cher(ease) (satoru gojo x reader)
notes: i want to preface this by saying: yes, i know i posted a fic yesterday too. no, i am not actually that prolific. this was written for the willow house Meet Fruit collab. actually, i wrote it right after @willowser suggested it, but i waited to post it because I was actually a little unhappy with it when I was done writing it initially and i figured some time away from it might help. it did. a little. i think. now i’m not sure any more..
contains: gender neutral reader, typical satoru gojo antics, some small manner of sexual tension
wc: 1.4k
You love cherries.
They are, without a doubt, your favorite fruit; tart, sweet and easy to eat with their stems serving as a cute little handle. It does suck having to deal with eating around the pits, but your beloved cherries are worth the inconvenience. It’s truly, truly a shame that they’re only really available in the summer, but that just means you need to eat your fill when they’re in season.
Which is why, when you stumble across a display of them at the market, rows of cartons filled to the brim with bright, plump, juicy red cherries, you end up buying a carton or three without a second thought.
In retrospect, it might have been better to show some restraint. Maybe you had hungry eyes, or were just a touch too excited, or maybe it was even the fact that you’d spent an unspeakable amount of money on just cherries. Regardless, in order to attempt to absolve yourself of some of the buyer’s regret that’s clearly haunting you after splurging on fruit you benevolently decide to share them with the students and your fellow staff members at Jujutsu High.
Or at least, that had been your intent.
“Oh hey,” Satoru Gojo greets you casually as you walk into the staff room, his feet propped up on the table so he can lean his chair back as far as possible. In one of his hands is a cherry, one of your cherries, hanging delicately from its stem. “What’s up?”
“What are you doing?” you ask him reflexively, ignoring his question outright as a surge of annoyance courses through your veins. There’s a part of you that feels weird about suddenly feeling possessive over the cherries. You brought them to share with everyone and everyone includes Gojo. It shouldn’t be a big deal that he's gone ahead and helped himself to some without asking, and yet you still find yourself feeling agitated.
"I was hungry," he replies nonchalantly, popping the cherry in his mouth.
"And you thought it would be okay to snack on my cherries?"
Gojo shifts forward in his chair and offers you an easy-going smile that only makes you scowl more. “There were so many in the fridge I’d thought you’d brought them to share.”
Your instinct is to argue, to be obtusely contrarian with him, but the fact of the matter is that he’s right, so you keep your mouth shut. Instead, you sit yourself down and stare at the half full carton of cherries on the table.
Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Gojo wiggling around, not-so-subtly vying for your attention like an overly excitable child. You ignore him and instead choose to think of the rising cost of produce. It was truly an ungodly amount you spent on those cherries and you know for sure that a year ago the same amount of them would have cost marginally less. When you thought about sharing them with the students, the blow to your wallet seemed bearable, their smiles worth the cost and more. But rather than your students' darling faces all you can see is the image of Gojo’s face, his cheeks stuffed with cherries like he’s a squirrel feasting on nuts. It’s annoying. Maybe you can get him to pony up and pay you back for a portion of what he’s eaten. Surely the heir to the Gojo clan can pay for some of the cherries he’s gobbled up.
“Hey…” He’s whining loudly now, any attempts at being subtle abandoned. You consider ignoring him more, but think better of it and look in his direction. Unsurprisingly, he’s pouting, his perfectly moisturized lips puckering out, and you’re glad that his blindfold detracts from what is otherwise a disgustingly handsome face. “Why the long face?”
He’s mocking you. He’s totally mocking you. Not that you’d expect anything different from him. Rather than grace him with an actual answer, you shoot him a pointed look. There’s no goddamn way that he doesn’t know. But still, Gojo plays his favorite role and tilts his head innocently. When you don’t say anything more he exclaims, “Oh! I know! You must be hungry.”
Again, he’s not wrong, but this time he’s not exactly right either.
He grabs another cherry, this time holding it up in your direction. He grins as he propels it toward your mouth. “Here. Say ‘ah~’”
“Gojo, you are not feeding me.”
He ignores you, insistently pressing the cherry to your lips as he speaks, his voice an octave lower, "They taste really good, you know."
The sexy drop of his voice is nothing short of deliberate— a tried and true tactic of his meant to get under your skin. You glare at him, your agitation clear as day. He is, as expected, completely unfettered, the cherry still flush against your lips.
