Goro Akechi | good ending (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pheasantboy) wrote2025-01-02 11:20 pm
pheasantboy) wrote2025-01-02 11:20 pm
Entry tags:
[meta] into the pheasantverse: how pheasant works internally
Priors
Pheasant's internality is built on the theory of a connection, or cognitive bridge, between the conscious mind (the ego) in physical reality, and the Shadow in the cognitive world. This bridge conveys the everything between the ego and the Shadow. It is critical to someone's functioning.
Persona users, whose Shadows have become their Personas, no longer have the bridge, because their Persona exists as an integrated part of them.
So what happened to Pheasant?
When Maruki took control, after the 2/2 meeting in Leblanc, he essentially replaced that bridge between Pheasant and his Shadow—and between everyone else in that world, and their Shadow—with one of his tentacles/cables.
Wait, wasn't Pheasant a Persona user? How could Maruki do anything to his Shadow?
Per Lavenza on 1/11, there's some complex shit going on around control of Mementos, and around the Phantom Thieves specifically, that results in them gaining control of Mementos from Yaldabaoth on 12/24 and then immediately ceding it to Maruki—without their knowledge. Their 12/24 despair in the cells may also indicate why they would potentially be open to Maruki taking over. Might.
As for Akechi? Well, we know that, despite his furious resistance, he's afraid to die. And he does have a wish—that Maruki enacts in part in the third semester, and in full in the bad ending. He is no less torn than the other Phantom Thieves; he just hides it better.
And we know how important it is to him that Joker, specifically, sticks to his own principles—the ones he sacrifices on 2/2, right in front of Akechi, to save his life. We see that that decision deeply wounds Akechi, to the point of breaking his confidant.
So it's possible Akechi just gives up, outside Leblanc, unable to hold on to his spirit of rebellion any longer, having lost the last shred of his hope. Something similar would go for the other Phantom Thieves, faced with Joker's decision not to fight; we see their meeting in the spiderweb/missed deadline ending, where they all (apparently including Akechi) blame themselves for not being able to fight any longer.There are other potentially interesting stories here, regarding earlier Persona users.
Well, okay. That all sounds like it sucked?
It sucked very much indeed. Shadow Pheasant remembers it vividly, has trauma from it, and experienced it as a violation. He remembers looking around and seeing the cable making straight for him, before it pierced him and took over every part of him.
For added fun, because Maruki's control had become total by then, and Mementos and reality had completely merged, this may or may not have happened to Akechi himself—and to everyone else in that world. What's left of Mementos in Maruki's reality is a place almost like the forests of pods in The Matrix—one Shadow after the next, each possessed by a tentacle/cable that links them directly to Maruki, turning them into nothing but a conduit for his power. If this sounds horrific, that's because it is.
As for Pheasant, now that Maruki's direct connection to his cognition has been forcibly removed, only the barest connection to his Shadow remains, keeping him alive.
What does it look like?
As detailed in Pheasant's meeting with Shrike here, the effect is of a gaping wound in Pheasant's mind, as if something was torn out by the root. You can see this, if you're a telepath. His subconscious still reaches down to that wound, trying to access the cable by which Maruki controlled him, or the bridge to his Shadow that was originally there. But next to nothing remains.
What effect has that had on Pheasant?
Everybody in Maruki's reality seems shallow and superficial; they have an inability to think about deeper things. This is at least symbolised by the loss of the connection to their Shadow, which was replaced by a connection to Maruki and his power.
So Pheasant is shallow and superficial and easily distracted; he skips over unpleasant realities or deeper things, and finds more pleasant distractions, as was the way of life in the world he came from. His mind constantly tries to heal, to reassert itself—but without the connection to his Shadow, Pheasant is playing with only a handful of pieces; it's impossible for much of the full picture to emerge.
Is that all that's going on?
No. Remember, Maruki's power is literally to remake reality, so that past events never occurred. So things like Pheasant's career as the black-masked assassin never took place. The trauma that defined his life never happened. While his mother did die, Pheasant is incapable of feeling grief about it, or even of viewing it as much of a bad thing.
There are suggestions of echoes, in the third semester—of people remembering things that have been undone, as with Sojiro remembering Wakaba after her unmaking. But it seems likely to me that, in a world under Maruki's total control, these echoes would no longer occur.
Why does he forget things?
This is where it gets hairy. Pheasant's blackouts are not part of Maruki's control over him (which no longer exists); they are the effect of his own mind trying to repair the gross damage that was done to it. In effect, his cognition is constantly trying to route around the damage.
And, at least in part because of Pheasant's own complex feelings—remember, as much as he struggled against it and as much as he was horrified by what he would become, he did get his deepest, most impossible wishes—his mind is routing around anything that would disturb his actualisation. It's also in part doing that because, with the link to his Shadow so attenuated, nothing is left accessible that could replace the actualisation once it's disturbed.
