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marasschino · 2 months ago

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hello! you said to ask about your femadachi thoughts and I would love to hear! when I've considered this, I wonder if she still kills people and if her victims would be men instead or a mix of men and women lol. also wonder who specifically. like she still sees mayumi on the midnight channel first considering everyone sees mayumi first but I'm wondering if she would feel inclined to do anything about that or not... much to consider...

before I start. uh obvious spoilers for p4 lol.

tbh I hadn't thought much about how different the situation or possibly even the different victims adachi would have as a woman before you asked. I'm a sucker for focusing on the changes in relationships first when I do genderbends of characters bc I like inspecting how people act w each other and being a woman would definitely affect adachi's relationships in this case (cough cough work place sexism cough but also nanako). but after giving it much thought I can say with like 83% confidence that I think fem adachi would still kill mayumi and saki. the catch? she's doing this specifically bc namatame becomes her proverbial lab rat she's torturing in the maze that is inaba and she likes the idea of being judge, jury, and eventually executioner for a man she thinks has proved that he is worse garbage then most men are. this is my thesis and I will explain in a long ass essay (under the cut) like the nerd I am.

to start I also wanna add the context that I agree w the tags you left on my art that fem adachi wouldn't be a misanthrope she is a misandrist and internalized misogynist (she's definitely been a misogynist for longer tho). also while she definitely doesn't like mayumi and didn't really have much an opinion on saki, they don't get pushed in the tv bc adachi was coming onto them, but rather bc one of her motives will not pass the bechdel test.

for mayumi in canon adachi calls her out to try and make her feel bad/punish her for being a home wrecker in a things are getting adult rated way, but for fem adachi she is doing it in a women hating women way. Obviously, I think mayumi would be way less standoffish to adachi here, and is like, "oh women that aren't taken seriously gang haha I appreciate a woman reaching out to support me??" until adachi is on mayumi's ass with, "fuck female solidarity. why, as a woman, are you so stupid and dense to let a man be the reason your life is ruined? you aren't taken seriously mayumi-san? oh, its because you threw your life in the trash for some stupid man who thought he could have his cake and eat it too. you give a bad name to women (like me) who actually try to make it in this world." obviously things get heated and mayumi gets scared, then oops! tv push! uh oh!

considering the lack of respect adachi would have for mayumi, she doesn't feel bad about pushing mayumi into the tv at all. as if it's like she gets to punish this woman for having an affair, and later when mayumi is found dead, its like punishing namatame for having an affair by killing his mistress.

for a brief sideline into man killing, once mayumi is found dead adachi probably briefly considers throwing namatame into the tv when she can get his hands on him, especially when she hears about how much this dude genuinely loved mayumi. it makes adachi sick to think that this dude had everything on a silver platter (in her pov) and STILL cheated as if he didn't have enough. but then she probably finds out namatame lost his wife, his job, any public servant opportunities, destroyed his reputation, AND adachi herself got to kill his mistress, and she thinks, "huh. maybe this dude will suffer more if he's actually gotta live with the consequences of his actions all alone. death is the easy way out for him. and if suffering alive is not good enough I'll do something about it later. (:"

so this is where saki comes in. obviously adachi still questions her bc she saw mayumi's body etc, but when she calls saki in a second time for questioning its probably to actually 100% confirm everything (at first) bc adachi here is a woman detective at an office with mostly men who do not take her seriously whatsoever (this also adds to the fact that I think fem adachi is definitely more of a workaholic then adachi in canon but not too relevant here yet). while going thru everything they went over in the first questioning saki brings up namatame and adachi is so all ears. saki says something about how he mentioned the midnight channel and he was being creepy, and adachi's first gut reaction is namatame is a freak (negative) for talking to a teenage girl, and the more she keeps badgering saki about it she realizes something.

namatame thinks he can save saki from being killed bc he saw her on the midnight channel.

now adachi cooks up a wonderful idea: what better way to make a man like him suffer then to keep making him feel like he's failing people who show up on the midnight channel? and adachi? well, she's a strong woman that isn't afraid of a little collateral damage for the sake of cruel and unusual punishment used on a man. even if the collateral damage is a whole teenage girl.

