#Persona 5 ROYAL

[mafuwara]

Fem!shuake on a picnic date for an art trade I did with @ore-kitsune !! Thank you for doing this with me ♡

[golfishwiththebigeyes]

May not be the most popular opinion since they’re considered pretty overtly romantic, but this is shuake to me

“whatever the fuck these two characters had going on” is a vastly underrated character dynamic

[poichanchan]

persona 5 cast in a metaphor au....

[kitukun]

doodley boodley, in the fes artstyle kinda.

I also fucked ryuji up shhhh

[uncleasriel]

I recently got that ending, and I'm honestly curious about how he got there.

My take on Akechi was always that he was resistent to Maruki's world because of his untreated trauma, and he viewed the world through a sense of epistemic masochism - the Truth Hurts, and so we know something is True because it Hurts.

That alone fascinated me - out of all the characters in the Phantom Thieves, with so many intellectually and emotionally intelligent people, only Akechi was not seduced by paradise. Both to see him, and the people around him, enjoying life was fundamentally wrong for him. He was unable to accept Maruki's world. Sumire easily gave in when faced with her past. Joker had Trickster Powers shielding him from Maruki's Demiurge bullshit. But Akechi? The power of a nascent god was no match for his fundamental belief that life was meant to be painful.

So...when Joker surrenders to Maruki, and agrees to accept his vision of the world, Akechi is left alone. A black hound, abandoned by all, snarling at a world that promised kindness.

What could Maruki say or do to him that could make Akechi accept happiness was something he deserved?

The bits in the post-decision world where he came up showed him as closer to his Detective Prince persona, a slightly posh but ultimately accepted member of his group - embracing a personality that all pre-Third Semester adventured demonstrated was explicitly a lie he created to help survive the world's demands, and something that he explicitly rejected as not an authentic self. It was fun to see him goof about with the other Phantom Thieves like a normal teenager, but after seeing him in Shido's and Maruki's Palaces, could I as a player really accept that false self as genuinely him? Could Akechi?

What could Maruki say or do to him that could make Akechi find this false persona reflected his actual self?

I seriously wondered if that version of him we see in that ending was actually him,or Cognitive Being made manifest. Sumire became her dead sister, because she wished it to escape the pain of guilt. I couldn't see Akechi ever wish to cease being himself and brought under another's control - I'd sooner imagine he'd kill himself, or die trying to kill Maruki (and fail make Maruki feel guilty about having to do that in self-defense, while trying to manipulate Joker's memories to not witness the benevolent Maruki killing someone Joker still valued).

I do think there's a lot to be said about how many of the characters are willing to delude themselves to find a happiness that they've long been denied by the world. Ryuji without an injured leg, Ann and Shiho having a lovely time, Futaba enjoying her mom and Dad and Joker sharing a home with Mona, etc. But I couldn't see Third Semester Akechi accepting that. It's interesting that Maruki removed some people's memories and trauma for that to take place...but I never see Akechi ever accept that.

Something I think about a lot with Maruki's perfect reality thing in terms of Akechi is how like, defanged he is for lack of a better term. I know Maruki's actual reasoning for things like that is just that his perfect reality removes a lot of the trauma from people, so they would inherently act differently, but to me it ends up just pushing the idea of "you can't be happy the way that you are"

It's reflected in a lot of the characters honestly, since a lot of their trauma didn't happen or is covered up by the reality none of them are themselves. Aspects of their personality caused by the hardships they faced no longer exist

Sumire is also a big example of this. I could talk a lot about Sumire but in relation to this topic, again her perfect reality being one where she is not herself (literally) and doesn't have any of the past trauma or experiences that made her who Sumire is just pushes that idea even more, not even getting into how it also reinforces her own negative ideas about herself by Maruki doing that

In the perfect reality, Akechi and Sumire are both different people than who they actually are, so it's really not a reality in which they are happy, is it? "You're too broken of a person to ever be happy while being who you are" is the message that gets sent across to me, whether or not Maruki intended that

Sumire is Kasumi now, a happy and determined person who isn't bitter and angry and overwhelmed with grief about the death of her sister, a person who doesn't hate herself and a person who doesn't have those experiences. Someone who now never has the chance to explore who she really is and grow and face her struggles head on, someone who will never get to learn that she is worth more than she grew up believing, replaced by the sister who she always felt was better then her

Akechi is now a cheerful and kind person, a reflection of his Detective Prince act, who is no longer resentful and lonely, no longer traumatized from all the actions he had to take throughout his life and someone who could've found happiness if he just had more time. Someone who had people who accepted the parts of him that would make most view him as unworthy of affection, the less palatable person who longed for someone to want him, as he is, replaced by a version of him that's seen as easier to love

[dullorangepulp]

"Would you care for some coffee?"

[ore-kitsune]

Heyo!

Royal trio for my art trade with @mafuwara !!! Also and extra with her Oc, Hayden!!!!

Thank you for all the patience and for doing this art trade with me! ♡♡♡♡

[stab3ry]

red duo comm

[golfishwiththebigeyes]

started ruminating on fem Sojiro and got carried away

[may-lutlone]

here's a quick sketchy comic for my simple take on accomplice au, explained here: x

so sorry it's like this, but usually don't do comics. at all 😭😭😭

And I am too busy/lazy to do it in a proper app or something, so I used pencils and ink hdjdnfkfm

Also, transcription, if somebody can't decipher my writing (don't worry, I sometimes cannot do that either)

Akechi: You were hesitant.

Joker: What do you mean.

Akechi: You were hesitant. I ordered you to scare them off. By shooting warning shots. And you didn't do it.

Joker: They were harmless, so I didn't want to waste-

Akechi: You know them, don't you?

Joker has a flashback here from the previous timeline.

Akechi: So? Who are they?

Joker: Just... People from my school. I realized it... there.

Akechi: Well, that makes it easier. Your current task is to stop them from entering Metaverse. Whether it is going to be via persuasion or threats is up to you. And go to sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow.

Joker: sure...

[hifugoro]

Akechi’s wild card status is a highly debated topic but I personally like to believe that he could very well recruit more personas like ren does except the thought of talking to shadows like they’re human never even occurred to him. Like if he reacted the way he did to makoto talking to saes shadow he probably thinks talking to non-palace-ruler ones is flat out nonsensical. The first time ren just starts casually conversing with a shadow like he’s trying to catch it with a friendship pokeball and actually succeeds in front of him akechi goes quiet for a considerable amount of time because He Did Not Know that was a thing. A thing he probably could have been doing the entire time and probably would have made things way easier. And he never even attempts it himself out of pure spite

[venusflitrap]

:>

some keychain designs i made a monthish ago of the guys during the third semester :D

i only had the time to make akira akechi and futaba before i got stressed abt shipping n time n stuff so it’s only them three lol

[fish-and-sticks]

reality isnt what it seems..

some art for that one nightmare/dream joker has before royal!

[faeriedoodles]

✏️ Scribbles

[jupiter-rin]

I ended up finishing Akechi Goro chibi today! My persona arts recieve so much attention in this platform <3 <3 <3 I got super motivated to continue drawing persona!!