Pheasant's internality is built on the theory of a connection, or cognitive bridge, between the conscious mind (the ego) in physical reality, and the Shadow in the cognitive world. This bridge conveys the everything between the ego and the Shadow. It is critical to someone's functioning.
Persona users, whose Shadows have become their Personas, no longer have the bridge, because their Persona exists as an integrated part of them.
So what happened to Pheasant?
When Maruki took control, after the 2/2 meeting in Leblanc, he essentially replaced that bridge between Pheasant and his Shadow—and between everyone else in that world, and their Shadow—with one of his tentacles/cables.
Wait, wasn't Pheasant a Persona user? How could Maruki do anything to his Shadow?
Per Lavenza on 1/11, there's some complex shit going on around control of Mementos, and around the Phantom Thieves specifically, that results in them gaining control of Mementos from Yaldabaoth on 12/24 and then immediately ceding it to Maruki—without their knowledge. Their 12/24 despair in the cells may also indicate why they would potentially be open to Maruki taking over. Might.
As for Akechi? Well, we know that, despite his furious resistance, he's afraid to die. And he does have a wish—that Maruki enacts in part in the third semester, and in full in the bad ending. He is no less torn than the other Phantom Thieves; he just hides it better.
And we know how important it is to him that Joker, specifically, sticks to his own principles—the ones he sacrifices on 2/2, right in front of Akechi, to save his life. We see that that decision deeply wounds Akechi, to the point of breaking his confidant.
So it's possible Akechi just gives up, outside Leblanc, unable to hold on to his spirit of rebellion any longer, having lost the last shred of his hope. Something similar would go for the other Phantom Thieves, faced with Joker's decision not to fight; we see their meeting in the spiderweb/missed deadline ending, where they all (apparently including Akechi) blame themselves for not being able to fight any longer.
Well, okay. That all sounds like it sucked?
It sucked very much indeed. Shadow Pheasant remembers it vividly, has trauma from it, and experienced it as a violation. He remembers looking around and seeing the cable making straight for him, before it pierced him and took over every part of him.
For added fun, because Maruki's control had become total by then, and Mementos and reality had completely merged, this may or may not have happened to Akechi himself—and to everyone else in that world. What's left of Mementos in Maruki's reality is a place almost like the forests of pods in The Matrix—one Shadow after the next, each possessed by a tentacle/cable that links them directly to Maruki, turning them into nothing but a conduit for his power. If this sounds horrific, that's because it is.
As for Pheasant, now that Maruki's direct connection to his cognition has been forcibly removed, only the barest connection to his Shadow remains, keeping him alive.
What does it look like?
As detailed in Pheasant's meeting with Shrike here, the effect is of a gaping wound in Pheasant's mind, as if something was torn out by the root. You can see this, if you're a telepath. His subconscious still reaches down to that wound, trying to access the cable by which Maruki controlled him, or the bridge to his Shadow that was originally there. But next to nothing remains.
What effect has that had on Pheasant?
Everybody in Maruki's reality seems shallow and superficial; they have an inability to think about deeper things. This is at least symbolised by the loss of the connection to their Shadow, which was replaced by a connection to Maruki and his power.
So Pheasant is shallow and superficial and easily distracted; he skips over unpleasant realities or deeper things, and finds more pleasant distractions, as was the way of life in the world he came from. His mind constantly tries to heal, to reassert itself—but without the connection to his Shadow, Pheasant is playing with only a handful of pieces; it's impossible for much of the full picture to emerge.
Is that all that's going on?
No. Remember, Maruki's power is literally to remake reality, so that past events never occurred. So things like Pheasant's career as the black-masked assassin never took place. The trauma that defined his life never happened. While his mother did die, Pheasant is incapable of feeling grief about it, or even of viewing it as much of a bad thing.
There are suggestions of echoes, in the third semester—of people remembering things that have been undone, as with Sojiro remembering Wakaba after her unmaking. But it seems likely to me that, in a world under Maruki's total control, these echoes would no longer occur.
Why does he forget things?
This is where it gets hairy. Pheasant's blackouts are not part of Maruki's control over him (which no longer exists); they are the effect of his own mind trying to repair the gross damage that was done to it. In effect, his cognition is constantly trying to route around the damage.
And, at least in part because of Pheasant's own complex feelings—remember, as much as he struggled against it and as much as he was horrified by what he would become, he did get his deepest, most impossible wishes—his mind is routing around anything that would disturb his actualisation. It's also in part doing that because, with the link to his Shadow so attenuated, nothing is left accessible that could replace the actualisation once it's disturbed.