But you may call me: She prefers to simply be called Akira. She doesn't put much stock in traditions and 'the old ways', so to speak, so the whole system of honourifics and surnames doesn't sit with her. Especially the '-chan' honourific. Call her Akira-chan and she'll hospitalise you.
The country I was born in: Akira was born somewhere in Japan--that much is for sure. But she'll never seem to say exactly where. It is known that she speaks with a heavy Hokkaido accent that can make her difficult to understand until you get used to it...which would seem to pretty much give the answer away, but she refuses to confirm it. [Pretty much, if you wanna imagine her accent in English: imagine her saying 'I' and 'I'm' as 'ah' and 'ah'm', 'to' and 'you' as 'ta' and 'ya', and 'that' as having a very subtle 'y' sound in there, so that it sounds a bit like 'thyat'.]
The month, date and year I was born on: Akira was born January 12, 1985, and is thus twenty seven years old. She's always had mature features, and in combination with her height in her youth she was often mistaken for being as much as five years older than she really was. Which, y'know, she didn't mind. Helped cement that fake ID she used to get alcohol and smokes when she was a teenager.
My gender: Well, given the use of 'she' and 'her' throughout this profile, I should hope it's evident she's female. Of course, she does have some masculine physical features, and the way she acts is everything but feminine, but biologically she is, indeed, female.
The clothes I am most comfortable in wearing: In terms of attire, Akira gravitates towards more or less typical metal and crust punk fare. You will typically find her wearing a band tee with the sleeves torn off, featuring any one of her favourite groups from Motörhead to Cynic, Death to Nile, Suffocation to Carcass; over this will usually go her beloved leather jacket, which is covered with patches from various punk and metal bands, and studs and spikes, as well as some rips and tears she has shabbily sewn back together. As far as her lower body, Akira often dons a pair of good old durable jeans (often with a few tears in 'em because she just can't be arsed to buy new ones), and then a pair of leather harness boots. Top it off with accessories such as a copper bullet belt, spikes wrist bands, biker gloves, and chains, and you've got the image of someone most people really don't want anything to do with. She wouldn't have it any other way.
Akira's appearance is in many ways just as unfeminine as her persona and hobbies. Her appearance is clearly not one that conforms to the wiles of contemporary fashion and ideals--if anything it flies in the face of everything most girls consider 'fashionable' these days, and both her physical aspects and choice of clothes cause her to stand out quite a lot in a crowd. She has a very rough-around-the-edges aesthetic, in her very physical appearance and choices of attire, augmented by rather masculine traits and her overall demeanour. Akira stands at about 189 cm (just a little over six feet two inches tall), with a sturdy, tough frame outlined with well-defined, powerful muscles; her skin is quite pale, again reflective of a Hokkaido heritage, the tone of cold porcelain, and across its expanse are found tattoos that Akira has gotten over the years of her life: all represent moments, words, sounds that have defined her life (disregard the Japanese kanji in that image, though. -_- In fact, all the tattoos there. I'll post she actually has, not the ones in the image). Her facial features are well-sculpted and possess masculine traits, with a strong, jutting jawline, high, defined cheekbones, a pointed nose, and thin, pale lips accentuated by a single lip ring on the lower lip. Her hair is her most eye-catching feature, however; since she was maybe fourteen or fifteen, she's been shaving the sides of her head, leaving a strip of frizzy, thin-textured hair running down the middle of her head that she often spikes or gels up, dyed an amalgamation of purples and reds--in other words, a mohawk. The natural colour is a faded black tone, and it's more or less straight in tendency--but hell, nobody knows that. Her eyes, narrow and daring, are heavy-lidded and a dark brown colour.
As said Akira has made several alterations to her body, irregardless of the permanency of the tattoos--she doesn't really seem to give a fuck. And as such, her body is a network of them. It would be difficult to specify and describe each and every one, but the most prominent would be the Motörhead War Pig across her back, adorned with bullets, chains, spikes, and the name of the band itself in arching letters over it. Others include tattoos related to her favourite bands, including nearly the same on her upper left bicep, or the Obituary tattoo across her right forearm; she also has one of Death's original logo (in red) at her collarbone, and Deicide's '666' on the bicep above her Obituary tattoo. Others are related to Egyptian mythology, which seems to be a passion of hers; examples include the large, flaming ankh on her left bicep, an Eye of Horus on the back of each hand, an Uraeus on her lower back, and the words âI have hidden myself amongst the never-setting starsâ, from the Spell for Not Dying Again, in the Papyrus of Ani, tattooed in very small print at the nape of her neck. And others are simply personal in nature--such as the letters 'MURA' and 'KAMI' tattooed across the knuckles of her hands. That is the oldest tattoo she has, and she did it herself when she was thirteen years old.
