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tomorrow’s another day and the world is my oyster—so long as i never want to leave tokyo.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
10 Sep 2025
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A glimpse at a bad end that's just as beautiful as it is terrifying. Vivid, sinuous prose twines around the whole thing, and by the end we can only ask: "what the fuck, maruki"
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Akechi Goro, Kurusu Akira, and conversations at Leblanc.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
10 Sep 2025
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A really fun encapsulation of the relationship as told through five moments in LeBlanc. Over light conversation hangs even louder unsaid truths. It's a clever choice of setting--untouched by the violence of the greater plot (supernatural and otherwise)--but the author still lets those moments echo and resonate. The author knows about Nov 20th, as does the reader, akechi, and akira. What else is there to do but have a cup of coffee about it?
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He’s not friends with Akechi. Not at all. Spending time together is a prerequisite for such a label, perhaps, but not the definition.
Akechi insists they’re rivals, like he never grew out of his sentai phase, which makes it all the more annoying when Ren has to admit that he agrees with the term.
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Ren learns to push his luck.ShuAke Week - Day 1: Role Swap
Series
- Part 1 of Shuake Week 2024
Bookmarked by CardXXII
31 Mar 2025
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A vivid, economic role reversal one-shot. An entire alternate game told in poignant flashes as our leads careen towards the inevitable Nov 20th. Even though their positions have swapped, goro & akira retaining (most of) their canonical backstories, personalities, and even behaviors during the game is fascinating. Goro is still the chatty one, still the one inviting Akira out, still initiating the duel. God it's so interesting when you twist the prism ever so slightly, suddenly all these actions seem so heroic. Of course the hero is going to doggedly pursue the quiet, unreadable dark-haired villain. How could it be any other way?
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Goro has a nightmare; this is the after.
The scent of fresh coffee cuts through the air as it brews—a smell that Goro associates with home—and she feels the nightmare fading like sand tumbling down an hourglass.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
31 Mar 2025
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Sad, sweet, & sapphic. Atmospheric & domestic. Goro grapples with the impending fate of her father. It's a tall task making shuake sweet while keeping canon intact, but jumping twelve years ahead is a really smart way to handle that. It's enough time that I totally buy where Akechi is at. Leaves me wondering: which is a worse fate for Akechi? Being a man who resembles his father or a woman who resembles her mother?
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The perfect cup of coffee begins like this.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
19 Feb 2025
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Short, sweet, and exquisite use of the 'food as a metaphor for love' tag. Made me want to reread it a second time with a cup of coffee on hand.
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Goro meets Kurusu for the first time in a TV station hallway—the marker of an end.
(Chess games and duels and the bloody ache of near clashes. Darts on boards and two hands shaking and the meld when they brush near. All of this refracted in twin mirrors, which was the face and which was the reflection?)
Goro meets Akira for a second time in a TV station hallway, it's the beginning of something. At least he knows that much.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
17 Feb 2025
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First meeting in the second rotation of a time loop. A pretty and sharp little one-shot that offers a tantalizing glimpse into what came before, and hints at what might come next. Feels like 30k words distilled down to the most important scene in the best way possible.
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When Ren’s fingers twine with his, Goro doesn’t jump even a little.
Ren’s voice is quiet. “Do you think we’ll always be together?”
Akechi gets everything he’s ever wanted, and nothing is wrong.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 9,485
- Chapters:
- 1/1
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- 1
- Comments:
- 44
- Kudos:
- 224
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Bookmarked by CardXXII
02 Aug 2024
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A fantastically harrowing trip as Goro tumbles through the third semester's bad end. It really takes advantage of writing as a medium to sell the wrongness of Maruki's dollhouse in a way the video game can't. Dreams, memory, reality, and "reality" tangle together, perception is malleable, and there's no iridescent shimmer effect to reassure you. Goro is in the deep end and so are you. Comes packed with a rug pull and a conclusion to Goro's arc that's satisfying and clicks perfectly in place with the themes of the character and game before it. Brilliant.
