ok buckle up longform essay on SatoSugu incoming

this thing was written for a friend in google docs and it is six. pages. long

the brainrot is real and it is driving me insane so HERE WE GO

In any interpretation of the relationship between Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru – lovers, close friends, brothers, etc. – the dynamic and story between them is (at least to me) incredibly tragic.

You have Gojo, who’s the Honored One - born into one of the three most powerful clans with two rare and frankly op techniques that render him a god amongst men and the Strongest sorcerer in jujutsu society - The strongest is untouchable, too high up for anyone else to reach, destined to be lonely at the top and exploited by the rulers of this society as a trump card, a weapon, for the rest of his life

Until he’s not.

Enter Geto - a sorcerer born from non-sorcerers, with the ability to manipulate curses. But his cursed technique is painful, and requires him to swallow the curses he exorcises in order to absorb them; he himself describes the taste as a “rag used to wipe shit and vomit”. If Gojo is a star or the sun he is the earth, closer to the curses they purge from the world than probably anyone else - after all, he ingests them. I’ve seen fics where they describe the curses affecting his mental state, eating him up from the inside and shouting at him in his head - but that’s not canon, and it just makes me sad, so I put it in cause I’m talking about the tragedy anyway. Geto is strong - cracked at martial arts and skillful with his cursed technique, and together he and Gojo are the strongest.

The two strongest sorcerers are tasked with delivering Riko, the star plasma vessel, to Tengen. They grow attached and are very aware that Riko is scared of the merger and wants to stay longer on the earth with her friends and her beloved maid and them, and they indulge her as long as they can before she goes. But they bring her to the school and she dies anyway, by the hands of the urban legend that is Toji Fushiguro - and Gojo, for the first time in his life, comes close to death. Geto, who has never once seen Gojo weak, is in reasonable shock and horror when Toji kills Riko right in front of him, then pronounces his untouchable best friend dead. He fights and is defeated, but not killed, and Toji leaves. Gojo survives with RCT and his new unlocked Hollow Purple, and kills Toji - but when he finds Riko and Suguru steps into the room, he is in a bit of a hollow mental state (which is understandable - riko is dead, he just made what is probably his first kill in his life, and the people who are at least indirectly responsible are clapping and celebrating her fucking death) and asks Suguru if he should kill them. Suguru says no - that there would be no meaning to it, and that meaning is everything - especially to sorcerers. And Satoru follows, because Geto is the moral compass for both of them.

It must be understood that Suguru is a moral person, but in a careful and objective way - he seems to organize things into neat boxes of “right” and “wrong”, “meaningful” and “meaningless”, and holds a strong sense of justice and responsibility that keeps him in the sorcery race even when he has to swallow vomit-curses and watch people die around him. But it grates on him, a lot, and the grieving and vomit and the ignorance of the non-sorcerers he is supposed to be saving, those he once believed were sorcerers’ responsibility to protect against curses, builds up on his psyche like a mold or an infection and keeps growing. When Yuki talks to Geto after the death of Haibara, she plants the idea in his head that yes, cursed energy does come from almost exclusively non-sorcerers and yes, eradicating cursed energy is possible in multiple ways, and yes, eradicating all non-sorcerers is technically a feasible solution, he struggles with that. A lot. At this point he is already spiraling really badly and questioning everything about his morality and his moral compass and his entire life purpose, and takes this idea to heart.

Meanwhile, his near-death and his power evolving during his final fight shook Gojo to his core and pushed him to be stronger no matter the cost. He got good at using his Limitless cursed technique at all times, being able to control it and its branch techniques with great efficiency so that he could never be caught off guard again. He gets sent on more missions, as he truly becomes the strongest - but in this process, he unknowingly begins to leave Geto behind. Gojo works best alone, when nobody is there to become collateral damage for him, and the authorities in charge send him on solo mission after solo mission. He is too blinded by his own pursuit of strength and his perception of Geto - the morally righteous one, his keeper, his compass, his best friend - to see his counterpart dying a little bit more with every passing day he is left to rot in his own mind. 