Your options at this point are to: wait until he gets bored and drops the cherry, possibly onto the floor— wasting it or shamefully accept it and endure him gloating about it for the rest of the day. As much as you’d love to waste Gojo’s time and sit at the table in a silent stalemate, you have other things to do. Important things.
So you open your mouth wide, wider than necessary, and use your teeth to rip the cherry from Gojo’s grasp in the most unattractive way possible.
“Yay!” he cheers, choosing to focus on seeing just what he wants to see instead acknowledging that you obviously don’t want his offering. You consider, for one wild second, spitting it back in his face. However, you don’t and just drop the cherry into your open palm. Now what? Do you eat the cherry or just toss it? Frankly, it feels like a lose-lose situation either way, so you might as well go with the option that gives Gojo less satisfaction: you toss it into the trash can.
“Aw…” His lips jut out to form an excessive pout.
“I already told you: you are not feeding me.”
“You’re no fun."
“I’m plenty of fun,” you dead pan at him, scowling. “I’m just not your plaything.”
“Meaning you won’t feed me either?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Not even if I say please?”
“Nope.”
“Hmph.” He’s being overly dramatic and you both know it. “Guess I will enjoy the cherries all on my own, then.”
His voice drops again. The second time makes your body feel a little bit weird, but you remain largely immune to his antics, electing to grab another cherry to eat over paying him any mind.
But Gojo reaches for the cherries right when you do, obviously and intentionally going for the same one you are, and your fingers brush against one another. You scowl and rather than play some weird version of finger footsie, you go for a different cherry.
Annoyed, you shoot him another glare, or at least, you intend to, but he’s pulled his dumb blindfold down and that’s a tell-tale sign that he’s up to no good. You can already feel your blood pressure rising. Dealing with him like this is even more of a pain than usual.
He holds your gaze, his eyes clear as the summer sky, glimmering, as he presses the cherry to his mouth every so gently, as if he’s kissing it. You watch, almost entranced, your mouth suddenly dry. Gojo rolls it over his lips, parting them ever so slightly to press the damn fruit further in, his tongue darting out and—
You force yourself to look away, rolling your eyes as you do. “What the hell are you doing? You look stupid.”
Gojo merely hums, chewing on the cherry. You hope he bites into the pit and dies of cyanide poisoning.
He tosses a few more cherries into his mouth before he speaks, another seductive drawl, and though you would never admit it, you think your immunity grows weaker every time he uses that damn tone of voice. “Hey.”
“What,” you deadpan, glancing at him.
Gojo grins at you and his lips part just slightly, calling your attention to them again. He reaches up and slowly pulls a cherry stem from his mouth. It’s looped into a little knot and the sight of it throws you back to your middle school days— your classmates giggling quietly to themselves over the implications of things like tongue tied cherry stems and candies unwrapped using one’s tongue alone.
“So,” he starts, his stupid blue eyes shining with shameless amusement, “have you heard what they say about people who can do this?”
He grins at you, far too pleased with himself for his own damn good. You know the answer he’s looking for. And he should know that hell will freeze over before you give it to him.
“Yeah. They call them idiots for putting the damn cherry stem in their mouths.”
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I can't see how the writers still think Skystar's a good person. Like, twelve year old me liked him and thought he was interesting, but I was like twelve. And even I knew he was an irredeemable asshole after Moth Flight's Vision.
If a twelve year old can figure this stuff out I have no idea what these grown ass writers were doing.
DOTC has a thesis, stated in The First Battle, that really explains everything.
"Fear and Greed" is just a fake-deep way to reinvent a Good and Evil dichotomy. Because Clear Sky's abuse comes from a place of fear, it means it's not malicious, unlike a "greedy" cat.
He can be "soothed," ergo, he's a fundamentally good person.
Post-First Battle, the books are focusing constantly on his feelings, how sad it makes him to not be trusted, how happy he is when people are on his side. All while he continues to screech at people who tell him what to do, manipulate and mistreat his son, and even still beats and mauls those who offend him.
But because it's "fear," that doesn't matter. That's a justification, an excuse. The writers don't seem to believe in good and bad actions as much as they do good and bad people. True 'evil' comes from a person who hurts others for the wrong reasons, like 'revenge' or malice.
