#anyway i could go on but ill shut up

[lovesickeros]

lord its so dark in here the sahara desert of tsaritsa content you are like a shining oasis. your characterisation of her compels me & mihoyo would be hard pressed to top it imo.!! caaaaan i humbly request yr thoughts on her first meeting w a reader of any kind, or maybe even multiple kinds (sagau, sagau god au, isekai, etc) if you so desire...

it really is like a desert here. being the fan of a character we aren't getting until the last damn nation is driving me up a wall but i will persevere bc if nothing else i support morally bankrupt women in media. we r in a severe drought over here but i do my best. unfortunately nothing i say is ever coherent so pull out your translation notes its abt 2 be messy

also this got out of hand but thats bc first meetings w the tsaritsa are tricky to write + a LOT of her characterization lies in deeper exploration then just surface level yknow...NOT A DIG AT YOU this is just my excuse for rambling. gently pats the tsaritsa she can hold so much complexity i do not have the word count to delve into it completely :]

gonna talk cult au for a bit here though because that's 99% of my content. and honestly? she thrives in sub au's of the cult au like villain au + imposter au. it's basically made for her. i mean, early days, the imposter au had been going around for a little while but one of the first few ideas was the Fatui taking reader in so like. it kinda technically actually was. pretty sure cult au Tsaritsa popped up because of the imposter au. a lot of it's writers kinda left though which. man am i getting old or.

anyway.

there isn't much of a chance her first impression is all that positive. at best it's usually neutral, imo, but rarely if ever positive. specifically because i view the Tsaritsa as someone who isn't as fanatical as most of the acolytes typically are towards the creator. she's not exactly going to worship the ground you walk on unlike a certain geo lizard. which is partially why i think she thrives in the sub au's i mentioned.

imposter au, for example. she meets you at your lowest. there's no gaudy extravagance or pampering from the acolytes waiting for you because your own acolytes have turned on you. for all intents and purposes you aren't a "god" at all. which is why i don't think she meshes well with normal cult au reader. the Fatui are made up of outcasts, basically, and imposter au slots right in just perfectly. you're weak, at your lowest, when you meet the Fatui in the imposter au. and the Fatui can help you, too.

a mutual exchange, really. the Tsaritsa sees a tool she can use to one up the rest of the nations and especially Archons, and she has no qualms about you using her and the Fatui in turn. you both want something out of it, after all. whether you just want to be safe from the rest of the acolytes, or you want revenge, or whatever else..she'll give you the power to fulfill it, and she gains the strongest piece on the chessboard when all is said and done.

the best way i can describe the first meeting is "practical", i suppose. she sees an opportunity in you. the ultimate gamble. because if she "saves" you, and you dont trust anyone else because they tried to kill you, well..she holds all the cards, doesn't she?

but the Tsaritsa, imo, is just as capable of being just as fanatical towards you as anyone else. she just won't worship you as the creator. but as yourself? clawing your way back to your divine power and taking back what belongs to you? the Tsaritsa is, to me, a character who's character flourishes in long-term fics more because she changes a LOT between "just met reader" and after having been with reader for some time. she's practically apathetic at the beginning but a lot of her character, in my characterization, shines through LONG after the first meeting.

[m00ngbin]

TFS TUESDAY!!! (WEDNESDAY??)

[milksteakkk]

sweet fluffy treebros is great nd everything and i could totally see it but also. i think they should be a teeny bit horribly toxic

[ganondoodle]

I'm really sorry that Zelda has burned you out. I can be excited with reserved expectations, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sad that the bar for those expectations had to drop so low. Zelda is such a beautiful franchise with potential that feels like it gets less and less tapped every entry.

Between Ganondorf in Totk and the live-action Zelda (I hate it here), I feel like I can only get so excited for a Zelda thing before I wait for the multiple other shoes to drop.