sometimes when adachi thinks too hard about it she probably feels some guilt about saki, but she justifies that by telling herself the girl was already a workaholic, she was struggling, facing the perils of rumors about her being a pathetic and easy girl (cough cough adachi is projecting cough). death was an easy way out for a girl like that. early on she tells herself she gave saki some kind of mercy killing, but the closer adachi gets to losing it near endgame she sheds any guilt she may have had about it and wholeheartedly believes that death was a better avenue for saki and it was necessary to ruin namatame (and by this point also to fuck with narukami bc whatever they got goin on is fucking weird). (a mildly relevant sidenote for saki's death: I'm not a yosuke hater, but fem adachi sure is)

regarding other possible victims, do I think adachi would kill anyone else by pushing them into the tv herself? hm probably not. Not bc she doesn't want to, or didn't derive some satisfaction or perceived usefulness out of the first two, but bc I see adachi as an opportunist killer. any version of adachi is smart as hell despite being a piece of shit, and although fem adachi would have no qualms about eventually killing namatame once he was no longer fun to mess with, getting more premeditated might leave more room for error in her eyes, specifically once she convinced namatame to kidnap people on the midnight channel. once namatame is kidnapping people she knows that means she would have to get to whoever shows on the midnight channel before he does, which is too much of a hassle. also killing someone who wasn't on the midnight channel means she would inadvertently break the pattern of the first two even if the body would be found in the same state. it could also discourage namatame, and if someone realizes the break in the pattern AND if anybody gets caught, authorities might realize there are two murderers AKA it's too risky. the other reason is it's a very tight window for adachi to kill anyone else anyway bc once yukiko is thrown in, anyone thrown in after that might get saved by the IT.

she still throws in mitsuo tho and that was probably her favorite tv toss. that kid definitely pissed her off more then mayumi, for obvious reasons, and (with the exception of narukami) I think fem adachi has a special hatred in her heart reserved for teenage boys.

for fem adachi, she is perfectly satisfied having her little rat namatame run around thinking he's playing hero and causing an absolute mess, she loves ruining a man's life <3 she also doesn't mind knowing dojima is getting put thru the ringer while they're at work, and once she realizes narukami's involved she is interested in seeing what he does bc she's got a weird thing about narukami that's way too much explaining here (but its definitely still got to do with her projecting her issues w men onto him btw). adachi's also enjoying it for the exact same reason as in canon as well. its fun to her, a miserable workaholic who hates her job and the town she lives in.

lastly, I want to thank you for the ask!! I love getting to talk about stuff like this. it's the highlight of my week, and if you personally have other thoughts to share about fem adachi, man I'd love to hear em. this goes for anyone by the way. come scream at me please. here's bonus art for making it to the bottom of this:

#persona 4 #tohru adachi #asks #oh my god this turned out way longer then i thought #i didnt even get to her relationships w the dojima family which is one of the first things i thought about w fem adachi #for another day perhaps #if its any consolation nanako calls adachi “tohru-nee”. I'll leave that for somone to think about #and for the me of the future to explain.#also fem adachi does NOT fuck with yosuke. she doesnt fuck with marie either. not bc of the misogyny but bc of some third other thing #im leaving breadcrumbs in these tags and should shut up o7 I've yapped enough #ok one more breadcrumb but fem adachi really doesnt fuck w teddie #the amount of times she could've lost it in front of the IT bc of the bear...#femadachi

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godsfavoritescientist · 1 year ago

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Building off of what I wrote in my fic "Sparks," I'm really compelled by the idea of Ford genuinely no longer being interested in sailing around in a boat with Stan by the time they were seniors in high school.

I like the idea of it not being just a symptom of the resentment that had been building between them, nor it being a dream of Ford's that only paled in comparison to west coast tech, but it being a genuine loss of interest on Ford's end. I think it complicates things even further in some really juicy ways.

Like, imagine going through high school slowly losing more and more interest in the dream you've shared with your twin and only friend ever since you were little kids. How do you break it to him? How do you explain it to him without making it sound like a rejection of him? Without it making him hate you?

How do you explain it without it feeling like a spit in the face to all the hard work he's put into a plan that started out as a way of him comforting you by telling you "it doesn't matter what people say about you, you're going to be an adventurer who sails away into the sunset and never has to hear their mockery ever again, and there will be babes and treasure and heroism, and then they'll all see how cool you really are!"

And all through high school you think to yourself, "he's going to move on to more realistic dreams any day now, and then I won't have to say anything about it!" But no matter how many times you mention something else he could do with his life that he seems interested in, or bring up the challenging logistics of traveling around long-term in a boat, he sounds just as committed to the childhood dream as ever, and completely oblivious to how apprehensive you sound.

So resentment grows, little by little. Because that's easier than confronting the soul-crushing levels of guilt that are building up inside of you, every time you don't take an opportunity to tell him you don't want to do the plan anymore. You don't have a single person in your life who modeled how to have difficult conversations for you. As far as you know, having this conversation with Stan would crush him into tiny little pieces and then he would hate you forever, and you can't stand the idea of losing the only friend you've ever had.

