#four!!!

It's interesting you picked up on that because er... someone might have been rewatching and rereading Jujutsu Kaisen lately to do a character study of a certain thousand year old curse for future potential projects.

Now this was after chapter 2 was basically completely written so the two aren't related. However, as I was telling @akumacaron literally the other day, when I write a character, I have usually have a sense of their voice in my head (not as weird as it sounds I promise) and while working on my planning notes for chapter 3, I started to get a sense of Sukuna's voice sneaking in and I was like you're not supposed to be here.

But yeah outwardly Sukuna and Shin do have some big similarities, namely the joy they seem to get out of violence and some fairly impressive egos. However there are some big differences as well, namely Shin has something to prove and some of his behaviour is compensating for his own insecurities, while for Sukuna this isn't the case at all. I also think it's worth noting that Sukuna is a much better strategist and planner and is far less inclined to make stupid decisions than Shin.

Case in point that fight with Gojo in episode 2, where Yuji seems to suppress Sukuna after ten seconds but Sukuna later reveals in episode 6 that partly worked because he wanted to switch too. We're not given a reason for him wanting to switch, but if I had to interpret it, I'd say it's because he realised that with only one finger's worth of power, he couldn't beat Gojo and chose to wait and take stock of his options. Shin on the other hand would not have backed down (and would probably have died).

So yeah there definitely are some surface similarities and in The Demon Prince I really wanted to lean into Shin's love of violence to make him seem as awful as possible which is probably why he seems more similar to Sukuna than usual.

Imagine if she hadn’t been born into wealth, if she had a working class family. She still has her absolutely amazing quirk, but it’s not like she could use it to make anything she and her family wanted because quirk use is illegal. Hell, maybe she can’t even use her quirk to its full potential because eating the amount that would allow her to have excess fat cells to practice making things is too expensive for the family.

Imagine if Momo’s parents suddenly died, and she was left all alone in the world, only just a middle schooler. No relatives, no guardians. To survive, she had to quit school and go work; and this job is her entire livelihood, it’s all she has - it provided boarding and food and pay. Then one day, that’s alllll gone due to an accident and an unfair boss. She’s thrown out into the streets, and now spends nights under a bridge with a trash can bonfire. She’s only 16 years old.

She’s a really good kid. She’s so kind and gentle at heart. But life is so hard. It’s lonely and cold and she has no one to trust except for herself. All the things she wants is out of reach— actually, even basic necessities are out of reach. It’s frustrating; hurts, even. She just wants a break from the bad luck; she just wants some comfort. Experience the carefreeness and fun any other teenager her age gets, like any other 16-year-old girl.

Most of all, though, Momo wants to feel like she has some control and power. She doesn’t want to feel so insecure and weak, so lacking in self-confidence and anxious. She wants feel better than that, wants to be more than what she is - a homeless orphan - and she can be. If she use her quirk.

It’s too easy of a choice. She can have everything she wants by making it herself! Clothes and a cellphone and counterfeit money, even. Oh, but here’s the catch - it turns out she can’t. Her quirk requires her to know the atomic configuration of the object she wants to produce. That’s…molecules, right? Molecular structure? Knowing about elements? Knowing the exact raw materials things are made from, knowing how a cellphone works, what with the electromagnetic waves and CPU and batteries…

Momo hasn’t been in a science class for years. Hasn’t been to school since she was 14, nor had she catch up with things on her own time, too busy working or surviving the streets. She’s a real smart gal, but lacking things like a teacher’s guidance and encouragement, textbooks and education, just plain resources and support - that hinders her a lot.

Plus, with the little food she’s able to get (because, again, she’s homeless and completely broke), she’s all skin and bones and no fat to make anything big or complex.

Turning to Villainy wasn’t at all her goal, but one thing keeps leading to another. So she illegally used her quirk. So she tried to sell little trinkets she made for some money, and so that was illegal too. So it started to be a bit of con work, making counterfeit items that would bring in more cash. So that caught the attention of some cops and then she’s on the run. So she’s using her quirk to evade them, to protect herself, to commit more and more questionable activities. So she ends up on a top wanted list because her quirk was seen as too powerful, too dangerous, too much of a threat to a society that just doesn’t trust her with it, doesn’t trust her to know what she’s doing, doesn’t trust her to be a good person. Never has, and never will. And they will never help her either, now.

So what? She just wanted to survive; and maybe do better than just survive. Have fun, have comforts, have means, have confidence, have opportunities, have what she was denied. Have people to trust, have friends, have a family and home again.

Momo just wanted to live, and she deserves that, doesn’t she? Born unlucky, but she could still make something of herself, even with limited choices.

And that’s how she became a Villain.