I guess this is one part "I'm sorry" and one part "I can kinda relate, and I wanted to vent"

To end on a positive note I've always been a huge fan of your art and you're unique depictions of divinity are genuinely fucking inspiring.

yeah, its both sad and kinda scary ... like i didnt think anything could disappoint me so hard it would make me this wary and bored of anything they do, though i was afraid of it, and yet here we are

its not just that i feel like the bar is lower than ever, i also feel like ... i dont want to invest time and thought into soemthing they might have never actually cared about? like botw made me so damn invested in its lore and world and totk just dropped it all so hard that i feel afraid to care about anything (new) zelda related

i still love the titles up to botw, i still like the franchise and care deeply about all the fanworks and stories and lore, but i cant lie, totk did damage that and any trust i had into them being able to tell stories "Zelda is such a beautiful franchise with potential that feels like it gets less and less tapped every entry." a sad cheer to that :,)

im not gonna talk about it any further, i dont wanna morph into a true notorious complainer tm- just gonna watch others play it but unless they actually pull something interesting off (which i doubt doubly so since its zelda as the played character..) i dont think im gonna do anything with it, so, sorry on that end

and thank you! it means alot to hear people enjoy what i do, no matter how annoying i can be xD and in this day and age where its harder and harder to reach anyone, or stay "relevant" for that matter especially bdksskjlvnfxdl

anyway, i wont stop working on any of my zelda projects any time soon :3 mainly thanks to the people like you, who can find worth in what i do even if i might doubt it! <3

[megumi-fm]

.

[samarecharm]

geniunely not trying to put words in ur mouth im geniunely asking: what do you actually like about persona 5? from all ur rants im just wondering why you didnt drop the game bc it seems (again, im not trying to put words in ur mouth) that it simply not for you? i geniunely have not felt any of the issues you bring up outside of the writing ones and i cannot tell if i'm just easily pleased and not good at discerning what a good game is or we simply have dif things we enjoy in a video game. i hate getting tone across text but im asking out of geniune curiosity im not trying to attack your opinion (;-;)

Nah, i dont feel like ur attacking me, and I hope u dont feel the same when u see my complaints! Lmao. In my defense, I am replaying the game for the first time after completing my first file back in 2020, so alot of the faults i kinda shrugged off in my first playthrough are now glaringly in my face now that I no longer have the confusion and interest in learning the main story to keep me occupied. The game is clunky all the way through, and at some times, even frustratingly so.

But despite that, i do like this game. Alot! Its probably one of my top games ever if im being honest!

This ended up way longer than I intended, so im putting it under a readmore to keep the post short on dashboards

If i had to describe what I liked about the game in the simplest way imaginable…I think I would say, I like how the game makes me feel :) I like the music. I like the vibe. I like the immersion from city to city, and I like the premise! I like the characters and I like the connections you make with these characters! As im replaying this game, i am most excited to see Akira and his comments about the world :) i like hearing everyones voices, I like their little interactions in Mementos, and I like seeing them fight!

P5 is the first game I played in the series; its the game that introduced me to SMT in the first place! And it (smt) is a series that my longtime best friend LOVES and never thought hed be able to share with me! It is a game i keep very near to my heart; it has influenced me in ways i did not think would happen in the short couple of years since i first finished it. It genuinely keeps me awake some nights thinking about the world this game has created, and I think that is a testament to the impact its had, be it good or bad.

The joke about wishing theyd make a persona game that was Good is that despite all of its numerous flaws, the games manage to snatch your attention and pull you in anyway. Imagine if they made a game that had all of those things that i mentioned I loved, but done Right and executed Properly?? Where I got to have a story that made sense and didnt need to be spoonfed to me (in like an HOUR of dialogue and scenes; an HOUR!), and characters that talked and bonded beyond the tiny snippets of interaction theyre allowed to have in mementos? Combat that let me use PERSONAS i liked instead of BUILDS that stop me from getting instakilled throughout the entirety of the endgame, and a Persona building mechanic that didnt feel like I was shooting in the dark looking for possible fusions that end up not even being useful in the endgame.