So tensions grow. A lack of interest turns into a bitter resentment that, if you were really being honest with yourself, is directed more at yourself than it is at Stan.

And then the falling-out happens, and it seems like you were proven right. Stan hates you now, and he's never going to forgive you for giving up on his dream. But two can play that game, so you try to hate him too. Because if you hate him too, then maybe it won't hurt as much that he never came back. That he never even turned up at school, or by the boat, or in through your bedroom window in the middle of the night. He knows what dad's like, and how he says impulsive exaggerated things when he's angry, and haven't you both dealt with his harsh words countless times before and been able to dust yourselves off and joke about it later? So why isn't he back at home, joking with you about how absurd your dad acted that night, being impossible and belligerent about ruining your dream, but at least now you're even, because you've ruined his dream too.

And now imagine you find out he risked the lives of everyone in existence to bring you back, right after you had accepted your fate was to die killing Bill. It would be terrifying and confusing and infuriating. If he cared so much, why didn't he do something to reconnect with you sooner? Why did he ignore you in favor of trying to make it big without you? Why didn't he take the infinitely safer and simpler action of reaching out to you without you having to track down his address and send a desperate plea for help? You were convinced that he didn't care enough to bother with you unless you had an important enough reason for him to come. But even then, he thought your plans were stupid. He didn't want anything to do with you, not even with the world at stake.

Did he save your life out of guilt? Does he pity you that much? It doesn't add up with what he did in the decade leading up to shoving you into the portal. And the dissonance between the version of him in your head that hates you, and the man who held out his arms to welcome you back to your home dimension, is so strong that you feel like you're being lied to again, like you're back in the depths of gaslighting and manipulation that Bill put you through, even though there's no way that's what Stan is trying to do... right? You can't figure it out, so you run away from it. You don't want to know the answer to whether or not Stan hates you, because you don't know which answer would hurt more, so you try to make him hate you more than ever, because at least then you would know for sure how he feels.

And in the end, after he sacrifices his memories for you, and for the world, things seem clearer. The layers upon layers of confusion and anger and hurt seem to have washed away like drawings in the sand, leaving behind the simple truth: that you two had an argument, and didn't move past it for forty years, and despite everything you put each other through, you both still want to re-connect.

So you sail away in a boat together.

And at first, it's wonderful. It's exactly what you want. It feels like an apology to Stan, and a thank-you for saving the world, and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to heal the rift between you two, and it's good to be back on earth, and you wonder why you ever doubted the dream you two once had.

But then, after the first long journey you spend on the sea together, when you get back home to dry land, Stan is already talking about planning your next adventure out on the open sea. He recaps every adventure you had on the first trip, over and over again, and he wants to chat with you all through the morning and long into the night, and you don't have the words to explain to yourself that you don't have enough social battery for this, and suddenly you're slipping back into the horrifyingly familiar feeling of Stan being overbearing and needing space from him and how could you think that? How could you think that about him after everything he's done for you and everything he's forgiven you for? But the longer this goes on, the more you realize that you still don't want to spend the rest of your life sailing around with Stan. It's great fun in moderation, but the idea of your whole life revolving around Stan and going on adventures with Stan and being in a boat with Stan with no time to be by yourself thinking about your own things and figuring out your own dreams makes your skin crawl with a claustrophobic kind of panic that you still don't know how to put into words forty years after the first time this feeling grabbed you by the throat and ruined your friendship with Stanley.

But the first time this happened, it nearly ruined his life forever. You can't let yourself feel this. You don't feel this. You're happy to spend the rest of your life fulfilling Stan's lifelong dream, and making up for the time you crushed his dream, and sure, maybe he crushed your dream once too, and maybe it would be nice for him to support your dreams like you're now doing for him, but you can't say that. He saved the universe, and it would be horrible and ungrateful and cruel for you to try to voice these feelings, especially when you don't know how to voice your feelings without it making other people feel like you twisted a knife into their gut. So you try to pretend the feeling isn't there.

You go out on a boat with Stan again. You planned out another incredible journey together, and this should be fun, and you should be happy about this, but the unspoken feeling you shoved as far down in yourself as it could possibly go is eating you alive. The worst part? Stan is starting to notice. You have never been good at hiding your emotions. The trick to it has always been to convince yourself you don't feel it at all, and not think about it, and that has always worked like a charm. But whenever the emotion claws its way back up to the forefront of your mind, you can tell Stan knows something is wrong. So you can't even give him the happy ending he deserves. You can't even convince him that you want to be here on the open seas forever with him, like he deserves. And you keep trying and trying to hide it, but Stan keeps asking in roundabout ways, like "You're being awfully quiet, sixer," and "whats that look on your face?" and eventually it comes exploding out of you like a shaken-up soda bottle dropped on its cap.

