I'm a shapeshifter
In which I explain how Joker from Persona 5 is actually very personal to me
This contains spoilers for Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal. Just so you know.
Friends tell each other things, show each other things. And we’re friends, right? We’re friends. We know each other, so- here’s a transcription of a diary entry I recorded in the summer of 2020.
Used to think I was lost in a sea of reflections of other people. That I had no central personality. Couldn’t figure out who I am. Tried to be like, okay, I’m going to be this. Like I could choose a favorite palette of traits and just be that. But it’s not like that. I am a million different things. Millions! But I have a core, a heart. Ask me a question in a million different circumstances and I’ll probably have the same answer, just said in different ways. I’m like a disco ball... I think that’s neat. I think as long as I have good intentions and dreams, it doesn’t matter who I am. But now I understand why getting close to me simply just takes time and passion for getting to know me- I’m a lot of work but I’m great. I’m infinitely interesting. People have to see me everywhere and see my spectrum of personality. I think mine is just super wide. Some have very small spectrums, which is also powerful. In the end, I must understand that I fluctuate and change but also am somehow the same. Just got a lot in me. I should be proud. …All of those pages seem so distant, now.
We could leave it there. Somehow I had packed all of my ghosts from my teenage years into a small, neat box with breathing holes. But friends don’t just leave it there. We stare until it hurts.
I want everyone to stare at me until it hurts.
O1. THE PROTAGONIST
I always had this, like, obsession with what people thought of me, growing up. I arguably still do. It’s just morphed into a different monster altogether. We’ll get to that. We’ll get to everything. All of it matters.
Anyway. As a kid and teenager, I was like, I have to be the smartest and funniest and coolest and most likable person ever, because friends are something you earn, something you prove yourself to get. Do I still think that way? Are friends that… transactional? In some ways and in some ways. I had this obsession with being known. I just wanted people to get me. I wanted them to see me, really fucking see me, and then they’d really fucking love me. Easy peasy. Anyone who didn’t like me- well, they just didn’t see the full me!
Younger Me was full of energy, cocky and loyal to a fault. I loved my friends more than anything, but I lacked understanding of key ideas, sometimes. I was often naive. I still am more naive than my peers in a lot of ways, completely the opposite in others. I was one of those kids adults would call very mature for her age but also a late bloomer. And that right there is what I’m here to tell you, my friend. I’m an oxymoron of a person. I’m confessing this to you in the hopes that I’m not alone in this. That maybe everyone feels this way, split between selves, two or several or dozens, and that it eats them alive. I’m begging at your feet for you to tell me I’m not the only being eaten alive. C’mon. Tell me you don’t recognize yourself, every once in a while.
Persona 5. In this game you aren’t told the name of the protagonist. You name him yourself. Everyone calls you by name or just simply him or he or this guy, which, during my play-through this past spring and summer, amused me to no end. People say there’s power in names, in words, which there is. More than we can handle. When people get your name wrong, say you’re someone else, forget you, it hurts deep somewhere animalistic and petty, doesn’t it? Even when you know it was an honest mistake. Even when you know that most people remember faces better. So, then- I believe that being named without truly saying the name itself, that’s- that’s being known, maybe. Maybe that’s power. Maybe that’s a soul. The thing that came before language in the way we now experience it. Knowing. Understanding.
The Persona 5 protagonist is named what you want him to be named, like Link in Zelda- but, of course, people write Link in the name box, anyway. Or they write their actual names, or some funny shit, I don’t know. And people are always memeing, like, The P5 protagonist is a blank slate! He has no personality! I mean, yeah, there are so many cutscenes where he just stands there, silent, hands in his pockets, and all the other characters are written to act like he’s actively engaging in everything. I think it’s interesting to analyze the role of player, to think about what it means to control a character in a video game, what that means about us, psychologically, when we use the limited choices in front of us, some real Undertale/Deltarune sort of shit, but I also think- well. The P5 protagonist isn’t exactly a blank slate. And if he is, he’s doing it intentionally. It’s kind of the whole point of him.
We’re about to talk about this video game character very earnestly, here.