What I see in the mirror: A tough as nails badass that serves as a cover for someone whose emotional state could best be likened to that of a sobbing six year old girl. Who acts like she's invulnerable to anything anyone says but in actuality is so emotionally fragile that makes her feel like if she gives herself a chance at happiness, she'll only end up drowning in sorrow--indeed, someone who believes she has no chance at happiness, and sees only hopelessness in its pursuit. She desires true human company and relation, and knows it--but is crippled by her fear that she will lose that connection no matter what she does, and she also knows that. Her attempts to find release in her music are slowly growing less and less effective as the vicious loneliness in her heart, grappling with the fact that her mind immediately relates words like 'friendship', 'love', and 'happiness' with 'betrayal', 'death', and 'pointless', pulsates and grows ever greater. Ultimately all she sees in the mirror is hopelessness--not herself, but a bleak, fading, tormented sliver of existence, surrounded and consumed with hopelessness.
Things that I have grown fond of: Akira's number one love in life is music. All kinds of music. Spanning from the deathgrind of Aborted and Carcass, grindcore in the vein of Napalm Death and AssĂŒck, the technical death metal of Death and Suffocation, straight up death metal like Deicide and Nile, the thrash metal stylings of Megadeth and Slayer, classic heavy metal such as Judas Priest and Motörhead, hard rock legends such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, crust punk in the vein of Doom and Gallhammer...hell, even jazz and blues, such as Art Blakey, Weather Report, and BB King. She listens to it all, most of it (in particular, the metal and the punk) at outrageous volumes that make people wonder how it is she hasn't gone deaf yet. And playing it, of course--it's her number one favourite thing to do. She seems to really like motorcycles like Harley Davidsons, and owns one herself. And she seems to like alcohol, cigarettes and other...harder drugs, but...well, obviously, she doesn't like them. She's addicted to them.
Oh, and she loves swearing.
Things that gets on my nerves: Oh hell, here comes a rant. First and foremost, Akira hates pop music. Hates it with a passion. If you turn on pop music in her vicinity, she will not hesitate to immediately crank her death metal up to even more ridiculously loud volumes. And the same goes for rap. She absolutely detests it. She also hates people (guys especially) who think they're the fucking shit and think they can do whatever the hell they like. Sexists who think she can't fight or handle herself because she's a chick will get their asses kicked violently. Judgemental assholes...well, they annoy her, but she doesn't really give a shit about them. Idiots who play shitty-ass 'faux-metal' like metalcore and nu metal and think they're hardcore. Dumbass emos who wear all black, listen to screamo, and lament how crushing existence is when they've got a loving family and all the opportunity for happiness Akira feels she lacks. She hates sappy romance shit where the good-natured, perfect guy gets the innocent, perfect girl, and they live happily ever after, because it never works out that way in real life. However, above all she hates liars and traitors. They hold a special place of utter abhorrence in her heart.
What I am scared of: Akira fears above all being abandoned or betrayed by those she trusts--it's her one most crippling fear in life, the one that stands in the way of her ever attaining happiness in life. She can't interact with anyone without feeling that if she gets too close to them, they'll hurt her by leaving, whether of their own accord or due to circumstances outside of her or their control--ie, death. More information under personality. Besides that she's afraid of the ocean. More specifically, being on a ship, in the ocean. More specifically, being on a sinking ship, in the ocean. The source is, frankly, rather unusual: as a child, she read about the Titanic, and the combination of reading about how helpless everyone was as the ship slowly went down, as well as pictures of the Titanic's bow, jutting into the air from the ocean, slowly sinking into the dark depths, made her absolutely terrified of being on a ship at sea. Other than that, Akira is honestly a rather fearless woman. She claims that she has nothing to fear from anybody, because ultimately everyone is human and that means they're as weak and vulnerable as the next person.
