kimono (着物)

AS OF 11/25/23: i uploaded kagaminoroi (鏡呪い) which is the spiritual prequel to kimono. if you play both, you will certainly get a different experience, with the additional emphasis on a history of severe sexual violence.

watch out! incredibly long meta below! it's a doozy! BUT THIS IS ALSO PROBABLY THE MOST COMPLEX NARRATIVE I'VE EVER WRITTEN, and one of the most horrifyingly true stories i've ever told

TW: half of the things under the sun. gang violence, sexual abuse, rape, csa, teacher/student csa, abortion, (didn't make it in-game because i forgot prior to release, but: ) severe internalized homophobia, internalized transphobia, suicide, eye trauma

KIMONO IS A GAME ABOUT GANG VIOLENCE. you can call it a "mafia au" of jujutsu kaisen. you can call it whatever you want. but it is a game about the truth regarding organized crime. and it is a game about the truth regarding the love borne from the depths of THE WORLD BELOW! which is not seen by many people other than hoes. 

kimono opens with sukuna meeting megumi in a seedy jazz bar beneath the nightclub she was meant to go to with yuuji and friends, and she flirts with sukuna who steals her wallet to (SEXILY) blackmail her for her number, and their relationship starts like that. also, uraume is there.

on the other side of the narrative, as sukuna and megumi's relationship begins to blossom, facilitated by uraume, yuuji runs headfirst into junpei, who is the most beautiful person he's ever seen, and he's as intensely captivated by this "man" who even smells AMAZING, and who is so stunning, he's breathless, but who he, as another "man," cannot harken the possibility of anything with him, despite wanting it so FUCKING bad. so yuuji and junpei become friends under a mutual seduction complex. 

or something like that.

as sukuna reveals more sides to himself than megumi initially realized were present, ones that curse-mark him as part of a world she doesn't understand, uraume keeps the balance, and junpei begins to realize that yuuji is more like his brother than anyone wanted to think.

FOOTNOTE A:

during kimono's dev i couldn't shake the thought about...you know, what happens when you're so fucked up you make "fucked up people" look well adjusted. there's cruelty, there's hardship, and then there's death/life-threat/killing/suicide/maiming that you don't really see outside of (gang) wars. 

every yard has its own snakes. rather than the grass is greener on the other side, every yard has its own snakes. even snakeless yards are no good bc without snakes they become rat-infested. 

i'm not playing "oppression olympics" for the unenviable quality of being "The Most Oppressed" or anything like that. 

i'm just saying that sukuna/uraume/yuuji are a different class of fucked up that comes from being born into / raised around gang violence / gang wars / mob activity that even people who have encountered / been brutalized by gang violence like megumi/junpei are, of course, severely fucked up! but sukuna/uraume/yuuji are a whole different caliber of "people that will never assimilate into Normal Society." 

(at best, like my friend said, they can roleplay as normal.)

my other friend said something once that stuck with me. "you can't expect an ex-yakuza to live like a normal man."

there's a lot of people at the "dregs of society" that no one thinks about because it's easier to pretend they don't exist. there are some (a lot) of people that will "never recover" by the psychiatric standard of "re-assimilating / re-integrating into Normal Society (and getting a Legal job and doing your capitalist function to stay finanically afloat like a little obedient worker bee)."

i don't whore anymore, but i'll always be a whore. and i do have a normal job now, and am gaming to enter a well-paying field at that.

but i will never "recover" by the psychiatric standard. i can only live "adjacent" to normal society, which is pretty good by my mark.

sukuna and uraume will never "recover" and have no desire to. the reason why uraume can facilitate megumi's relationship with sukuna (and in doing so, partner intimately with him in their own right), is because they have no personality outside of sukuna. they have no desires whatsoever outside of serving sukuna, living for him, and their utter and complete devotion is the only reason why they can pay so close attention to sukuna's nonverbal cues when he subs for megumi.

sukuna...is like yuuji, sometimes, when he subs, and he's loving and devoted and adorable and sweet and yielding. but like yuuji says, he is also like sukuna. PRONE TO RAGES, OBSESSIONS, AND EXTREMES. 

