us, impossible for any outsiders to try and move it from its spot. The cat, a stand-in for So, is shown to be happy. That may seem odd given the kind of man he is, but this is something reflective of what Saito feels, wants, and ultimately hopes for.

Saito wants love despite his struggles with it. He wants attention and acknowledgment and ultimately acceptance. Hurting and even killing So would surely be an act that would make him happy, given that he is the one person Saito really cares about in the end. If his brain makes him happy whenever he harms another, shouldn’t killing So be the best thing he’s ever experienced?

And while this is more conjecture on my part, I see the fact that the cat is smiling as representative of Saito wanting that from So, even once he kills him. He wants his dad to be happy with him and understand why Saito has to kill him. He wants everything to “click” together in his dad’s mind and for it all to end with them maintaining their deeply flawed ideal family… even in death!

All this and the setting of VaiN2 itself gives the impression that Saito has wanted to kill So in this fashion for potentially years and years prior to the NCK, that this desire stuck with him. But we know how this ends for him.