What's wrong with me: Her responce to such a question would undoubtedly be "What's wrong with me? What the fuck do you mean, 'what's wrong with me'? Ain't shit wrong with me. Fuck off, asshole." But she does have a number of...'issues' that she has inherited from her mother, as well as from environmental factors, and she is definitely mentally and emotionally unstable. She has major-depressive disorder, and has displayed symptoms all her life, causing her to grow sullen and resentful at times--and suicidal and self-destructive at worst. She also inherited passive-aggressive disorder--which isn't quite so dramatic. Her severe aversion to change, a vague need to speak ambiguously in order to cover up insecurities, and fear of intimacy and dependency are all aggravated (but not directly caused) by PAD. And while in rehab, she was diagnosed with schizotypal and possible schizophrenic disorders--but she won't so much as bring that up.
What happened to me: Heroin. That's all she'll say. Continued inquests into her past or the cause of her rehabilitation will earn you nothing more than her boot in your groin.
Good things about me: She's tough. That's a good thing. Physically, Akira is akin in build and stance to a modern-day bruiser, and is for the most part of all present the most capable of kicking someone's ass if she's pissed off. Her strength is fuelled by a strict daily workout routine, one she's kept up for the past thirteen or so years. And much to the surprise of...well, everyone, she's remarkably intelligent. Not necessarily wise in any way, but she knows a lot more than she in general acts like she does, and this only comes apparent when someone claims, say, that Earth's magnetic field is what keeps it rotating around the Sun, to which Akira corrects that this is accomplished by the interplanetary magnetic field, which is a part of the Sun's magnetic field that is carried into interplanetary space by the supersonic outflow into interplanetary space of plasma.
And of course, she's one hell of a guitarist. But that's detailed below.
Bad things about me: Whelp. Akira's crippling fears of abandonment and trust are her one glaring weakness. If you were a truly cruel, evil person and wanted to hurt her, you could accomplish this by biding your time, getting close to her, managing to get her to trust and truly cherish you, take comfort in you even after all she's done to avoid this--and then leave her. Leave her, reject her, abandon her, any such thing. Experiencing that again after making herself vulnerable one last time to the last person she trusts would probably cause her to lose all hope on life and become withdrawn and shut-up within herself for good. Besides this, her abrasive attitude, foul mouth, tendency towards violence, and proclivity for drugs doesn't exactly appeal to everyone, nor do her plethora of tattoos, which many find off-putting--not that she, in general, gives a shit.
Overall Personality: Akira is without a doubt a very difficult person to get along with, and an even more difficult person to get to know and truly understand. She is an abrasive and rough woman; she tosses about swear words and curses as casually as adjectives and verbs, and sheâll turn a verbal disagreement painfully physical at the drop of a dime simply out of what she perceives as a need to protect her pride and dignity, whether it be concerning herself, her culture, her style of playing, or her band. Her sense of humour is dry and sardonic, with a heavy dose of pessimism, and sometimes insulting to those around her if they arenât used to her biting sarcasm in the first place. Akira is also highly averse to anything she perceives as an attempt to control her or exert authority over her, as she is a fiercely independent and self-reliant woman. She has a love of the âfast lifeâ that never seems to abate, from the drugs to the loud music to the alcohol, she does it all and never slows downâin relation, she loves motorcycles, and owns a Harley Davidson chopper. Unfortunately, she is as a result heavily addicted to cigarettes and alcohol, to the point where she goes nowhere without at least two packs of smokes on her, and is literally capable of drinking two eight packs of beer and barely feeling it the next morningâand in times of great stress she will resort to harder drugs. She doesnât seem to care about her drug issues nor her dangerous lifestyle, claiming that she will live however the hell she wants and that she enjoys her lifestyle.
Under these layers of careless living, casual drug abuse, and apparent apathy to her own life is a very different personâa far more conflicted and vulnerable person. Akira realises that the way she is living her life, sheâs likely to end up dead in a hotel room with a syringe in her arm and no one to care, probably before she makes it to thirty years old. But at this point, itâs like a high-speed roller coaster where the track eventually cuts offâAkira believes that the drugs are the only things that can keep her mind from wandering to all the things she sees wrong with herself and the world, and that if she âgets off the roller coasterâ at this speed she will suffer just as much, if not more. She is headed straight for self-destruction, and consciously or subconsciously, she knows it. Akira is plagued by fears, sorrows, despairs, and anger exacerbated by her use of drugs and lack of connection to others: they have festered within her, as she has never truly had an outlet for them besides her music, refusing to grant her peace and calm for a moment. At this point, she hardly remembers the pain that first drove her to begin using drugs because it has become mired with many other pains that are only intensified by the drugs that she previously used as an escape from reality, a way of dealing with stress and sadness. Her abrasive and wholly unpredictable personality mirrors her fear of personal pain and abandonment--Akira has convinced herself that if she keeps others at arms length with her wild and aggressive attitude, she can avoid making connections, and thereby the pain of the inevitable severance of those connections. She has come to fear the pain of losing those she loves and cherishes, and believes that by avoiding true friendship and love she can remain untouched by this grief.
