I've Seen Different Takes On Akechi And His Attitude Toward His Fame In Fic I've Read But I Think A Lot

I've seen different takes on Akechi and his attitude toward his fame in fic I've read but I think a lot of them oversimplify things. Usually he's portrayed as being disillusioned or annoyed by his fans, and while I think that is true to an extent, it's also a lot more complicated than that.

Goro gets his self worth from other people. His success, his skills, his perception, are all how he values his worth as a human being. So when he first achieves fame, becomes Tokyo's new sweetheart, of course that's all going to go straight to his head. People love him. They're obsessed with him! He's going to revel in that, in the feeling of being liked and adored for the first time in his whole life.

And I think that there's always an underlying fear and bitterness, because that love is for a fake version of himself. People love the Detective Prince. They don't love Goro, and they never would, not if they knew the real him.

But all that doesn't really hit him until the public turns against him. The superficial and fickle nature of their love is abundantly clear once they all turn on him. I think it's then that Goro really starts to sour on the public and fame in general.

But of course, he still gets his self worth from what others think of him. No matter how much he wishes he didn't care what ignorant strangers think about him, on a deep level he can't quite control, he does. They hate him even as the Detective Prince. Even when he's the ideal person, even when he's erased every bit of his unlikable traits, he's still not good enough, and that hurts.

By the third semester, he's probably relieved to not have the public's eye on him any longer. He no longer has to perform the image of a perfect Detective Prince. But I think part of him probably misses it too. Misses being known and adored by strangers, misses being loved, even if it was by people who could never understand him. Which makes him hate his fame all the more, because he shouldn't miss any part of it. He shouldn't want the approval of others, he shouldn't care what anyone thinks. But of course he still does. He can't stop caring, not when he's cared for so long, when that's the only basis on which he's measured his self worth for as long as he can remember.

But he's done performing. He's done acting the perfect role of the lovable hero. Akechi is free to finally be himself. So Akechi stops trying to be liked, stops trying to be loved, and starts pushing everyone away instead. Because if he's not able to be loved, what's the point of even trying?

Goro thinks his true self is inherently unlovable. He's a failure and a murderer and there's no possible way anyone could overlook that. He thinks the only reason anyone ever liked him at all is because of his perfect fake public persona. And that's what makes Akira so incomprehensible to him. Because even when Goro drops that persona, even when he becomes the person he thinks he is--the asshole who no one could ever love--Akira still loves him. Akira sees the real Goro, and he likes him. Goro can't use his true self to push everyone away. It might work on the Phantom Thieves, but it just makes Akira love him even more.