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The aquarium date as a vector for marine facts and the intimacy of being understood
Bookmarked by CardXXII
30 Jul 2024
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This fic just so excellently captures as an aspect of ship I enjoy dearly: how absolutely bizarre these two character get when you put them together. This fic valiantly carries the torch into exciting new territories, specifically, competitive fish facts. The aquarium date is such a good moment to expand upon, and I love the little flashes we get of both Akira's vulnerability, Akechi's slipping facade, and the tenderness that can happen between them.
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One unsheathed knife must glint in an alternate timeline’s light by silverid
Fandoms: Persona 5
23 Jul 2024
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Akechi finds a cardboard box in Akira’s bedroom, filled to the brim with black leather gloves. They sit in neat rows, folded over each other like nesting animals. All the same, all— All right-handed. There are no matching pairs; only the same garment, repeated ad infinitum.
Akechi picks one up, hands shaking. He already knows how familiar the glove is going to feel.
It’s his. They all are.
For Shuake Week, Day 2: Time Travel
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 9,402
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 28
- Kudos:
- 479
- Bookmarks:
- 84
- Hits:
- 3,218
Bookmarked by CardXXII
29 Jul 2024
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What a deliciously horrifying timeloop reveal, and what an enormous emotional weight to add to an already burdened 2/2. Both characters are sent reeling at the reveal and are forced to find a way to pick the pieces before 7/3's infiltration. What sinister genius to hit both characters with this right after the convo with Maruki. This rings true to the overall tenor of their relationship: maybe in another life, maybe if we'd met sooner, maybe next timeloop.
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What will losing Akechi feel like, this time? Will it be like dying? Disappearing? Falling asleep? Will Akechi have time for last words? Or will the world reset like a clock wound backwards, all at once with no room for goodbyes?
Bookmarked by CardXXII
24 Jul 2024
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An artfully done take on 2/2, complete with deft use of figurative language and detail. There's just enough to paint a vivid scene without slowing down the momentum of a tense moment. Absolutely lethal "In another life" callback with new added context. Gorgeous and brutal.
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Maruki plays his ace in the hole, never expecting that Akira already knows.
The punchline is: Goro never expected that either.
(2/2 B Side, or: the AU where Akira figures out what his "wish" is before the deadline.)
Bookmarked by CardXXII
23 Jul 2024
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Beautiful fic where romance is twined naturally into an already loaded 2/2. It's heady, it's messy, it's in-character. Akira being aware of his wish early on makes all the following drama much tastier, and Goro's POV on 2/2 is always a treat. Love seeing those bits of anguish, self-sabotage, and, even a little bit of healing. Lovely take on canon.
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goro wants to shoot him with handel playing, goro wants to strangle him to mendelssohn.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
18 Jul 2024
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Things Akechi loves & loathes: art, god, akira.
What a beautiful fic. I love when authors take mundane events and string them together with beautiful prose. It’s lyrical, it’s winding, and sometimes, like poetry, it takes a little deciphering in the best of ways. This is a delightful treat. -
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Rank 1: reluctant leader of the Phantom Thieves Akechi Goro meets a Very Annoying Celebrity and immediately resolves to destroy him.
Written for the ANTITHESIS fanzine.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
25 Jun 2024
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A clever and thoughtful roleswap! Akira as celebrity psychic instead of a detective is inspired, and I'm especially fond of how much of their personalities have been preserved despite being on opposite sides of the narrative. In any lifetime, it's still going to be Akechi who finds a way to namedrop Hegel.
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Rank 8 if Akira and Akechi had to catch the same train afterwards. It's awkward, at least, for one of them.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
25 Jun 2024
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What a perfect little cake topper on the delightfully unhinged rank 8 interaction. This is the shuake dynamic at their funniest: bafflingly homoerotic despite it all. This is canon to me now, and I appreciate any fic that can make me laugh.
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deep-shadowed from the candle’s guttering gold by Grennusona (angrennufuin)
Fandoms: Persona 5
26 Sep 2019
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Joker has a habit of quietly effacing himself from perception, but it has never worked on you -- or not recently, anyway. Which is a natural consequence of becoming more involved in your rival’s life. Of course you’d be more aware of his presence than previously; of course you’d be able to see through his pathological lurking.