Akira has had several relationships--with both men and women--over the years. However, her 'intimate romances' tend to have more in the way of intimacy, and less in the way of actual romance. As she says it, "A good relationship is like fireworks: loud, explosive, and liable to maim you if you hold on too long". In other words, the majority of her relationships last for a month or so at the maximum, and exist mostly for the temporary, fleeting pleasure of sex rather than the actual, true happiness of love. Again, this is because of her fear of losing those whom she loves--instead of risking that pain, she would rather just accept momentary, fleeting happiness. She's long since forgotten what it feels like to be with someone because she genuinely loved and enjoyed being with them on a personal level rather than simply physical pleasure...she isn't sure she remembers what it was like to actually fall in love without being afraid of the consequences of it.
What is my sexuality: Bisexual, though she seems to lean towards women in general.
My background story: Were you to ask Akira about her life, she would undoubtedly tell you to mind your own goddamn business and fuck off. And if you were, by some miracle of the gods, manage to get closer to her, to the point where that isn't her immediate responce to anything you say, she'll merely respond with "My life has made me who I am. I'm a complete fucking asshole. What kind of life do you fucking think I've had?" Either way, she really ain't tellin', and she's really averse to talking about her history, so that's probably all she'll say at rehab too. It's known that previously she was the singer and guitarist of a death metal band called Legion (which really sounds a lot less impressive when you say it the way most Japanese do...'Rijion'. Yeah, no.) which achieved a degree of regional popularity. However, after the...'event' that led to her ending up in rehab, her band got a different guitarist and singer, and left before Akira could do anything about it. She's been infuriated over it ever since--but knows that she deserved it due to what she did specifically that caused her to be delegated to rehab.
Singing Voice: Akira doesn't really 'do' normal vocals, and she is not, as a result, often used for singing. She does, however, excel at extreme vocals. In terms of vocals, Akira forgoes the typical growls of most death metal singers in favour of an even more vicious, bestial, extremely raspy snarl that makes her sound like a rabid creature, some sort of beast fresh out of a Lovecraftian horror tale. She will sometimes sink lower to around the level of conventional death metal growls, or raise her voice to a rasped, animalistic shriek as well. For quite some time, she's wanted to be the singer (and guitarist) of a band; the former, as it were, didn't really work out here.
Playing type: Akira is a highly technical player in the sense that much of what she plays is very difficult to replicate, using various different techniques such as pinch harmonics, tremolo and hybrid picking (which she has adapted to a heavier, more metal sound than it is usually used for), as well as sweep picking, and pick tapping. However, she does not consciously use these as âtechniquesâ, or use them just for the sake of making her music more complicated; she finds effects and ways of playing that sound good to her, and thatâs what she uses. In terms of musical sound, Akira often employs a very harsh, overdriven guitar sound, enabling each note to be heard clearly while maintaining a (in her words) 'hardcore' sound. Her style often utilises chromatic, atonal scale soloing, changes in time signature that can be either abrupt or very subtle, high-speed, palm-muted chord progressions, and minor-key shredding; Akira utilises extremely high-speed shredding, but keeps it to very controlled, maintained patterns so that it doesnât come off as just playing ridiculously fast for the hell of it. And as such she brings to Anger Management (which, considering Akira's demeanour and lifestyle...is kinda ironic) a dose of death metal aggression and technical prowess, just as all band members bring to the band their own unique sound. I don't really have a video, sorry.
As far as her instrument, Akira plays an onyx black BC Rich Avenge with dark crimson pinstripe lining, utilising also various Metal Zone distortion effect pedals to give her guitar an extremely overdriven sound. She tunes the guitar to dropped A, which results in extremely heavy riffing.