It's abuse apologia. Plain and simple.
The truth is that abusers don't think of themselves as evil people, and everyone, even you and me, is capable of being toxic or abusive. Talk to those who have been abused and we'll tell you; we often stayed because we "saw the good," or even felt responsible for them. Abuse can be passed down through generations because the kids come to believe the way they were treated was normal and okay.
If you go through life thinking that abuse only comes from evil/greedy people, you won't see it when it happens right in front of you. Fundamental good and evil is childish. Abuse comes from fear all the time.
Abuse is about power and control. Fear of rejection, of losing someone, of pain, those are all very common motivators as the abuser tries to stop them from happening before they even begin. It doesn't MATTER that your abuser is in pain too, you NEVER "deserved" what they did in an attempt to break your legs so you wouldn't run.
But... we can all change. Even the worst of us. It's never too late to stop hurting others, move on to a better life, but some people never will. Skystar loves his power, and he keeps that power no matter how many times he misuses it.
He has no reason to change as long as his cruelty rewards him with status and authority.
But the writers are incapable of recognizing that, because for this entire arc, they were stuck in an absurd view of the world in terms of Fear and Greed. Abuse can be excused if he did it for the "right reason," and that makes him "fundamentally different" from the truly evil villains, Slash and One Eye.
Hopefully, it now makes more sense to you.
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In Defense of Magnificus
A very very long rant by me. Originally from a rant I posted in a discord server in 2022, modified to be a little more concise. I have to apologize if some of this stuff is incredibly outdated, I haven't really bothered to catch up with newer stuff about the game outside of the game itself yknow... Like twitch streams from the dev and such.
I saw a theory that Magnificus was originally intended to be the villain of the original, in lore Inscryption, but through the rush of making the game as a coverup and developers like Kaycee not making much progress on the development because of said rush, he didn't get finished. And I think if you really analyze his character, everything about him FEELS unfinished.
His character design is super simple compared to the other scrybes. His deck is weak; there are not a lot of hard hitting cards aside from the Stim Mage, and the Magiks system itself feels wonky, as if they didn't have enough time to balance it out. His tower feels empty (Specially that damned bathroom. It haunts me.) His letter stops before its completed, he suddenly disappears mid-sentence... He's the only scrybe to not get a proper 3D version, as the game was mostly deleted by the time we got to him in Act 4, and he might've been the only scrybe that never became hegemon. We don't get to finish his battle, and he doesn't even get a handshake.
And going back to originally being a villain? Maybe that's why he was made to be so cruel to his pupils. P03 is also mean to his subordinates, but they're robots, they're not mean to gain as much sympathy from the player. Meanwhile, Magnificus is established to be mean and perhaps downright evil by the dialogue we get through Act 2. Rebecha speaks about him by saying he's mysterious, stating "Some say he wants... No, it's too terrible to say." But we never know what that refers to, and if it's coded dialogue or her own speech.
Outside of the CODED IN lore behind his pupils suffering, we don't see him being evil AT ALL. In Act 1 he is practically our savior; his throughout preparing was able to get us the film roll, and if we take too long he sends the player VISIONS to guide us in the right way. In Act 2 he attempts to warn the player about P03, his paint leads around to secrets to clue in about the OLD_DATA as well as perhaps serving as warnings for it. At the end of the game he is the only one who is distraught about everything being deleted; Grimora and Leshy accept their deaths, but Magnificus REFUSES to.
But wouldn't a villain rejoice about people dying? About, in his own words, an entire world being destroyed? It's like the original plan for his villainy was there, but he doesn't WANT to be one.
Now as to why he seems to continue to treat his pupils badly. I think it's just.. guilt. I believe he didn't have a choice in making them suffer, they were all just coded into what we know of Act 2. They were all created with the pupils being in torturous states and the game code telling them "It's Magnificus' fault". I think he himself believes this. I believe he could have tried to fix it before. But the thing is that, even if he ever did fix it, if he stopped their pain, it would all be for nothing... because the game resets. The only times it doesn't do this is when a scrybe takes over, which is something he has supposedly never been able to do. And if he were to help them outside of being hegemon they'd just go back to their original state once the new game card was used. I think he simply gave up upon realizing this and instead chose to bury his own grief that comes from it by playing into the character he was originally meant to be; the villain. That, and I think he just doesn't want to look at them... It hurts him to. I believe this is why he painted bleach over Goobert's painting.