Geto sees this disconnect between him and Gojo and it adds another straw to his very quickly growing spiral haystack, and at some point it has to snap. And it does - he is sent on a solo mission to a rural village, where they have locked two sorcerer girls in a cage and blame them for the things happening to their town. Even after Geto exorcises and swallows the curse that was causing the problems in the first place, the village people blame the girls for their powers. It enrages him, and probably makes him think of Haibara and Gojo and the culmination of all the things non-sorcerers do to sorcerers in the name of ignorance, of hunting and eradicating anything that is “other” or “alien”, of the man who nearly killed him and his best friend and called himself a monkey. How the deaths of his friends have all been undeserved, caused by something they could not control or even foresee, how sorcery is all just a race to the bloody, unjustified, meaningless end. Something in Geto snaps, and he massacres the entire town and takes the girls under his wing with his new conviction: that he hates monkeys, and they deserve to die.

Gojo and Geto have their kfc breakup. Gojo is genuinely shocked that the one person who always caught up with him, and was always there by his side when nobody else ever really could be, turned around and committed mass murder when Gojo didn’t even know Geto was suffering, and Geto takes this as Gojo’s ignorance, too: that while he was here spiraling and rotting to the point that he snapped, Gojo was the strongest. Untouchable. Exalted by all and therefore not knowing, or caring, what it would feel like to doubt his own morality or fear the inevitable death of everyone around him in the brutal world of curses and sorcerers. Geto believes that the life of a sorcerer has no meaning - that the endless race of kill or be killed from adolescence to an early grave is a dead end, a pointless suicide mission, generation after generation of lemmings culled by the sorrows of the weak - by the ones they swear to protect. (Some stories spin it a slightly different way, where Geto and Gojo are in love - and seeing Gojo work himself to the bone to be a living weapon all his life, seeing his one and only isolated like this, kills him more than the thought of being hated for freeing him. They theorize that this is the main conviction that drives him to go through with the plan to kill all non-sorcerers.) 

So he leaves, and is branded as a curse user to all of jujutsu society. He is to be killed on sight. But Gojo is the one to confront him, and when he raises his hand to kill his best friend he can’t do it. (“Kill me,” Geto says as he walks away. “There’d be meaning in that, too.”)

The Honored One and the Cursed. The Heavens and the Earth, the Righteous and the Damned. One blessed with innate kindness, and snap moral judgment - one cursed with an infinite moral dilemma, relegated to careful deliberation and action to carry out justice. One with a cursed technique that could be compared to ascension, unlimited power and enhanced perception and untouchable beauty, so high up he is unreachable as heaven itself - one with a cursed technique that could be described as bottom-feeding, damning, so low compared to the veritable God he walks beside that it seems the curses he swallows and the pain he carries could sink him into the earth all the way down to hell.

Yin and Yang, two halves of a whole that circle each other, but never really touch. 

Gojo’s Infinity ensures that. 

In their separation they both adopt children - Geto the girls he saved from the village, Gojo the kids he saved from the clan that had produced and rejected Toji. Geto becomes a cult leader, amassing curses and money and followers by tolerating “monkeys” and healing their “ailments” and swallowing their curses. Gojo becomes a teacher, swearing that as long as he is there nobody will be alone again. (Shoko was there - has always been there - but that is a different tragedy altogether.)

They meet again in JJK 0. Geto declares war on all of jujutsu society, the Night Parade of a Thousand Demons (I think), and Gojo fights alongside the school. Yuuta and his own tragedy, Rika - his lost childhood love whom he accidentally cursed to remain on this earth and torment him, letting nobody close to her lover - face off against Geto at Jujutsu tech. When Yuuta accepts all of Rika and she fully manifests her power, the strongest curse Geto has ever seen, he begins to fight in earnest. (I’ve heard theories that maybe Geto is so unwilling to accept that Yuuta and Rika are truly in love during that fight because that would mean that him leaving everyone he cared about, and the one he truly loved, in order to save them from a life of suffering was completely unnecessary, and he could have had love and a purpose - he could have had Gojo -without all the pain he caused himself and Gojo and everyone who’d cared about him back.)