Theme song: Death - Empty Words. dem lyrics
Suffocation - Mental Haemorrhage. also dem lyrics
Carcass - No Love Lost. also also dem lyrics
Other: Nope.
The country I was born in: Akira was born somewhere in Japan--that much is for sure. But she'll never seem to say exactly where. It is known that she speaks with a heavy Hokkaido accent that can make her difficult to understand until you get used to it...which would seem to pretty much give the answer away, but she refuses to confirm it. [Pretty much, if you wanna imagine her accent in English: imagine her saying 'I' and 'I'm' as 'ah' and 'ah'm', 'to' and 'you' as 'ta' and 'ya', and 'that' as having a very subtle 'y' sound in there, so that it sounds a bit like 'thyat'.]
The month, date and year I was born on: Akira was born January 12, 1985, and is thus twenty seven years old. She's always had mature features, and in combination with her height in her youth she was often mistaken for being as much as five years older than she really was. Which, y'know, she didn't mind. Helped cement that fake ID she used to get alcohol and smokes when she was a teenager.
My gender: Well, given the use of 'she' and 'her' throughout this profile, I should hope it's evident she's female. Of course, she does have some masculine physical features, and the way she acts is everything but feminine, but biologically she is, indeed, female.
The clothes I am most comfortable in wearing: In terms of attire, Akira gravitates towards more or less typical metal and crust punk fare. You will typically find her wearing a band tee with the sleeves torn off, featuring any one of her favourite groups from Motörhead to Cynic, Death to Nile, Suffocation to Carcass; over this will usually go her beloved leather jacket, which is covered with patches from various punk and metal bands, and studs and spikes, as well as some rips and tears she has shabbily sewn back together. As far as her lower body, Akira often dons a pair of good old durable jeans (often with a few tears in 'em because she just can't be arsed to buy new ones), and then a pair of leather harness boots. Top it off with accessories such as a copper bullet belt, spikes wrist bands, biker gloves, and chains, and you've got the image of someone most people really don't want anything to do with. She wouldn't have it any other way.
Akira's appearance is in many ways just as unfeminine as her persona and hobbies. Her appearance is clearly not one that conforms to the wiles of contemporary fashion and ideals--if anything it flies in the face of everything most girls consider 'fashionable' these days, and both her physical aspects and choice of clothes cause her to stand out quite a lot in a crowd. She has a very rough-around-the-edges aesthetic, in her very physical appearance and choices of attire, augmented by rather masculine traits and her overall demeanour. Akira stands at about 189 cm (just a little over six feet two inches tall), with a sturdy, tough frame outlined with well-defined, powerful muscles; her skin is quite pale, again reflective of a Hokkaido heritage, the tone of cold porcelain, and across its expanse are found tattoos that Akira has gotten over the years of her life: all represent moments, words, sounds that have defined her life (disregard the Japanese kanji in that image, though. -_- In fact, all the tattoos there. I'll post she actually has, not the ones in the image). Her facial features are well-sculpted and possess masculine traits, with a strong, jutting jawline, high, defined cheekbones, a pointed nose, and thin, pale lips accentuated by a single lip ring on the lower lip. Her hair is her most eye-catching feature, however; since she was maybe fourteen or fifteen, she's been shaving the sides of her head, leaving a strip of frizzy, thin-textured hair running down the middle of her head that she often spikes or gels up, dyed an amalgamation of purples and reds--in other words, a mohawk. The natural colour is a faded black tone, and it's more or less straight in tendency--but hell, nobody knows that. Her eyes, narrow and daring, are heavy-lidded and a dark brown colour.
As said Akira has made several alterations to her body, irregardless of the permanency of the tattoos--she doesn't really seem to give a fuck. And as such, her body is a network of them. It would be difficult to specify and describe each and every one, but the most prominent would be the Motörhead War Pig across her back, adorned with bullets, chains, spikes, and the name of the band itself in arching letters over it. Others include tattoos related to her favourite bands, including nearly the same on her upper left bicep, or the Obituary tattoo across her right forearm; she also has one of Death's original logo (in red) at her collarbone, and Deicide's '666' on the bicep above her Obituary tattoo. Others are related to Egyptian mythology, which seems to be a passion of hers; examples include the large, flaming ankh on her left bicep, an Eye of Horus on the back of each hand, an Uraeus on her lower back, and the words âI have hidden myself amongst the never-setting starsâ, from the Spell for Not Dying Again, in the Papyrus of Ani, tattooed in very small print at the nape of her neck. And others are simply personal in nature--such as the letters 'MURA' and 'KAMI' tattooed across the knuckles of her hands. That is the oldest tattoo she has, and she did it herself when she was thirteen years old.