I think him being originally an unfinished villain plays into him always being prepared. As I stated before, people often forget how helpful he is- it's due to his preparations that we are able to leave Act 1, he warns about The Great Transcendence in Act 2, warns Luke about the OLD_DATA, and warns him about the fate he'd encounter if he looked upon it. I think Magnificus wants to make up for his "villainy" by being the one the other scrybes and npcs can rely on in a time of need, so he spends every hour of everyday getting ready for the worst, and foreseeing what is gonna happen next.
Thing is that, he never stops anything from happening. He prepares a way out of Leshy's hegemony, but he can't stop it from happening in the first place. It's very probable that he was the one that planned how to stop P03 in Act 3, as we see he has been preparing since at least Act 2. But not only does the P03 hegemony happen, but he is ultimately unable to stop the Great Transcendence once it is in progress. Same thing for the game's deletion, which I believe it is at that point he truly panicked, because he couldn't foresee it or plan for it beforehand. It all feels like... An unfinished character arc. He never got to do anything he wanted.
I think he feels powerless.
Magnificus is often regarded as the worst scrybe. But in a sense, there's no real reason why that should be the case, at least not compared to the others. Like... Leshy took over the game and put the other scrybes into cards. He had good intentions, sure, but that doesn't mean his actions were good. Magnificus lost his eye, Grimora lost her memory, P03.... Was having a bad time...
Hell, the reason people hate Magnificus so much so often is because of the treatment of his pupils... But Leshy isn't all innocent there either. He puts Goobert in a bottle (At least, maybe he does. It's not clear whether it was him or Mags), which we know Goobert REALLY doesn't like, and he also put Goobert's description in the rulebook as "Failure". He also threw the bottle into the river as stated by himself in Kaycee's Mod.
P03... I don't gotta explain this one we know it is an asshole.
...And Grimora deleted the game, which basically killed everyone in it. While she had good intentions, it really only led to the discovery of the OLD_DATA and the subsequent assassination of Luke.
Now, what did Magnificus do? Nothing. Like... Really. He didn't GET to do anything. People dislike him because of his treatment of his pupils, but as I talked about before, I really don't think he can do anything about that, even if he wanted to.
So why do people so easily hate him? Circles back to the theory: Because he's unfinished. Everything about him is unfinished. The other scrybes are loved because we got to finish their arcs... We get to know why they each do what they did.
P03 not so much, but... P03 is a villain of sorts, people like villains and don't need them to be "good" to like them, which I agree with cuz villains are fun! P03 does have some sympathy points somewhere, though, which I'm not gonna go into here.
I'm gonna focus on Grimora and Leshy instead. Their farewells were perfect closure:
Grimora spoke about why she chose to delete the game, and we as the player come to understand her. It was right after her doing it in the first place, so we didn't even get to really build anger towards her. She talks about it being a necessary action- perhaps something we can agree with after knowing everything about the OLD_DATA. She laments not being able to play more with us, but she accepts her death and says goodbye.
Leshy talks about just.. wanting to play. That's all he wants, he just wanted to give us a good story. The original Inscryption is rushed and weird- Act 1, his hegemony, was his attempt to make it better and enjoyable (Which, considering it is the Act people love most, he succeeded.)
The player probably misses him by this point- playing cards with him feels somber, sad, and nostalgic. At this point we consider him a friend. And then he gets deleted after complementing our past deck, speaking about how much he enjoyed his time with us, and saying farewell. It's not something that leaves us with any possible anger towards him.
Magnificus though... He doesn't get that. We never get to talk to him properly, he never speaks about how he feels or why he does things. In Act 1 he spends most of the time in the clock, in Act 2 he gets cut off when trying to speak to us, Act 3 he only speaks a few sentences, and in Act 4..
His farewell is different than the other two. Leshy and Grimora accept their deaths... Magnificus doesn't. He doesn't talk about his feelings or justify his actions, because if you have been holding in your feelings, that is something you do when you can no longer do so. You let them go when you know you're going to die soon.
But he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to die, he can't accept it.
