#THE SQUAD

[uvegotafastcar]

our get along charles’ baggy pants

[suncrat]

Was looking through my old sketchbook and found this:

The sillies

[roborain]

Inktober day 6 - trek

[godisarepublican]

[vashtijoy]

inaccessible scenes: after the engine room

Many sequences in P5R are not deleted exactly—they're inaccessible. They're in game, theoretically, but game mechanics make it impossible for you ever to see them.

For instance, there are a bunch of TV shows that exist, that are presumably in game, but you can't ever get to the TV to watch them—usually because Morgana makes it impossible for you to go downstairs.

A couple of these scenes happen around the end of Shido's Palace, around the Akechi fight. Once you go into the engine room, you cannot leave until you defeat Akechi. You can't use a Goho-M, you can't take the route out. You are well and truly stuck.

Plus, once you have defeated him, the game funnels you to the Treasure, and any attempt to (say) go to a safe room will again be cockblocked by Morgana.

This means that the last two safe room meetings in Shido's Palace are never accessible. And one of them is important. Let's have a look.

We all know about the meetings—you go to the table in the safe room, you talk to the team, you ask how your progress is. They say some shit. It's usually worth a regular check-in:

The first inaccessible script appears to be triggered by entering the engine room. You get it after going in, but before fighting the Cleaner—so presumably after fighting his mooks, while you chase him about:

Morgana: We found the engine room, so all we need to do now is get our hands on the letter of introduction. Haru: It would be nice if we could avoid a fight in the process... Yusuke: Hm, given his attitude up to this point, that is highly unlikely...

The second one appears to kick in after the Akechi fight. After Akechi has given his life to save you:

Yusuke: Goro Akechi... I believe he may have been the greatest casualty of Shido's actions... Makoto: Was there no other way? Ann: We'll avenge him when we take Shido down. Come on, we have the letters now—let's do this!

"the greatest casualty of Shido's actions", huh? And it's inaccessible, of course. Leaving the engine room will warp you to the locked treasure room door. If you run to a safe room, Morgana won't let you go in. If you try afterwards, you've been updated to the "we need to send the calling card" script. You never see this.

But I'd bet money it's there. Just out of reach. Just another instance of the PTs understanding Akechi, and mourning him, rather than (say) hating him and being glad he's gone.

one more thing

Most people probably know that you can lurk mournfully by the shutters in the engine room. Nonetheless, here it is:

[hussyknee]

A foreign lobby group wielding this much influence is insane. Coupled with the fact that most journalists, students, academics, activists and artists being expelled, fired, persecuted and disproportionately penalised are BIPOC, it seems like white supremacists are using this opportunity as a concerted effort to push minorities out of every institution of influence. It's nothing less than a bipartisan attack by the white establishment on civil rights.

If y'all do not fight like hell for these people US minorities will be fucked no matter how much you vote.

[street-of-mercy]

Fallout & Cinnamon Roll Squad

[bunnymajo]

[brontios-helm]

Destiny 2: A Storm Rolling In

[homuraholic]

打了光的神圣六重奏 by 高粱Sorghum [pixiv] [twitter]

♡ reprint permission was granted by the artist. 

[t-u-i-t-c]

[thecreechurcollective]

Your eridan John sollux and equius bring me immense joy that words cannot express i love a good group of rare pairs they deserve the world

I'm glad it brings so much joy! I do enjoy drawing these dweebs together, it's a fun dynamic. They bring me a lot of joy too! :'3

[harlquinzels]

-Returning here... Who decided on that? -Oh, that's right... I have a letter from Mom.

[scaryscarecrows]

Jason wakes up to breathing and for three terrible seconds thinks, God how long has he been here what's he done to me please no--

Wait.

Wait, wait. There's multiple people, which is not unheard of but is also not typical. At least, not without chuckles. Joker's goons suck at shutting up. Okay. One point in the What the Hell box.

He's on a bed. That's point two. Decent thread count in the sheets, smells like Tide, firm-but-not-too-firm mattress. Hotel?

Everything hits him at once after that realization and he finally shudders back to reality. Gotham. Out of Gotham. Some hotel in fuck knows where. Domino's delivery. Everyone had, at some point, been watching something about the most venomous animals on the earth, but now he hears what sounds like QVC. He's curled into a ball, fingers fisted in something soft; t-shirt. Someone's got a tight grip on his sweatshirt and there's another hand flung haphazardly over his shoulder.

The deep, rusty-engine breathing a few feet behind him is Ages. The hand on his shoulder is Dylan--it's too small and tense to belong to anyone else. If he moves, it'll probably smack him out of reflex. Drouot's the one gripping his shirt; probably for the best, because it feels like if he rolls backward he'll fall. Whacking his head on the nightstand or the gross hotel floor is not something he needs right now.

He should move. Dylan's reflexes are good, but Jason's pretty sure he can untangle himself enough to disappear back to his room.

But.

S'just.

He's safe. He's comfortable enough. He's got people he trusts between him and the entrances to this room, and damn if he's not still reeling from...from, frankly, everything.

Fuck it. He has no idea what time it is, he's still knocked on his ass from Scarecrow's shit (three days, four, six? what day is it now, has he lost time again?), he's safe enough.

He curls into a tighter ball out of habit more than anything--yep, there's the smack--and sighs. To hell with it. He'll deal with the consequences later, but he's not moving.

[vashtijoy]

terms of address: maruki

I was asked how the squad refer to Maruki, so here goes.

first, the normies

Many of the cast refer to Maruki exclusively as "Dr. Maruki": 丸喜先生 Maruki-sensei. These mentions are universally in kanji.