What I see in the mirror: A tough as nails badass that serves as a cover for someone whose emotional state could best be likened to that of a sobbing six year old girl. Who acts like she's invulnerable to anything anyone says but in actuality is so emotionally fragile that makes her feel like if she gives herself a chance at happiness, she'll only end up drowning in sorrow--indeed, someone who believes she has no chance at happiness, and sees only hopelessness in its pursuit. She desires true human company and relation, and knows it--but is crippled by her fear that she will lose that connection no matter what she does, and she also knows that. Her attempts to find release in her music are slowly growing less and less effective as the vicious loneliness in her heart, grappling with the fact that her mind immediately relates words like 'friendship', 'love', and 'happiness' with 'betrayal', 'death', and 'pointless', pulsates and grows ever greater. Ultimately all she sees in the mirror is hopelessness--not herself, but a bleak, fading, tormented sliver of existence, surrounded and consumed with hopelessness.
Things that I have grown fond of: Akira's number one love in life is music. All kinds of music. Spanning from the deathgrind of Aborted and Carcass, grindcore in the vein of Napalm Death and AssĂŒck, the technical death metal of Death and Suffocation, straight up death metal like Deicide and Nile, the thrash metal stylings of Megadeth and Slayer, classic heavy metal such as Judas Priest and Motörhead, hard rock legends such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, crust punk in the vein of Doom and Gallhammer...hell, even jazz and blues, such as Art Blakey, Weather Report, and BB King. She listens to it all, most of it (in particular, the metal and the punk) at outrageous volumes that make people wonder how it is she hasn't gone deaf yet. And playing it, of course--it's her number one favourite thing to do. She seems to really like motorcycles like Harley Davidsons, and owns one herself. And she seems to like alcohol, cigarettes and other...harder drugs, but...well, obviously, she doesn't like them. She's addicted to them.
Oh, and she loves swearing.
Things that gets on my nerves: Oh hell, here comes a rant. First and foremost, Akira hates pop music. Hates it with a passion. If you turn on pop music in her vicinity, she will not hesitate to immediately crank her death metal up to even more ridiculously loud volumes. And the same goes for rap. She absolutely detests it. She also hates people (guys especially) who think they're the fucking shit and think they can do whatever the hell they like. Sexists who think she can't fight or handle herself because she's a chick will get their asses kicked violently. Judgemental assholes...well, they annoy her, but she doesn't really give a shit about them. Idiots who play shitty-ass 'faux-metal' like metalcore and nu metal and think they're hardcore. Dumbass emos who wear all black, listen to screamo, and lament how crushing existence is when they've got a loving family and all the opportunity for happiness Akira feels she lacks. She hates sappy romance shit where the good-natured, perfect guy gets the innocent, perfect girl, and they live happily ever after, because it never works out that way in real life. However, above all she hates liars and traitors. They hold a special place of utter abhorrence in her heart.
What I am scared of: Akira fears above all being abandoned or betrayed by those she trusts--it's her one most crippling fear in life, the one that stands in the way of her ever attaining happiness in life. She can't interact with anyone without feeling that if she gets too close to them, they'll hurt her by leaving, whether of their own accord or due to circumstances outside of her or their control--ie, death. More information under personality. Besides that she's afraid of the ocean. More specifically, being on a ship, in the ocean. More specifically, being on a sinking ship, in the ocean. The source is, frankly, rather unusual: as a child, she read about the Titanic, and the combination of reading about how helpless everyone was as the ship slowly went down, as well as pictures of the Titanic's bow, jutting into the air from the ocean, slowly sinking into the dark depths, made her absolutely terrified of being on a ship at sea. Other than that, Akira is honestly a rather fearless woman. She claims that she has nothing to fear from anybody, because ultimately everyone is human and that means they're as weak and vulnerable as the next person.