O2. AKIRA KURUSU
So. The protagonist got a name, when Persona 5 got adapted into a manga, and that name was Akira Kurusu.
It’s kind of entertaining to me how this guy has so many names. It’s kind of meta. It’s kind of confusing and kind of interesting how people get to choose their favorite, and how some use this one because they were into Persona in 2018 and not, say, 2022, like me.
Akira’s whole deal: he gets charged for a crime he doesn’t commit, moves to Tokyo, and proceeds to help all these misfits and outsiders around him to take down their part of society’s oppressors of youth. Among other things. Persona 5, in my opinion, is at its best when it is about this oppression. When it blasts you with the real feeling of being someone who has no power in the world, because there are people who came before you who are actually evil. Persona 5 is about evil! And somehow it nails it for me, that big idea, that long-trodden theme, it makes me angry, makes me think, yeah, you know what, some adults really just need to be fucking taken down a peg! I’m an adult, now. It’s a big responsibility. Bigger when you affect the lives of children, which we all do, to some extent. I’m a sucker for narratives like that, where it’s the world against the kids. And Persona 5 is firmly rooted in real life issues, nuances; it starts off with a gym teacher who abuses kids on the sports team and manipulates everyone into being quiet about it. Yes, the writing in Persona 5 often veers into problematic, usually misogynistic territory, but I take what I can get from it. It’s an oxymoron, too- it’s like the writers have this wall between true revolutionary ideas and just like, respecting women. Funny, also, how you can’t date the guys in the game and there are random extremely homophobic cutscenes when the whole point of the game’s plot is being someone that people oppress because they simply don’t understand you. We have villains like Kamoshida who are portrayed as evil for preying on underage girls and yet we are encouraged to do that, as a player, and also are allowed to date fully grown women. It’s bad. It makes me wonder. People are complicated. They’re so unaware of themselves. They’re fucking stupid.
I think one of my issues is that I am hyper-vigilant of myself (until I’m not). I think one of my issues is that I have amalgamated a soundboard of responses to any given situation over the years to use instead of my actual feelings in the moment. But is that just being alive? Being a person in society? Do we not all just accumulate different reactions to things, create paths in our brains over time and that just creates a Self? (A persona? Ha. I can’t start doing that.)
On my end it seems like the idea of a Persona in the game is pretty literal in that you’re unleashing another side of yourself. Very Jungian (and this is not a Jung-centric essay, I say, writing this). The characters obviously gain their main Personas through some event of great trauma that forces the angry, righteous side of themselves to come through and help them defeat some villain. Perhaps you could say this is their truer self. But is a part of yourself more true because it’s more hidden, harder to access? Or are our shallow areas just as much a part of you? They certainly show up more than any other. They certainly dictate so much of our daily lives.
And then there’s Akira- he’s got Arsene (again, we’ll get to that) but he also has the ability to use so, so many other Personas. He’s a wild card! He has so many selves. This is probably low-hanging fruit in the realm of Akira-Kurusu-related-analysis, I know. I’ve got to introduce it all. I’ve got to ease you in. I’ve got to show you what you know, maybe what you want - perhaps those are the same - and see if you’ll stick around.
I was always very struck by the imagery of Akira in the Velvet Room. His self, imprisoned. I haven’t really played the other Persona games (I’m a fake fan, I know, please have mercy) but I know their Velvet Rooms are not like that. And I think that it can’t be accidental that so much of Persona 5 involves the self and the hiding of the self, that all the characters are despairing over people’s perceptions of them versus what they see or want of themselves. Akira’s response options are slightly different around each character, but his personality still shines through. He’s quiet, sure. He’s funny in a weird way. He’s kind of weird in general. I think it’s hilarious. All of these characters are in love with him. Like, yeah, that comes with the territory of being a video game protagonist where you can romance others, but also- I’m eager to accept the idea that Akira offers his different selves up to people to get them to like him. I mean, think about the conflicts in P5R’s Third Semester. Maruki’s palace. Well. I feel like Third Semester is so good because they take all these vaguer themes and feelings and hone in on them, especially when it comes to Akira, and, you know, that other guy.