Yuuta defeats him. Satoru and Suguru are left alone after everyone has left, one painfully mortal and one painfully untouchable. Destined to fight each other. One cursed to die, one cursed to live. No matter the dynamic that was between them, their last words are a tender moment and a testament to the affection and care they still hold for each other, even after their ideals and their lives have strayed so far from each other in adulthood. Gojo kills Geto, but does not have the heart to dispose of his best friend’s body - which is what relegates Geto to the role of puppet, used to carry out Kanjaku’s agenda. In a way Gojo really did curse him, in the end.

Breaking the fourth wall, there are little elements outside the story that make it so painful as well.

Gege Akutami, the mangaka who created this whole universe and its characters and their dynamics (I look up to him, kinda, for the pain he makes me feel) has given details in author’s notes and interviews that make SatoSugu all the more painful. For starters, he agreed with the producer’s(?) statement, which describes Geto as Gojo’s “first and last warm spring of youth” which,, ow; and then he makes it so Geto’s priestly cult man robes are a design that literally have part of Gojo’s name in it (I can’t find the actual name but it’s in there) and in one author’s note or filler issue of the jump he gives us songs that remind him of each character and one of Gojo’s is about heartbreak and love and LITERALLY WORD FOR WORD could describe the dynamic between the two.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!!

The anime, in season 2, opens with Ao no Sumika and ends with Akari - I think the opening and ending are meant to be Gojo’s perspective and Geto’s, respectively. The lyrics line up - the opening is fun and lively and bright but still foreshadows pain and heartbreak in the lyrics and certain frames of the sequence, and the ending is vaguely melancholy in lyrics, melody, and color; it’s even raining, and half the time Geto appears on the screen he is doused in shadow. In the opening the singer literally reflects on how the brightness/loudness of being with this person drowned out their silence (which cmon that’s satosugu for certain), and ruminates on the unsaid “will we meet again?” between singer and subject. (which AGAIN, SATOSUGU) And one of my favorite ever sequences in that ending sequence is a pair of scenes that show first Gojo, his eyes following a black beta fish with spiky, damaged fins and tail; and then Geto, his eyes downcast, looking away from a white beta fish that is whole and healthy, almost glowing. It’s my favorite way their dynamic is symbolized in the anime and the most painful - just these two frames themselves are enough to foreshadow their entire story. Gojo cares about Geto, and follows him - he wants him to come back. He wants him to be by his side again, for them to be the strongest again. But he doesn’t even notice Geto’s departure until the fish is already on its way off the screen. The fins on the black beta fish are damaged because Geto is sick, because Geto is spiraling, because beta fish whose fins are damaged and sickly like that are typically not far off from dying. Geto looks away from the healthy white beta fish - he turns his back on love. He thinks it’s pointless, and accepts like a martyr that to save Gojo from his fate at the hands of this world he will have to hurt him by destroying it, and likely dying because of it. What’s more - two male beta fish can’t be in the same tank together. They’ll fight to the death until only the strongest is left.