Ann has 41 of these, and often uses sensei by itself;

Haru has 26 of these, and uses sensei alone a couple of times, during Maruki's Palace;

Makoto has 27 of these. She uses sensei alone quite often;

Yoshizawa has 41 of these total, 14 as Kasumi and 27 as Sumire. She calls Maruki just sensei often.

Noticing anything? Yeah: they're all the girls. These particular characters consistently seem to have relatively colourless and unmarked speech. This may in itself, of course, be a form of marking, since expectations around gendered speech in Japan can be so strong.

the relatively boring

Ren appears to always use "Maruki", apart from one instance very early on when an option, "Ask about the counsellor", includes Maruki-sensei. He also always uses kanji; protagonists don't have to be polite.

He calls Maruki sensei alone once, during his confidant. Kawakami gets it more often, while Takemi gets it constantly.

slightly more edgy

While Futaba always uses "Dr. Maruki", she slurs it a little, making it slangier: 丸喜せんせー Maruki-sensee. She always uses kanji for "Maruki", except in the text chat after he visits Shujin, where she's only heard his name spoken!—which is a cute detail. Occasionally she uses せんせー sensee by itself, which is distinct from her 先生 sensei meaning "a teacher".

Ryuji, again, virtually always makes it "Dr. Maruki", usually Maruki-sensei in kanji; a few mentions very early on, when they're still talking about the new counsellor guy, are just straight "Maruki". Also, in his counselling session, Ryuji almost just calls him that!—ultimately deciding to make it "Dr. Maruki":

Ryuji なあ、丸喜⋯センセーってよ、よく『変わってる』って言われね? naa, maruki... sensee tte yo, yoku "kawatteru" tte iwarene? Hey, Dr. Maru— ah, I mean, Doc. Anyone ever tell you you're kinda… not normal?

The meaning is a little lost in translation here, with Ryuji cutting from the normal form of address to a nickname. Also, in Maruki's Palace, he recognises Maruki on one of the videotapes, and starts off in hiragana before finishing in kanji. It feels a bit as if he isn't initially sure what he's seeing:

Ryuji まるき… 丸喜先生？ maruki... maruki-sensei? Maruki... Dr. Maruki?

He uses sensei by itself a couple of times, far fewer than you might expect; his "Doc" is usually either glossed in, or was originally Maruki-sensei, "Dr. Maruki".

He also uses 大先生 daisensei, "great leader/teacher/artist" etc, as a term of abuse, aimed at palace bosses such as Shido and Madarame. 獅童大先生 shidou-daisensei—"that stuck-up bastard Shido!".

the slightly outlandish...

Morgana overwhelmingly uses katakana for names, and Maruki is no exception. He talks about him a lot, always in katakana, as マルキ Maruki. He never uses any honorifics for him.

He has only one use of kanji, 丸喜 Maruki, in "will you meet with this confidant?" text, around I think rank 5, which looks like it may be a slip.

the strangely polite...

Akechi, of course, fails to grace Maruki with his title of "doctor"; he's just plain "Maruki". The localisation sometimes makes it "Dr. Maruki", but that's a gloss; Akechi never once uses sensei (or any other honorific) about him.

But he uses an honorific to Maruki, once:

That "isn't that right" is ですよね desu yo ne, which might seem startlingly polite for third semester Akechi. In fact, he's rather consistent about his masu forms to Maruki—and only to Maruki—during the third semester.

He has no uses of desu or -masu/-masen, for instance, to anyone else in the third semester. It's actually rather cute, because it makes it clear a number of his lines in the 1/2 and 1/9 Palace are directed not to Ren or Yoshizawa, as it might seem, but to Maruki.

So this looks like a sardonic little aside, and I'm sure there's a lot of that in it—"Maruki-san". But this is also the only time Akechi ever addresses Maruki by name. And since he has all these desu and -masu forms going on around Maruki, then maybe he just calls him Maruki-san, full stop.

Did I mention he's a weird boy?

...and the downright weird

That leaves us with Yusuke, who (as nobody will be surprised to hear) does his own thing that raises some fascinating possibilities.

Yusuke only appears to address Maruki by name once, when they first meet in the courtyard, and as you'd expect, he calls him sensei—丸喜拓人先生 Maruki Takuto-sensei, "You are Dr. Takuto Maruki, correct?".

But every other time Yusuke uses sensei in the script? He's referring not to Maruki, of course, but to his sensei, Madarame. That initial approach to Maruki, stranger to stranger, face to face, is the only time he uses it to anyone else.

So what does Yusuke call Maruki? He calls him 丸喜氏 Maruki-shi.

what is shi

氏 shi is a very formal and exclusively third-person term, usually seen in writing, or heard from newsreaders. It's often translated "Mr X", which can be very odd to hear in media that retains honorifics like -san and -kun; "Mr. Akechi's coming on!" is an example, from 6/10. And Akechi is, in fact, usually mentioned as Akechi-shi on the evening news.

Yusuke's Maruki-shi is universally translated as "Dr. Maruki", as if he'd just said Maruki-sensei like everyone else. Which is a little bit of a shame.

Yusuke also uses shi for one other person—the art patron Kawanabe, in his confidant, before you meet up at the sushi bar. Most of the rest of the time, before and after, Yusuke just calls Kawanabe "Kawanabe" in third-person, with no title; he pulls out a Kawanabe-san at rank 10, after he's won the contest—face to face, of course, since shi is only third-person.

On the other hand, Yusuke never mentions Maruki at all without a title.

the other time yusuke uses sensei

Okay, I lied: Yusuke has one other instance of Maruki-sensei. This, like Morgana's single lapse into kanji, is in prompt text: "Are we going to Maruki's Palace today?" Again, I think this is likely an error.

revision history

Click here for the latest version.

v1.0 (2023/12/29)—first posted.