There was a point when I moved to a new high school. It was a tough time for me. We don’t have to get into it. We don’t, we don’t. I won’t. Take a few steps back in time: in middle school I became hyper-aware, suddenly, that I was perceived a certain way by my peers. I was the nerdy kid. I hate the word nerdy, but I think it sums it up. In elementary school I’d gotten a lot of praise because I was smart, or whatever. Wait. Ugh! This is painful to write out because I find myself wanting to come off as both someone who’s confident but also not too confident. I don’t want to insult my younger self - she was fucking smart! - but I don’t want to be too smug, the thing people disliked so much about me, still do, sometimes. I cringe, I blush. Smart, or whatever! What a statement. This is painful because I’m giving you everything! I’m giving you who I really am! And I don’t get to control it. You’re going to take these few sentences and run. I’ve always found myself wincing when I have to tell stories about my childhood, because you’ll never get it if you weren’t there, and honestly, you’ll never get it because you aren’t me. But we tell the stories anyway. I grimace and I sneer and I cry into my pillow.
I think of Suzanne Rivecca’s quote, from “Ugly Bitter and True”—
The San Francisco therapist kept telling me I shouldn't be terrified of creative experimentation.
"I don't know what's going to come out of me," I told her. "It has to be perfect. It has to be irreproachable in every way."
"Why?" she said.
"To make up for it," I said. "To make up for the fact that it's me."
O3. REN AMAMIYA
I get really pissed off when people think I’m… I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to say it.
I’m afraid people I know in real life (hi, coworkers, former classmates, ex-friends, my god) will read it and remember it and it’ll change their perception of me, which gives them power. I don’t want to lose power. Maybe that’s my problem. I think a self, a persona, is power. Instead of expression. But expression is power, really. Love is power. A self is- a self is-
I’ve had people tell me what I am my whole life, and they told me violently. Does this happen to everyone? It must, right? I feel my truest feelings running out of my eyes sometimes like mudslides. Destructive and murky and unexpected. All because of each other. I’ve had people tell me I’m too quiet. I’ve had people tell me I’m too loud. I’ve had people tell me I’m horrible at conversation, that I’m too confident. That I’m grounded in what’s important, that I’m actually insane. I’ve had, I’ve had. I had them do it. I made them. I brought this upon myself. I started noticing people’s cruelty too late, maybe. When I was ten or eleven or something. That’s when I have the earliest memories of it. I saw that I could make them stop by giving them what they want. I made them do it. I gave them whatever I could.
Someone recently told me, You’re always like, I’m crazy, I’m crazy, but you’re really sensitive, on the inside. I know. Fuck, I know. I wish I wasn’t so sensitive. I wish I didn’t care. I always think, fleetingly, still: If I could just be myself, without thinking about what others think, then-!
But my Self is right there. It’s already here. Just because you’re more mean or care less about what others think doesn’t mean you’re closer to what you are. What you are- I’m still trying to understand that. I hope someday I reread this and I have this fond sort of nostalgia for my lack of understanding, that my heart softens. I’m trying to be fond of the girl who didn’t realize other people disliked her, the one I was at age nine, but I’m going to be honest. Sometimes I hate her, I hate her so much.
She’s so embarrassing.
I had this girl tell me once that I was not an extrovert. I was trying very hard to be something people would want to talk to. Something. Anything. I was the new girl at a conservative, almost all-white high school, queer and Latina and also full of social anxiety. I was trying very hard. No one really got close to me that year. I kept thinking It’s my fault It’s my fault It’s my fault If only I could be better. If only I could prove that I was-
I was saying, yeah, I love being around people. I sat with her at lunch, and she had laughed at me and said, You know, I really just don’t see you as an extrovert. Like, at all. At my look, I suppose, she had stammered and said, I’m sorry!
It’s always an apology, I guess. Or not. I’ve had versions of this interaction a lot over the years, for some reason, and have always ended up going home and crying to my mother about it. Like, every time. Over the phone, sometimes. And every time she says something along the lines of: They’re projecting, hija. They’re being weird.
But, I wail, what is a relationship if not projection- what is perception of others if not projection- what is social interaction if not-
Ren Amamiya is another name for the P5 protagonist. It originated from the anime adaptation. It’s my favorite. I don’t know exactly why. It’s more subdued, maybe. I like the name Ren. It feels like him.