The game he played with us wasn't complete- the scales were gone, so we weren't even supposed to play against him. It was his opportunity to just say what he needed to say before he was gone, but he refused to accept his upcoming death. So instead he tried prolonging the process by using unrealistically high numbers instead of scales (The bigger the number, the longer the game will take, right..?). Even as he felt himself getting deleted he refused to end the game, or even talk to the player properly. For once, he couldn't prepare for the worst, and he was in denial- he was completely powerless and he didn't want to accept it. Instead, he speaks to us about the game deleting. He blames the player for it. He tries to guilt us; "You even allowed my goo mage to get deleted... I thought you two were becoming friends!"
And he doesn't get a handshake. He tried to push his deletion away for so long that he ended up not even being able to finish the match or get the same, proper farewell that Grimora and Leshy got.
I think by now I've said what I needed to say, but I wanna add that... Yeah, I think he's one of the most tragic characters in the game. I think he spends a lot of time being anxious- we don't get a clear answer on if he can see the future or if he is just able to predict it, but either way he lives with a lot of anxiety because of it.
I think the worst part is the deletion of the game and his farewell. He isn't able to let go because he's scared to, and because he has spent his whole life trying to prevent bad things from happening; trying to help his friends to get out of bad situations they caused themselves. But this time he's not able to, he can't do ANYTHING about it, and he's terrified because that means his whole existence and work is just... Gone. He spent all his days preparing for the worst scenarios, only for it all to be thrown away. He WASTED his life for nothing. And it hurts me that the fandom never saw that.
Or maybe I'm overthinking all of it. Maybe this has all already been directly disproven. But I still wanted to share this.
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what are your thoughts on Madoka and Sayaka's relationship? I always thought it was underrated for how complex and tragic it is.
Madoka and Sayaka's relationship function similarly to that of a knight and a princess, so both their friendship or couple pairing are interesting to me. It seems to be intentional that Sayaka was crafted with a knight motif in mind to click with Madoka's vulnerability. The tragedy is that Sayaka was way too young and inexperienced to be shouldering such expectations in a friendship. Taking up the role of a protector at every turn because she wanted to protect everyone has always been a contributing factor to how fast Sayaka burned out.
Contrarily, Madoka's struggle with her own helplessness throughout the show was also part of the reason why Sayaka said a lot of terrible thing to her, but deeply regretted her actions to the point where she succumbed to Witching out away from Madoka. Madoka, at least in this "final" timeline, was not there to see her own childhood best friend change into something else. To, in a way, "die", and be reborn as the same monster that all magical girls were hunting after in a frenzy. Homura was right that Sayaka brings Madoka grief — it seems that in almost timeline, since Sayaka becomes a Witch as long as she becomes a magical girl unlike Mami or Kyoko, Sayaka is a consistent source of Madoka's grief. Whenever Madoka becomes a magical girl, then, her aspirations are based on Sayaka's sacrifice and ideals, except Madoka actually has the power to "save everyone". I believe Madoka loved Sayaka as Sayaka may not have been an "effective" magical girl, but she was the one who was willing to sacrifice her soul for her ideals, regardless of how naïve they were. To Madoka, who was so ensnared by her sense of uselessness, Sayaka was the closest thing to an idol or a star for the courage required to be a magical girl. Sayaka's desire to make the world a safer and justified place for people was so inspiring to Madoka that even when Madoka becomes Kriemhild Gretchen, the Witch's whole gimmick is "creating heaven on earth, a Witch content only if there is no more grief in existence". A prospect deeply held onto by Madoka that even Gretchen embodies it.
It's probably why Madoka's wish to save all magical girls would definitely sound equally impossible to he audience and the incubators, but Madoka herself says, "If someone says it's wrong to hope, I will tell them that they're wrong every time." Sayaka was often called foolish for her ideals and hopes, and Madoka was the only other person aside from Kyoko who understands Sayaka's struggles so much that she outright tells people that Sayaka was never wrong — this is how Madoka protects Sayaka. Madoka would never want anyone to say any of the magical girls' wishes were wrong or foolish. It was how Sayaka also found her peace at the end of the show: to be understood and not viewed as an object that would eventually be replaced in the cycle of magical girls and Witches.
Madoka and Sayaka eventually learned how to protect each other. Sayaka doesn't need to suffer from her own overbearing expectations anymore, and Madoka can finally be something even more to protect her angel: A God.
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