What's wrong with me: Her responce to such a question would undoubtedly be "What's wrong with me? What the fuck do you mean, 'what's wrong with me'? Ain't shit wrong with me. Fuck off, asshole." But she does have a number of...'issues' that she has inherited from her mother, as well as from environmental factors, and she is definitely mentally and emotionally unstable. She has major-depressive disorder, and has displayed symptoms all her life, causing her to grow sullen and resentful at times--and suicidal and self-destructive at worst. She also inherited passive-aggressive disorder--which isn't quite so dramatic. Her severe aversion to change, a vague need to speak ambiguously in order to cover up insecurities, and fear of intimacy and dependency are all aggravated (but not directly caused) by PAD. And while in rehab, she was diagnosed with schizotypal and possible schizophrenic disorders--but she won't so much as bring that up.
What happened to me: Heroin. That's all she'll say. Continued inquests into her past or the cause of her rehabilitation will earn you nothing more than her boot in your groin.
Good things about me: She's tough. That's a good thing. Physically, Akira is akin in build and stance to a modern-day bruiser, and is for the most part of all present the most capable of kicking someone's ass if she's pissed off. Her strength is fuelled by a strict daily workout routine, one she's kept up for the past thirteen or so years. And much to the surprise of...well, everyone, she's remarkably intelligent. Not necessarily wise in any way, but she knows a lot more than she in general acts like she does, and this only comes apparent when someone claims, say, that Earth's magnetic field is what keeps it rotating around the Sun, to which Akira corrects that this is accomplished by the interplanetary magnetic field, which is a part of the Sun's magnetic field that is carried into interplanetary space by the supersonic outflow into interplanetary space of plasma.
And of course, she's one hell of a guitarist. But that's detailed below.
Bad things about me: Whelp. Akira's crippling fears of abandonment and trust are her one glaring weakness. If you were a truly cruel, evil person and wanted to hurt her, you could accomplish this by biding your time, getting close to her, managing to get her to trust and truly cherish you, take comfort in you even after all she's done to avoid this--and then leave her. Leave her, reject her, abandon her, any such thing. Experiencing that again after making herself vulnerable one last time to the last person she trusts would probably cause her to lose all hope on life and become withdrawn and shut-up within herself for good. Besides this, her abrasive attitude, foul mouth, tendency towards violence, and proclivity for drugs doesn't exactly appeal to everyone, nor do her plethora of tattoos, which many find off-putting--not that she, in general, gives a shit.
Overall Personality: Akira is without a doubt a very difficult person to get along with, and an even more difficult person to get to know and truly understand. She is an abrasive and rough woman; she tosses about swear words and curses as casually as adjectives and verbs, and sheâll turn a verbal disagreement painfully physical at the drop of a dime simply out of what she perceives as a need to protect her pride and dignity, whether it be concerning herself, her culture, her style of playing, or her band. Her sense of humour is dry and sardonic, with a heavy dose of pessimism, and sometimes insulting to those around her if they arenât used to her biting sarcasm in the first place. Akira is also highly averse to anything she perceives as an attempt to control her or exert authority over her, as she is a fiercely independent and self-reliant woman. She has a love of the âfast lifeâ that never seems to abate, from the drugs to the loud music to the alcohol, she does it all and never slows downâin relation, she loves motorcycles, and owns a Harley Davidson chopper. Unfortunately, she is as a result heavily addicted to cigarettes and alcohol, to the point where she goes nowhere without at least two packs of smokes on her, and is literally capable of drinking two eight packs of beer and barely feeling it the next morningâand in times of great stress she will resort to harder drugs. She doesnât seem to care about her drug issues nor her dangerous lifestyle, claiming that she will live however the hell she wants and that she enjoys her lifestyle.
Under these layers of careless living, casual drug abuse, and apparent apathy to her own life is a very different personâa far more conflicted and vulnerable person. Akira realises that the way she is living her life, sheâs likely to end up dead in a hotel room with a syringe in her arm and no one to care, probably before she makes it to thirty years old. But at this point, itâs like a high-speed roller coaster where the track eventually cuts offâAkira believes that the drugs are the only things that can keep her mind from wandering to all the things she sees wrong with herself and the world, and that if she âgets off the roller coasterâ at this speed she will suffer just as much, if not more. She is headed straight for self-destruction, and consciously or subconsciously, she knows it. Akira is plagued by fears, sorrows, despairs, and anger exacerbated by her use of drugs and lack of connection to others: they have festered within her, as she has never truly had an outlet for them besides her music, refusing to grant her peace and calm for a moment. At this point, she hardly remembers the pain that first drove her to begin using drugs because it has become mired with many other pains that are only intensified by the drugs that she previously used as an escape from reality, a way of dealing with stress and sadness. Her abrasive and wholly unpredictable personality mirrors her fear of personal pain and abandonment--Akira has convinced herself that if she keeps others at arms length with her wild and aggressive attitude, she can avoid making connections, and thereby the pain of the inevitable severance of those connections. She has come to fear the pain of losing those she loves and cherishes, and believes that by avoiding true friendship and love she can remain untouched by this grief.