Gojo and Geto are tragic because it’s so clear that Gege wrote them as a duo, two halves of a whole, two sides of a coin. They are foils as much as they are literally meant for each other in any way that phrase can be interpreted, and yet they are destined to fall apart in the end. One is destined to kill the other, then live with the grief that comes from it. The strongest is fated to survive at the cost of the other, stranded on a pedestal that is covered in blood. They are kids, thrust into an endless cycle of death and pain and suffering and gore because it is their responsibility to protect the people that cannot help themselves, and when the two strongest children are met with the horror of it all one breaks and drops out, and one continues the race and runs faster because he’s not allowed to drop out. The one still running eventually must kill the other to keep running. The best tragedies are those where the characters could have very easily done something to prevent the tragedy from happening or stop it as it unfolds – but because of who they are, and their inevitable choices because of who they are, it doesn’t make sense for them to do so. It makes sense that someone so morally compromised like Geto would snap at the realization that the deaths of his friends will keep happening. It makes sense that once the idea was planted in his head and he was shown the multitude of ways in which non-sorcerers were ignorant of the suffering sorcerers went through to protect them, he snapped at the sight of child sorcerers being relegated to a fate they didn’t deserve. It makes sense that Gojo would let Geto free out of love, even if it led to his demise anyway. It makes sense that he was so shocked at his friend’s actions and curse-user status, because he was buried in his own set of societal pressures and took his friend for granted. It all makes sense, and yet they’re all doomed. Every last person in JJK is doomed. Geto’s children died trying to free his corpse from the monster (man) that stole it. Both of Gojo’s children house(d) ancient sorcerers, and will both probably die fighting in bodies they cannot control. Yuji, the main character, is surrounded by the deaths of everyone he cares for, and the foreshadowing of his own inevitable end. Gojo is the Prince in his tower, is forced to watch, untouchable, trapped, as the knight on a dragon is shot down, plummets to the earth below - and becomes the enemy against his own will. Sometimes it makes me so sad I am close to tears. (and sometimes i read fics that make me cry more, because how in the hell are people that good at writing grief and angst and tragedy and where can I learn to do the same)

If the manga ends happily I’ll be surprised, because right now it seems a tragic but meaningful ending is in the works and I’m scared

Hello op tis me again!! Apologies for taking [checks notes] 84 years to get back to you I have had A Week. However!!! Cayn and Ysabel continue to live rent free <3 like I'm just so obsessed with how gothic they are which is like. My favorite thing tbh. Part of me is gratified bc everything you said I kept nodding and going yeah I thought so, because your art was so *clear* the vibes were just. So easy to read (in the best way). I THOUGHT the ring was a match with Aegon's and also rip the rat tail long live the rat tail. I have to say Ysabel haunts me but Cayn scratches an Itch. Like. U feel me? Cayn belongs squarely in Hannibal NBC with his palatable person suit that is doing very little to distract *him* from the fact that he's about to eat someone whole and raw and it's probably going to be someone he loves before he moves on to someone he hates. Maybe it'll even be the same person. Who knows!! There's this tragedy to them both but Cayn is almost trying to tell himself he can Change it and Control the way the tragedy will fall (and getting humbled bad lmao) while Ysabel is like. Carrion carted away by the waves. Never stood a chance and at some point she stopped fighting very hard. Also I feel like. There's this Deep Intimacy yet Huge Emotional Distance between Aemond and Ysabel where neither knows how to communicate or really Approach someone so instead they have to consume maim kill leave a mark. I cannot touch you except to hurt you ect. And her obsession with him is in and of itself so haunted bc it's like she wants to Eat Him but she Doesn't but that way she can Control It but. And we stay at that but. While with Aegon and Cayn it's like yes I do like you. I fear writing the stronger word. Instead I will eat you whole and you will remember me by the imprint of my teeth on your side and I will remember you by the way I bloat with desire for you and choke on your blood <3 and it's like wooow. Wooow. Love it. Obsessed with it. As you can tell I do not like them normal. Do u know what happens to them at the end of the war? I can't imagine Ysabel ending up any better than Helaena. But also. I gotta say. Big fan of tragic siblings I am—I have So Many Feelings about these two relating to each other qnd hoe The Love Was Apparently There and it Didn't Change Anything. Too many feelings to put it too words. After all that word vomit (thank u if you read the whole way through) I wish to tell you that u have inspired me to make my Bolton oc more weird and unsettling and haunted. My disgraced Lenora and her legion of skinned animals and skulls <3 My Shadowskin Lady. I want her to be such a Freak while also being so tragic and doomed to being nothing but a third wife <3 but anyway!! I have stolen enough of your time and wish you good luck with your commissions!! Thank uu for replying to me and I look forward to future works on these doomed suckers 😌

under the cut because this got long ..