in one sex scene with megumi and uraume, megumi gets angry and sukuna cowers and fawns because he's frightened of her and needs to do anything so she's not angry anymore. megumi isn't even angry with him, exactly, she's just frustrated and upset he's not communicating, and uraume tells her to calm the fuck down, sukuna can't do anything other than behave extremely fearfully when she is angry, and the truth about that scene that uraume displays ithat megumi just can't display anger around sukuna. if sukuna feels that she is angry with him, he will instantly enter a trauma reenactment where he has to do anything (offer himself up sexually) so she stops being angry with him and won't hurt him.

like is it healthy???? in a relationship to be unable to have a fight or talk "sensibly" or have a heated or angry discussion and communicate all your honest feelings? of course not. but sukuna isn't remotely healthy to begin with. and he will never be. does this mean he is never joyful or happy or playful or cute? of course not. he is all those things, but sometimes, like megumi, you have to rework your paradigms and meet the other person in their history, not yours, or what you think is sensible or right for most people because some people are not like most people, and you can't treat them that way.

the only reason why uraume can explain to megumi and translate for a nonverbal and trauma-flashing sukuna is because uraume does not exist outside of sukuna, which is also not healthy, of course it isn't, but uraume chose this, sukuna chose them, and sukuna chose megumi as well. they all chose each other. living like this, only for sukuna, is uraume's wish. and sukuna, in return for being loved, will put on his collar and obey megumi's every will, to be her perfectly obedient puppy. and he will do everything in his power to be ferociously deserving of uraume's love.

where the other side is concerned, junpei is part of geto's faction, adopted by mahito as their sex pet/toy, and that's still her status when she starts to get involved with yuuji, who she at first, who EVERYONE at first thinks of as a big slobbering puppy dog boy. he just has severe internalized homophobia, and she really wants to be his friend, and a good friend to him, but he's making it extremely hard by trying constantly to ruin their friendship at every chance he gets, so desperate is he for her.

junpei doesn't realize until too late...that yuuji, as long as he knows junpei wants him, which she absolutely 1000% does, yuuji won't accept her saying no to something they both want, even if she's only saying no to try and protect him, because yuuji's internalized homophobia stems from being CSA groomed as a child by teachers and professors even now in university.

and she doesn't think he's ready for a relationship "with a man" even though she's a girl, because he isn't ready to understand that yet either.

so she's trying to do right by him, and protect him, as his domme.

she doesn't realize the severe abnormality of yuuji's fixation, desperate, intentional seduction, obsession, and persistence until it's too late, and she already gave into something she really really wanted all along, and it isn't until the end that she understands she's been outplayed. she wasn't controlling the pace, the game, the entire time.

it was yuuji.

and then when PANDEMONIUM AT THE WAREHOUSE happens. well, after that, everything changes.

KIMONO IS ABOUT BREAKING DOWN ASSUMPTIONS / PARADIGMS THAT FUNCTION "FOR MOST PEOPLE, EVEN MOST 'mentally ill' PEOPLE" but not for everyone.

kimono is a game about what people consider the 1%.

but i know. i have seen.

it's a lot more than 1%. in some worlds, in THAT world. it's everyone.

but you know even people at the "disgusting bottom dirt filth scum" realm of society? they are still people, we are or have been "still people," (regrettably,) and still human after all things. 

the filth of society are still human, after all things.

BUT YOU CANNOT APPLY THE RULES OF THE WORLD ABOVE TO THE WORLD BELOW. it's a different world; the natural laws are different. people who come out of the world below come out different, and will never "belong" to the world above, try as they might. an ex-yakuza will never live like a normal man. 

you cannot expect him to.

FOOTNOTE B:

REGARDLESS OF IF YOU BELIEVE IT OR NOT! (ripley's believe it or not voice), kimono is a game about gang violence. and it is a true story. it is also a fanfiction of jujutsu kaisen. "how can a fanfiction be a true story?" it is a true story if you believe in the truth of the violence you witness in the game, which is my truth, and it is a true story if you believe in the love you witness in the game, which is also a truth i have lived, and a love i will never have again.

i will never be loved like i was in kimono. 

i will never love like that, or be loved like that again.

but uraume/sukuna/megumi and yuuji/junpei love each other deeper than the ocean sea, far fathoms beneath. and that love can be hideous, frightening, and violent. and that love, that depth of devotion, can be so enormous it is overwhelming, but the conviction of it can overcome even the deepest conviction that VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY TRUTH.

violence is not the only truth. (but what is?) <-- kimono answers this.

only a love as powerful as violence can convince you that violence is not the only truth.

that's what kimono is about.