I lean a lot on fictional characters to make me feel seen. I guess that’s why I’m in this business. I take them very seriously, okay. I usually look to characters who are high-energy, confident, excited about life, I think about them a lot in my free time, I think, I’ll be like that. As corny as it sounds. I’ve done it since I was small. Then, it was Percy Jackson. Now it’s Monkey D. Luffy, I guess? Or, surprisingly, Ren Amamiya.
I hate when people tell me I’m quiet. I’ll- I’ll give you this one. Let’s enact a truce. Forget it, if you know me in person, as a favor. But these past few years I’ve been having these strange, scattered moments of clarity, thinking that maybe it’s okay if I’m quiet, sometimes. If I’m formal or polite. If I take it easy. If I’m not a constant show for the people around me. There’s a time and place for things. I can read a room. That’s a strength of mine. Because sometimes I really am like that. Sometimes I stand there with my hands in my pockets, and I don’t say anything, and I smile.
And during those times, yes, there are people who still like me.
Again, for a long time I had this constant mantra that if I felt watered down around someone, they didn’t understand me, and they didn’t deserve me. But this translated into me forcing myself to try to be one thing - and that thing was usually funny and exciting - all the time, instead of allowing myself to be different things, to feel. To, you know, be a human being. It ended up a responsibility of mine instead of others’! So it goes. Seriously, I was like, I have to be this character. And then I’d get so fucking upset when people still didn’t care! But that’s the thing. So many people aren’t going to like me, regardless of what I do. Or you, for that matter. It’s statistics. I’ve realized it’s fine if someone thinks I’m boring, or quiet. Because I don’t. And isn’t that a lesson we’re told at a young age, a simple one? That some people just won’t like you? It’s taken me a long time to get it. I sometimes just don’t talk to people because it’s not worth it, these days. I choose my battles. I let people tell me I’m nice. Imagine! Oh, sixteen-year-old me. Confidence is just about feeling at peace with yourself. It isn’t an act of proving. Obviously we still have so much to learn. Obviously I am still in love with the act of proving. But- I don’t explain myself. I don’t mind if stumble over my words and my body isn’t made for apologizing. It never has. No one’s body is made for apologizing, my friend. We have this fixation, heightened by the Internet, I think, with putting ourselves in boxes. Defining ourselves in limiting terms and letting it cage us instead of using it as expression. Let yourself be. Sit in the rain and say nothing. Change every second of the day. Being quiet can be strength. I’d never tell someone else that being shy is the same as not being brave, that being calm is the same as being boring. So why would I tell her that. Why did I keep telling her that. Telling me that. I’m sorry. I meant me.
O4. JOKER
I mean. I’m still not going to let anyone dictate what I am.
Okay. Okay. I confuse people. I wish it was as sexy as it sounds. I have been haunted for many years - up until now, when the feeling has started to change - by the idea that I needed to find a Central Sense of Self.
Okay? I think to some extent this has been formed by my experience as a biracial person, as a bisexual person, as a nonbinary person. I had trouble fitting in, growing up, partly because I had these things that people would say put me in groups that were “in-between”. I now know that these groups are different things altogether. I don’t believe that being bisexual is “in-between” being gay and straight. All the people saying Pick one! Ha! It’s something else, bitch! It’s a totally different thing. I think that is liberation, for bisexual people. The day we start claiming our own community instead of trying to mesh into others is when we’ll be at home with each other. I refuse to use your molds. I will be something! else! altogether! I will know myself. If you do not know me, then I guess you lost that one. I’ll be moving on without you. I’ll be marching on.