IM JUST GLAD TO BE TALKING ABOUT THEM !

it did make me sit and stare and giggle a little bit because its true you were very on the mark with them . i do think part of the charm with the boltons Is their inability to be anything but very un-subtly gothic and weird and strange . you look at them and you can immediately clock what's going on here .

and its very true… ill be so real and genuine i STILL havent watched hannibal the whole way through but ive absorbed the vibe enough through many years of being a gay person online to where yeah definitely this guy has some hannibal in him . that bit of restraint in really really trying to put yourself in a square that slowly but surely begins to crack under the weight of at the core needing to feed the urge to hurt something . believes himself to be strong enough to keep it away but ultimately the same fate waits each time …… similarly to ysabel . they both end up in the same place of hurt inflicted on others and in turn on themselves but while cayn fights against it and tries to rise above it ysabel leans into it and accepts it regardless of how much it scares her because she's always been taught to lay down and take whatever comes her way as a polite nice lady that doesn't fight and doesn't say no .

i do like to spin their relationships around in my mind . both separately and between each other . with ysabel i feel like her most intimate moments Are when she gets to be a little unhinged ie biting and chewing on someone etc because its very raw . so entirely separate from anything she knows and anything that's expected of her and so desperate and pleading that it gets very real . whereas cayn for a long time sees that violence as a failure to himself and in turn prefers to sit down and have a polite conversation and only thinks of how it would be to reach across the table and strangle a man . ultimately though that violence is inherent to him i like to think he wants to feel in control of it . wants to have the upper hand no matter what and doesnt like when it becomes an urge that just drives you without thought or reason . ysabel starving animal who cant help it vs cayn predator on a calculated hunt etc in the end theyre both very much formed by being raised by a dad who was so much worse . united in misery and a root of violence and hate and death that was planted in them from the moment they were born . they both have it and they will never escape it because there was never a point where it wasnt there. as for endings ….

i'm a little conflicted on them both partially because i still need to iron out some war details etc but as a general frame of reference it ends aaaalmost the same as in canon beyond the fact that the greens win a little more vividly . well . as much as you can 'win' a terrible tragic war with your own family . in the end jaehaera + aegon + alicent + cayn + ysabel and her kids are alive . aegon iii and viserys ii hang around too like in canon . i imagine errhhmmmm… (taps my noggin) aegon remarries . ive been fond of cassandra baratheon stepmom to jaehaera lately . well.. king's landing politics ensue . everyone is sort of miserable . i swear that i'll get to figuring it all out one day . i swear!!!!

most relevant to court i guess would be ysabel since i imagine she remains in the red keep for most of the war and after it . mentioned somewhere i think but she has two kids - a daughter (aelora) and a son (baelor) both of which make it through the war - but baelor is weak and sickly kind of partially because ysabel is basically left half-bedbound after her second pregnancy that probably shouldn't have happened in the first place . … he dies of illness pretty young which sends ysabel spiraling even worse than she already was post war . girls who have their bodies irreversibly ruined and torn apart to where they can barely function anymore in the hopes of having a son - giving a little boy to a husband who is bound to die at war and having your son follow closely behind and having it all be for nothing . i think she grows to resent her daughter silently for being a girl (westerosi misogyny so deeply seated even in its women) and i don't think they ever really grow all that close . sits and rots in her chambers or in the gardens and dreams about her dead son and her dead husband instead of looking to the family she has that are still there .