And then it's like you're back at home in New Jersey again, standing in the living room while dad grabs Stanley by the shirt. It all comes pouring out of you, in the worst possible way, with the worst possible phrasing, like a pandora's box of monstrousness, and Stan tries to fight back against the sting of your words, but you're made out of acid and you're burning through him and you can see it on his face, and there's never any coming back from this, not this time, you'll just have to either jump into the ocean or become a monster forever, so Stan can hate you more easily again, and-

-and at the end of the outburst, you're still on a boat in the middle of nowhere in the ocean with your brother, in dangerous waters, and you have things to do to keep the boat running smoothly.

You can't run away from him. He can't run away from you. You're stuck here for at least a couple more weeks, even if you turned around and sailed back towards shore right away.

And the thing that compels me so much here, despite how unbelievably angsty it all is, is that it sets up a situation wherein the Stans might end up forced to actually address the decades of resentment and confusion and wanting-to-reconnect-throughout-it-all that they thought they could gloss over and heal with enough time spent adventuring together on a boat. They might end up forced to actually address the crux of the issue that drove them apart in the first place: Ford wanting a little more space to feel like his own person, and to feel like he's able to have his own dreams, too.

It wouldn't happen easily, nor right away, but if they were stuck together on a little boat in the middle of nowhere surrounded by magical creatures they have to protect each other from in order to make it back home alive, then after they had one fight where they brought up all the things they silently agreed to never bring up again, it would probably happen many more times, and each time it would leave them both angrier at each other than ever, until eventually something honest slipped through amidst all the saying-anything-except-what-they-mean bickering. And once enough of these honest moments slipped through, then they would have a thread to tug on to start to unravel the gargantuan knot of their decades of unresolved conflicts.

And then, eventually, maybe Stan could learn that he can have a good friendship with his brother without needing to be glued to him at the hip, and Ford needing a certain amount of alone time doesn't mean he dislikes him or wants to abandon him, and Ford could learn that he can be honest and have a meaningful connection with someone without it driving them away and making them hate him.

#succumbed to the stan twins angst visions and wrote 2000 words about this #ford pines #ford meta #this turned into a character analysis that almost reads like a fic #godswriting #<- i need to change my writing tag to this #something bothers me a little bit about the solution to their conflict being 'ford appreciates stan more now so he is now fine with-#-boat adventures with stan'. to me it leaves the initial conflict of 'he doesnt want to do that anymore' unresolved #obviously you could easily argue that ford never stopped wanting to go on boat adventures with stan and he just couldnt justify it to-#-himself when compared to the opportunity at west coast tech. but that has one less layer of conflict #compared to the possibility that he truly was not interested in boat adventures anymore. ESPECIALLY if its a manifestation of him #feeling suffocated by the whole dynamic-twins-duo thing #its normal to start wanting a little bit more space especially at that age. to want to have space to figure out who you are #the healthy thing would have been them talking about it and figuring out a compromise. like 'when ford needs space he can spend a few hours #-alone without stan being worried the whole time that it means ford hates him' and 'we still spend x amount of time working on the boat and #-we still chat on the way to and from school every day and hang out at the beach on weekends'#like of fucking course it was never about hating stan or about wanting to get away from him because of who he is as a person!#he literally just wanted to have a little bit of breathing room to be his own separate person. he just didn't know how to put it into words #I really think the crux of it all was them not knowing how to navigate that balance between independence and identity while staying close #so ford misattributing/reducing that feeling to 'I dont have the exact same dream as stan anymore. why does he still have that dream. oh no #feels like a good way of giving that conflict a tangible aspect to it thats easy for the stans to point at and talk about as a way of-#-alluding to the REAL core of the conflict between them.#and of course the show never says 'they sail around the world for the rest of their lives 24/7' so it's not like it Actually Conflicts with #-my interpretation of the conflict and how it should be resolved. but since its the last thing we see happen between them when theyre given #their happy ending. I feel compelled to say 'hey I know them living in the shack together and traveling in a boat every single year sounds-#-really fun and like a satisfying ending but I think they should have a Little Bit more space from eachother than that. Hanging out almost-#-daily but not literally being in the same house and same boat for the rest of their lives. bc if stan was ok with ford asking for that-#-little bit of space and if ford didnt panic and isolate himself from everyone whenever he needs like one hour of alone time? that would-#-feel like a big piece of the puzzle fitting into place for their conflict resolution and growth as characters. to me #and I think they deserve to have all the tied-up-loose-ends and resolved-conflicts and character-growth in the world.

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