Same with gender. I am not what they told me I would be. I am not what they tell me I should be. I refuse to explain my gender. I will simply be and I’ll keep marching on. I get the use of labels. I get the use of creating community with them. I used to very vehemently laugh at people refusing to label themselves. But now, on some level, I get it- I sometimes feel as if by labeling myself I am trying to explain a complicated thing in layman’s terms to people who do not care or respect me. I am trying not to make this an angry thing. It isn’t, I don’t think. I think what I’m saying is that I’m not going to explain myself to cis people. Or straight people. Or non-bisexual people. It’s just another way of degrading myself, sometimes. Of proving myself. Once, a gay peer of mine told me I didn’t look gay enough to go into this queer club he was talking about. Someday I’ll write about this more. Same with my culture. I am a Latine who has one white parent from the US and one brown parent from Venezuela. I grew up in an area where neither group really knew what to do with me. It is what it is. I think a lot about not fitting in growing up and being bilingual. Having two native languages. Telling people what they want to hear. Different grammar structures, different ways of communicating made me into a chameleon. I can talk a million different ways. Add that to how I’ve moved around the country, how my slang terms are a mishmash of west and east coast United States, and northern Venezuela put through filters, and years of changing Internet culture- I confuse people. It is what it is. I tell myself I’m unique, that it’s my strength. I believe it. No one on this earth can think like me.
Joker from Persona 5 is about rebellion. I love Joker. It’s so endearing to have this character who is obviously catering to people, who is quiet in class, polite, keeps his head down, but has this- this streak of insanity, of fun, of cleverness, of revolution. That his insides are red and on fire. What is rebellion, to me! It’s that lack of explanation, it’s that joy in expression. It’s changing people’s hearts. But it’s unapologetic when it does it. Joker goes to this new school where everyone whispers about him and doesn’t speak directly to him and all the teachers are saying this bullshit to him and then he’s so fun! He’s a thief! He doesn’t actually keep his head down. He’s changing everything behind the scenes and somehow that gets louder than anything else, and there’s this edge to it. I’m not sure what the writers of Persona 5 actually think about the Phantom Thieves, because they’re generally portrayed as something to root for but also sometimes portrayed as hubristic; but I like that their ideas are truly revolutionary, that they believe in what they’re doing. Hubristic, maybe, idealistic when actually pulled apart, sure, but- powerful. Inspiring.
I also love that P5 uses tarot cards in the way it does. I think Joker being The Fool is so good. He’s like, crazy. He cares deeply about his friends, and about justice. It’s so cute that his rebellious self is that earnest and still that cool. His outfit in the Metaverse! Arsene in general! The game’s idea that he has this willingness to be fluid in who he is. That his selves are formed through bonds with others, but that he bears none of them any ill will. I want to be like that, right now. I want to see my selves laid out on a table and give them all equally sloppy kisses. I want to forgive myself and expect better at once, but without malice. I want to have fun but I want to allow myself to mourn. I want to allow myself flaws. I want to fetishize imperfection. I want to be a good person but also not back down. I want the world to be better. I want to make the world better. I want to be around others and see their selves laid out on a table and judge them as I will, because I’m human, but also love them. I want to stare until it hurts, but I want it to hurt in the way an old scab does when it’s picked off. Who is the Central Sense of Self! I don’t know. I don’t think it should be able to be summed up in one word. I think it’s okay to confuse people. I think life isn’t meant to be summed up in definitions, I think it’s lived through and looked back on and it’s a constant explosion, a study in opposites and in-betweens and also something else altogether.
O5: CONSIDER: GORO AKECHI
And is caring about what other people think just a part of who I am? Of my personality? Until I can forgive it, or enjoy it, or romanticize it, even, I don’t think I’ll be at peace. I think I’ll be chasing approval in a way that keeps me imprisoned. The snake eating its tail and wondering, is chasing approval intrinsic to my way of being alive.
The thing with being what people want me to be is that I lose some of my values. I want honesty. I like being honest. I don’t want to lie about who I am. But what is honesty, if we dive very deep, psychologically? Is society not something we just made up, developed over time? If we dropped someone in a completely different society, suddenly, wouldn’t it change the way they acted? Jung said our personas are a response to what society wants from us. So can we even get rid of them? This begs the question, too, that I can’t answer, that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to- where does the self come from? What does it look like? Is it a core? Do I imagine an earth with a crust and a center, full of magma, nearly unreachable, or does it even exist at all? Is this what a soul is. The thing at the center. The unchangeable thing that dictates what you are when society stops being a concern (and what does that even look like). Is that what Arsene is. Is that what Loki is. But those, too, are responses to what we’ve grown up as, in my opinion. We’re getting close to a nature versus nurture conversation, here.