Akira has had several relationships--with both men and women--over the years. However, her 'intimate romances' tend to have more in the way of intimacy, and less in the way of actual romance. As she says it, "A good relationship is like fireworks: loud, explosive, and liable to maim you if you hold on too long". In other words, the majority of her relationships last for a month or so at the maximum, and exist mostly for the temporary, fleeting pleasure of sex rather than the actual, true happiness of love. Again, this is because of her fear of losing those whom she loves--instead of risking that pain, she would rather just accept momentary, fleeting happiness. She's long since forgotten what it feels like to be with someone because she genuinely loved and enjoyed being with them on a personal level rather than simply physical pleasure...she isn't sure she remembers what it was like to actually fall in love without being afraid of the consequences of it.
What is my sexuality: Bisexual, though she seems to lean towards women in general.
My background story: Were you to ask Akira about her life, she would undoubtedly tell you to mind your own goddamn business and fuck off. And if you were, by some miracle of the gods, manage to get closer to her, to the point where that isn't her immediate responce to anything you say, she'll merely respond with "My life has made me who I am. I'm a complete fucking asshole. What kind of life do you fucking think I've had?" Either way, she really ain't tellin', and she's really averse to talking about her history, so that's probably all she'll say at rehab too. It's known that previously she was the singer and guitarist of a death metal band called Legion (which really sounds a lot less impressive when you say it the way most Japanese do...'Rijion'. Yeah, no.) which achieved a degree of regional popularity. However, after the...'event' that led to her ending up in rehab, her band got a different guitarist and singer, and left before Akira could do anything about it. She's been infuriated over it ever since--but knows that she deserved it due to what she did specifically that caused her to be delegated to rehab.
Singing Voice: Akira doesn't really 'do' normal vocals, and she is not, as a result, often used for singing. She does, however, excel at extreme vocals. In terms of vocals, Akira forgoes the typical growls of most death metal singers in favour of an even more vicious, bestial, extremely raspy snarl that makes her sound like a rabid creature, some sort of beast fresh out of a Lovecraftian horror tale. She will sometimes sink lower to around the level of conventional death metal growls, or raise her voice to a rasped, animalistic shriek as well. For quite some time, she's wanted to be the singer (and guitarist) of a band; the former, as it were, didn't really work out here.
Playing type: Akira is a highly technical player in the sense that much of what she plays is very difficult to replicate, using various different techniques such as pinch harmonics, tremolo and hybrid picking (which she has adapted to a heavier, more metal sound than it is usually used for), as well as sweep picking, and pick tapping. However, she does not consciously use these as âtechniquesâ, or use them just for the sake of making her music more complicated; she finds effects and ways of playing that sound good to her, and thatâs what she uses. In terms of musical sound, Akira often employs a very harsh, overdriven guitar sound, enabling each note to be heard clearly while maintaining a (in her words) 'hardcore' sound. Her style often utilises chromatic, atonal scale soloing, changes in time signature that can be either abrupt or very subtle, high-speed, palm-muted chord progressions, and minor-key shredding; Akira utilises extremely high-speed shredding, but keeps it to very controlled, maintained patterns so that it doesnât come off as just playing ridiculously fast for the hell of it. And as such she brings to Anger Management (which, considering Akira's demeanour and lifestyle...is kinda ironic) a dose of death metal aggression and technical prowess, just as all band members bring to the band their own unique sound. I don't really have a video, sorry.
As far as her instrument, Akira plays an onyx black BC Rich Avenge with dark crimson pinstripe lining, utilising also various Metal Zone distortion effect pedals to give her guitar an extremely overdriven sound. She tunes the guitar to dropped A, which results in extremely heavy riffing.
Theme song: Death - Empty Words. dem lyrics
Suffocation - Mental Haemorrhage. also dem lyrics
Carcass - No Love Lost. also also dem lyrics
Other: Nope.