#i should probably mention that there's maybe no anti-akechi fan who will really read this

[akechicrimes]

there’s this thing called the “perfect victim myth” that a friend of mine introduced me to, which is the myth, even the requirement, that a person’s pain and trauma is only valid if they were on their best behavior, did nothing wrong, and can in no way be faulted for contributing to their own terrible situation. trauma is only trauma if you sat there as an unsuspecting, poor faultless blameless disempowered victim, and terrible things were inflicted upon you without any of your input whatsoever. it’s only if you did absolutely zero things wrong that you’re allowed to be considered a victim.

therefore, akechi did things wrong, and therefore cannot be a victim of anything on his own end. right?

i cannot stress enough that this is simply not how abuse, abusive behaviors, or trauma works in real life, and that believing such a thing does a disservice to not only all people who’s been victims of abuse, but also anyone who believes such a myth.

look--insofar as persona 5 is a game in which the main characters are all victims of someone else doing something bad to them, i think yusuke is probably the best example of an unfortunate real-life victim situation, so let’s talk about yusuke for five seconds: he actively prevents the PT from trying to save him, defends his abuser at the expense of himself, and even after he’s joined the PT, he sometimes oscillates wildly between “i hate madarame and refuse to even speak of him” and “i miss him terribly and still speak fondly about him and my time living with him.” he never really seems to unlearn a lot of behaviors he picked up from living with madarame--things like not caring for himself at the expense of art, not listening to his own hunger cues, and arguably has a whacked-out relationship with money due to madarame’s own whacked-out relationship with money. personally, i think he also has difficulty with respecting other people’s personal boundaries because madarame never respected his, hence him inviting himself to live with ann, or inviting himself to live with akira.

now consider a situation where yusuke drives the PT off, continues to live with madarame, drives himself into the dirt to supply madarame with his art, and eventually fulfills nakanohara’s prediction of killing himself in despair. is that yusuke’s fault? arguably, it is, isn’t it? someone extended a hand to him, and yusuke refused. even consider a situation in which yusuke successfully calls the cops on the PT, like he very genuinely attempted to in canon, and akira goes to jail because of violating his probation. what then? now it’s not just yusuke is at fault for his own suicide, but he’s also done a terrible harm to akira that will follow him for the rest of his life. what then? are we supposed to have sympathy for him now?

that’s not such an unusual situation. that happens. that’s why nakanohara warned the PT about it. it has happened before and will happen again, and not just in the gameworld of persona 5.

if you come away from that story believing that that’s yusuke’s fault, i’d say that you’re not wrong, but you’re not right, either. it is probably partly yusuke’s fault. is he still a victim? did terrible things still happen to him? that is also true. 

does it really matter if it was partly his fault?

also now consider the woman that shido was harassing. what about her? do we sympathize with her? she helped get akira convicted to save her own skin. is she a victim or an abuser? should i sympathize with her or not? arguably she should have stood up for herself in the first place, right? maybe she shouldn’t have left herself alone with shido, either. when akira came to save her, maybe she should have run. when the police came, she should have testified that akira did nothing wrong. she probably would have had her life ruined by shido for the rest of her life, in that he’d probably go out of his way to destroy her career forever after, and she knew that, but hey, she should have stuck up for akira, right?

then there’s makoto--makoto who did some pretty colossally stupid things re: the yakuza incident, makoto who still had the nerve to love her sister despite her sister’s vaguely-immortal legal practices, makoto who didn’t immediately refuse kobayakawa when he arm-twisted her into doing his dirty work. what if makoto had decided that the letter of recommendation was more important? do you know how badly makoto shot herself in the foot by pissing kobayakawa off? that letter of recommendation might have been the difference between her going to the best college in the country to graduate as a doctor in law, and going to a run-of-the-mill college for a simple undergrad degree. her pissing kobayakawa off probably didn’t make her sister’s life any easier, for that matter; half the reason why sae acts as ruthless as she does is because there’s so much workplace misogyny against women in the justice system, and sae’s little sister being a shit to her principal probably didn’t help at all. so who’s to blame for all this? are we allowed to sympathize with makoto? how about sae? how about kobayakawa--makoto refused to help kobayakawa, and that directly contributes to kobayakawa getting fucked over by shido because kobayakawa wasn’t able to give shido what he wants. am i allowed to feel bad for him?

a lot of the cast of persona 5 doesn’t do anything even morally grey in this respect. the game goes out of its way to inform us that akira did Zero things wrong in trying to defend that woman from shido. ann is nothing but a perfect victim on her end, and is the model of a victim who resisted; she tried to run away, tried to tell kamoshida to stop, even had a good long sympathetic cry in an animated cutscene. haru is the exact same way. (ryuji gets put through the meatgrinder by his old track team for his actions, but if anything, ryuji has the opposite problem--he did everything right, and was punished for it. he’s the situation in which the woman stands up to shido and gets brutally destroyed for it.)

the point that i’m trying to make is that issues of victimhood and abuse get really messy. shido has a lot of dialogue that implies that he groomed akechi to do what he wanted, and there’s dialogue that tells us that akechi willingly volunteered himself for the role. both of those things can be true. we can acknowledge that akechi probably didn’t have much other options in his life besides his half-cocked plan to get revenge on shido. we can acknowledge that in all likelihood, i don’t think akechi ever really thought he’d live for very long; either he dies in poverty or he goes out with a bang against shido. we can acknowledge that simultaneously he probably did have other options that he should have chosen, like working a shitty low-wage job for the rest of his life because of his parentage.