Something of a style-test. Arguably written for #GoroWeek2019 day 2: Angst, but mainly written as an excuse to shoehorn my favorite poem into a fic title. Spoilers for the end of November.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
14 May 2024
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We love a fic set within the casino palace! Such a lovely swirl of emotions to sort through--that inevitable increasing of proximity vs that november-20th-shaped sword of damocles. Very interesting to view the other phantom thieves through Crow's tilted, calculating lens.
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amamiya ren is an exchange student whose prissy new roommate doesn't seem to want anything to do with him. unfortunately, there's been a mix up at the dorm, and they've been given a double bed instead of two singles.
what a contrived set of circumstances that they will surely deal with maturely and sensibly.
(or: eight times akeshu were cliche fic tropes, and one time they weren't)
Bookmarked by CardXXII
24 Apr 2024
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So interesting to see how the deck has been reshuffled and arranged to a no metaverse college AU. Very sweet, very funny, and very impressive how our leads still feel very in-character even divorced from magical powers and dark pasts--quite a feat! Adorable fic.
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There's Akechi, bandaging his wounds in the dusty summer evenings with gentle hands; Akechi, reading the English aloud for his sake; Akechi, with undue viciousness, tearing at the shadow that had threatened them.
"Don't worry," he said. "I won't let them touch you." But oh, they're not the ones he's afraid of.
There's no Haru, this time. No Makoto or Yusuke or Ann or Ryuji or Morgana to tell him that he's making a mistake (again) and he'll regret this (eventually) and this won't end happily (or peacefully); no, it's just him and Akechi and a list of palaces to rip through in record time. What did they call it? Thick as thieves?
Akira tries to remember what he's here for.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
24 Apr 2024
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A fic so good you need to stare at the wall after reading.
Perfect writing style that dances over the tragedy. Matter-of-fact, perfectly arranged, full of empty spaces for the pain to pool in. Never too much. Often perfectly, cruelly casual. Absolutely devastating application of "take your time." The story hits and hits and hits from the opening scene to the very last. The literary equivalent of being water boarded, and it's fantastic. 10/10.
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“You’re awake,” a voice heavy with sleep rumbles into his chest as fingers drift to the dip of his waist.
He knows this voice, hears it every morning when he wakes, every night before he sleeps.
Heard it in the minutes before he died, mere moments ago.(Akechi gets a small taste of what he could have had in the future if he made different choices.)
Bookmarked by CardXXII
24 Apr 2024
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What would it take for a fully defeated akechi to accept a new game plus? Unfortunately the answer is as sweet as it is sinister: hope.
I love the separate threads in the first scene: what akechi says, his surface-level thoughts, and his deeper-level thoughts. All three are really deftly woven together & making that easy for the reader to follow takes skill. Charming banter, and there were some absolutely killer lines that drop and echo.
There's something so tasty about a one-shot that picks the perfect place to start and end. The story could've ended without the final scene, but including it finishes the story off on a perfectly dark resounding note.
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“Isn't this pathetic?” It croons, weaving its hands into his hair. “The great phantom thief, begging for fragments of a ghost.”
Akira seeks comfort from a dead boy and his doppelganger.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
19 Apr 2024
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How does one even grieve a death like Akechi's? The only honest answer seems to be: messily. A delightful, tragic ride. The quick, trasitionless cuts are so good a blurring the line between the real and unreal, dream vs reality vs the metaverse where things are both. The constant interplay of persona user & persona, watching those edges blur, is such a fascinating exploration of the topic.
Akira mirroring Akechi's envy is also a brilliant take. The man with 23 confidants being jealous of the freedom that comes from having none is *chef's kiss*. A dark, twisted, absolute genius interpretation.
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“make it quick”, akira says the twelfth time.
Bookmarked by CardXXII
19 Apr 2024
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What sweet suffering. Akira stuck in a timeloop inside the interrogation room? Absolutely deliciously diabolical. Akira's scattershot thoughts as he tries to hold the love, the pain, the fear, the determination all at once make for a gripping read. No punches are pulled, and there's nothing for the reader (or akira) to do but endure. Really brilliant work.