I have this problem, my friend, where I often deeply relate simultaneously to two characters who foil each other. Like, say, Joker and Goro Akechi. I mean, they’re obviously similar in a lot of ways. Joker lets people project on him; Akechi’s whole deal is letting people project on him. But they’re different in the ways they execute that, obviously. Joker throws away and gains selves over the course of minutes. Akechi gains new ones and buries the old ones deep inside where no one can find them, because he hates them. He thinks he’s stronger.
Anyway, I’m always wondering if there’s something wrong with me, there. Is it my Gemini rising sign. Do I need therapy. Akechi’s whole thing with Robin Hood versus Loki and Crow versus Black Mask is like, so real. And yet I’m not quite like him, not quite like Joker, either. Obviously I’m not a video game character, I’m more complex. But— people are still perceiving me as either or. It still happens, these days, even when I try so hard to be myself, whatever that means. Maybe it’s the act of trying. But that’s me, too. I think a lot about twos. I think a lot about the moment I as a middle schooler felt myself split into someone I really was and the person I made myself be so people would, in theory, want me around. And then those split into more, split into more, split into even more. And now I have this collection of a thousand selves all blinking back at me and I keep having this thought, this horrible thought, that if I could just put them all away and reach past them and find something shiny and new and better, then I could finally- I could finally be-
I don’t know. I think a lot about who we are online and in real life and in front of friends and in front of coworkers and in front of family and parents and brothers and cousins and the people you met when you were in preschool and the people you met in college and I think about how I always have felt like no one knows me. How I so often daydreamed about being known. And then, my friend, whenever I get close to it, I get so scared I feel as if I might die. I ask for understanding, and then I think: if this person uses this against me, somehow, I don’t know what I’ll do. And I don’t run. I just- okay, maybe sometimes I run. But I think we all do.
The thing about Akechi is that he’s still playing a part, even during Third Semester, and we have to watch Ren get to know him so deeply, so closely, that it breaks them both to be forced to let go of one another. I think a lot about how Ren doesn’t really seem to get a wish, right, not like the rest of the Phantom Thieves, doesn’t get wrapped in a fantasy but- doesn’t he, though, because why is Akechi there. I think about how Akechi likes Ren for a lot of things, but mostly for the way he is as Joker- but, well, does he really, because he’s jealous of Ren’s friendships, of his aptitude at being what others want him to be, at succeeding despite what people think, and doesn’t that make them so tragic, so complex, so important, because they’re the fucking same. Maybe we’re all just- trying our best. Fractured and tired and reaching for love.
I think about how we don’t learn much about Joker, before Tokyo, and how his friends love him for the moment, they don’t really ask. I think there is value in the past. This is my problem. I don’t want to be cruel to the past but I always think: if people only had what I am, right now, would they still love me? But that isn’t the full me. So what is. Everyone becomes a different person in different situations. I just always thought I could make that person better. I also thought people were my friends, just because they saw more of me.
I should be, shouldn’t I. All of it. I should be all of it. Pain, I’m remembering, has always come from forcing myself to be only one thing. And there’s that funny thing that Akechi says, when he first meets you and mentions Hegel’s idea of aufheben. Becoming preserves the original and changes it. I want to become. I will keep becoming until I am nothing at all. Nature doesn’t let me decide on that one.
This has been a long-winded way of saying that I know I’m a dichotomy. I’ve realized this very, very slowly. Every personality trait, I somehow have it and its opposite. I think most people are like this to an extent, yeah, but I’ve always felt alone in how extreme both sides of me have felt, how unpredictable. So instead of leaning into one, throwing away the other, I think I should just- love them both. Love them all. But is it that simple? Can I just- do that? Can I simply nod when people tell me I’m small, big, average, exciting? Can I just decide what I think I am, how I’ll act? Can I just take it all in, experience it all, have everything I want? As I write this I feel this swell of incredulity, like, of course. Who else gets to choose. I’m a shapeshifter. What else should I be.