i think she's kind of disconnected from court just based on the fact she's entirely too hurt physically and mentally to really even be able to contribute much . she's allowed to sit in her misery because she's family to the targs atp but it's a little rough . in a little twist of weird connections i think she would get along with aegon iii pretty well in the sense that they're both horrendously miserable and she projects some sort of son onto him. sits and reads with him and talks about whatever kids talk about and acts like nothing is wrong for a few hours

i played with the idea of her eventually joining the silent sisters as a sort of final frontier of guilt and shame and horror at what her life becomes but i don't think she would even have the drive to do that much at the end of the war LOL

and cayn …

this one is trickier because he's …. … ……..? i dont know. i think its tough to find a real direction for him in my mind and i cant figure out why . but i think i got it.. more context first > their dad dies during the war, i imagine somewhere around rook's rest after the north is openly split apart or a bit later on when they actually try to go against the starks directly, and in my mind it kind of leaves cayn in (similarly to ysabel) in a state of being trapped in the past in a place he can never return to . their dad represents everything cayn believes he should be and all he should live up to and all his house and family stand for and seeing him die really does get to him . not to mention he also gets hurt pretty bad - just that chunk of harm that comes with war and what it'll do to a man. forever stuck on some field of battle far away and the world keeps spinning but you never quite spin along with it . dons his dad's armor and now suddenly he's saddled with the weight of responsibility and duty and all their family's pain both literally and metaphorically . kind of resembles the bolton skinchanging theories if you really get insane about it ie you take on a man's skin (his weird flesh armor) and now you're just as much him as you are yourself etc

i imagine he returns to king's landing for a while after they've duked it out with the starks for a bit and the north cools off a little . comes back and he's hurt and aegon is hurt and barely conscious half the time and his facade probably drops pretty harshly . spends some time taking care of aegon and doing what he's told and dreams about the fact that there has to be a purpose and a meaning to fighting a war . goes against what he used to want (restraint) and drives himself to violence and hate because if he doesn't then he'll sit down and think and realize that his dad died for nothing and theyve been fighting stupid battles for a cause that he doesn't really care about . rabid guard dog off the leash with no true goal he wants for and no true cause he believes in .

by the time the war ends and aegon remarries i imagine he leaves court because admittedly he would actually seethe a little bit seeing aegon married again . with helaena it was okay because i think he recognizes neither of them chose that and neither of them (from my perspective) really love the other in any romantic sense but when it's an active choice he gets really really upset . silently of course . <3 the gay yearning catches up with him and he faces the fact aegon is barely a person anymore and he has no place at court in turn . goes home to the north and with the greens sort-of-winning he's given winterfell and titles and they settle into some kind of peace for a little while. he marries a karstark girl because it's what his father had intended for him and they're about as unhappy as you can get in a relationship. maybe they have a son in time but more than likely not. i think while everything kind of holds up for a while there are a lot of issues here that don't seem to ever really get resolved properly - lots of unhappy lords and lots of bastard siblings who think they know better and lots of rumors and disagreements and a steady swirling pot of disaster boiling under the surface. i can imagine he goes off to fight off some rebellion after a good few years and ends up dead . maybe for the best .

i dont know if ysabel even really processes it . i think if she wasnt already so unresponsive she WOULD just step out a window

in another reality that im going to manifest in my mind space cayn stays in king's landing after the war and has someone else manage the north . sticks around and tries to ignore the fact that he's jealous and angry and feels no satisfaction or ease even when they've won and the war is over . sticks around and has a toxic evil homosexual relationship with the king that grows strained when he has a new wife and a kingdom to run properly this time and they settle into a horribly tense unbearable distance that's broken only when cayn steps up and poisons him or just chokes him out or something and proceeds to kill himself ala your first gay situationship where dying feels like a good alternative to having to process the fact that you cant really be together . hope you understand . either way the boltons (well . the ones that are relevant in this case there are always cousins and second cousins etc in asoiaf to pick up the slack) fizzle out and end up miserable or dead even after the promise of power and status is fulfilled . don't aim too high or you'll have that much further to fall if you will a whole lot of nonsense being put out here but i hope you enjoy whatever's cooking …. really really appreciate the interest and im glad to provide whatever u might be wondering about + more ramblings… would LOVE to see more freakish bolton ocs also . there is nothing like a horrible house that raises horrible people who reek of tragedy and terror and a doomed narrative and SO many chances to make something so fun please tell me more !