so was akechi forced into this situation or not? if we can answer that question, things will be simpler, won’t it? we can say definitively: akechi had a choice, and therefore it’s his fault. akechi didn’t have a choice, and therefore it’s not his fault. 

so which is it? was he forced or not?

the truth about abuse is that the victim always has agency. always. ALWAYS. and because the victim has agency, it is often very difficult to say that the victim was “forced.”

the victim is always making choices for themselves. the victim always feels a modicum of control. the victim is always telling themselves that they could walk if they really wanted to; they’re staying because they’re going to make the situation better; they’re going to work hard and achieve their goals, even. this is the case of people looking at a battered woman and saying, good god, why doesn’t she just leave him? isn’t this a simple issue? is she being literally forced to stay with him? if she’s choosing to stay with him, is she really still a victim or a battered woman?

the truth about abuse is that it relies on pressure, and on limiting options. very rarely does abuse ever force anyone. in yusuke’s situation, there is enormous pressure for him to stay with madarame, both because of emotional ties, yusuke not having legal rights as a minor, yusuke not having the financial means to support himself, and simply the career prestige of having been madarame’s student--but is yusuke being forced to stay with madarame? arguably no. for the woman who accused akira, there’s pressure to do as shido says. but she has the option to refuse shido only in technicality, in the same way that someone being mugged technically has the option not to hand their wallet over, and consequently get shanked or shot.

as for akechi, there’s a lot of pressure to comply with shido, even when akechi feels like he’s doing it willingly, and even when akechi IS doing it willingly. there’s a lot of pressure to do terrible things such as murder, that akechi could technically say no to. akechi retains agency throughout his entire story, even when his agency is highly pressured to operate in ways that serve only shido’s benefit.

this is because akechi is a far more realistic victim than most victims of abuse in most media. he retains agency. and sometimes having agency means that you are highly pressured to do bad things.

this is the other thing about the “perfect victim myth”--a lot of it relies on arguing, “well, the victim is a victim because they had no other options.” that is to say, someone can only be a victim if it’s clearly demonstrable that they had no agency whatsoever in the situation. and this is simply not true. not of real life victims, and it shouldn’t be so for fictional victims.

and, not to mention, sometimes having agency means that you just straight-up do bad things because you’re coping badly. i mentioned earlier that i don’t think akechi intended to live very long, and that comes primarily from his willingness to sacrifice himself the instant he decides not to go through with his plan to kill shido. for a lot of kids in shitty situations growing up, it’s very difficult to see yourself growing up and having a fulfilling, happy future as an adult. if you’re not intending to live very long, why wouldn’t you consider all bets off? it’s not like you’re getting through this alive.

the other unfortunate fact of victims retaining agency is that they don’t always use it well, especially when they’ve been thru some shit, and this is almost always used against the victim to say, “well, you should have done this instead.” the entire thing smacks of ways to gatekeep “victimhood”--this magical status that lifts someone above criticism, above having flaws, and above the unfortunate status of being a human being. it’s a way of saying that certain characters are not allowed a right to their own pain because they didn’t fulfill certain criteria. it’s also a way of dehumanization, and avoiding the fact that real life is complex, and that doing good, doing bad, and even just doing living with other people is messy and often painful even at its best.

when someone acts out and makes bad decisions because they’ve been through a terrible situation or are in a bad headspace, obviously this does not excuse their actions, but it is possible to not excuse their actions and understand that people do not always cope well. coping is not always a cute waifish girl in an indie road trip movie. coping is not always a cute waifish girl crying in a bathtub. sometimes coping is being in such a headspace that you’re A-Okay with being murdered by your cognitive double because you don’t have anything else to live for. sometimes coping is latching on to the idea that if you just get revenge on the person who did this to you, maybe then you’ll be okay.

in the myths, the perfect victim is never responsible. the perfect victim is never an active player in their own lives. the perfect victim always copes well, according to the script, and never inconveniences anyone else. the perfect victim is always a heartwarming and uplifting story for other folks to feel good about. the perfect victim is, in a lot of ways, neatly packaged, bundled up, sanitized, and further dehumanized by removing their flaws.

i strongly do not recommend subscribing to the perfect victim myth. it benefits almost nobody, except for abusers who get to claim they didn’t abuse anyone because their victim didn’t fit the perfect victim model.

ultimately, my point is that i understand if akechi is not your cup of tea. lots of characters are not my cup of tea. i will never be a die-hard fan of, say, hifumi togo. i like her well enough, but she’s not for me.  you can dislike akechi!! nobody said you have to like him!!!

but i strongly dislike when people bring morality, victimhood, and rhetoric of abuse into justifying why they don’t like akechi.  but when you start talking about the reasons why akechi is the absolute worst and nobody should be allowed to like him because of reasons you’ve pulled out of the perfect victim fallacy, you’re doing a disservice to literally everyone everywhere who’s ever been in an abusive situation. no, not even that--you’re doing a disservice to everyone everywhere who’s ever suffered pain because of what someone else did to them. you become part of the rhetoric that invalidates people’s suffering and keeps us thinking of victimhood/abuse/trauma as a black and white issue.

and ultimately you’re doing a disservice to yourself, because one day, someone will hurt you, and you’ll believe that you don’t deserve to feel bad about it because you weren’t the perfect victim. 

do yourself a favor and quit it.