Ive mentioned it before, but I complain so much bc I have seen what a good p5 game looks like, and its Strikers almost to a T. Combat is still your typical warriors-esque style combat, but it is at least different from the turn based strategy of the main game. Characters talk to each other freely, they hang out and comfort each other in a way that feels more connected that the base game. Strikers implements the ability to see ALL possible fusions with ALL registered personas, not just the ones in your Stock, so you can fuse easily without having yo consult a guide. The story feels like it makes SENSE with antagonists that feel morally grey and sympathetic. Genuinely, alot of the complaints for p5 I had were almost immediately rectified in this game.

But please also know that the praises I sing for this game is only bc of the groundwork laid by p5 and the world it created. Thats what I like about this game, that it had such a captivating premise and cast of characters, that a DIFFERENT company was able to hit the ground running with them. P5 had alot happening in that game, but i think what it had most was potential. The effort put into this game is astronomical, and the possible connections you can outright MISS if u arent paying attention was worth the money and time to implement; even if it meant that it could be considered a waste of resources to higher ups.

Books and games and part time jobs???!! Silly little cutscenes that add nothing to the game PLOTwise, but define and flesh out the personality of your protagonist. There was alot of love put into this game, and its evident by the fact that we have NOT seen a new persona game released; they bank on existing titles bc they are unwilling to make a game like this from scratch again. They dont want to ‘waste’ resources on good voice acting and a complex, overarching story; they dont want to waste money on scenes a player may never see, on routes a player may never get to experience. Making a game that gives u even the slightest bit of freedom means more money in programming and detailing that freedom. This has been an issue for a WHILE, and its a miracle that the gaming landscape had space for a colossal title like p5!

I complain bc I want better, and I do not think that is inherently at odds with my love of this game. In b4 im told to get good; ive played on hard and tested out merciless (its NOT fun, im making godbuilds again and its boring 😞). Its not the most accessible turnbased rpg; theres no colorblind modes, and the affinity system is convoluted and overwhelming. Combo moves are hard to keep track of and it can be incredibly frustrating to see your turns being skipped or seeing characters take extreme technical damage without understanding WHY it happened. The fact that they KNEW the game was desperate for qol improvements by the time royal came out, and instead of updating the base game to have those improvements too, they just pushed the royal edition out for people to play instead. It sucks! Customers and fans deserve better than being forced to shell out money for a game they already played !

As the gaming climate gets more and more hostile and unbearable, I think it is good to look at your games critically, and understand why products come out subpar. Persona 5 is a fun game that has a nice cast and an interesting premise, but it is ultimately tied down by its refusal to build on existing building blocks regarding its combat, and it insists on having insulting and downright out of character dialogue and scenes to appease the audience its designed to be targeted to. It is easy to forget sometimes that queer ppl are infact NOT the prime target of these games, its cishet gamer bros from aged 16 to 40 who will laugh at homophobic comments, who drool over a 16 yr old girl with a 16 yr old mindset and a grown womans body, who need to be placated with constant sexual comments to deal with a convoluted story that will inevitably make zero sense until its laid out for you before the literal end of the game.

Its bad. Its good. Its so shallow and its unbelievable that they thought having the plot twist make ZERO sense until they showed CUTSCENES of YOUR character discussing Goro and his connections to the metaverse for endgame SHOCK VALUE was more important than just having your team be smart and piece it together over time. Its shit. Its literally amazing. It let you FUCK your teacher ??????????????what the FUCK. They also let me shoot a god in the face w the best looking ult persona in the world so i can ignore that shit. And ultimately that is how i got through the game. Lol.

[anshiel]

It’s weird to argue over ships in 2023, going to amy rose ship tag and seeing arguments

but also, girls we need to unite against the true enemy, people who hate on Amy Rose STILL

[fvneralhouse]

really quick adding a big space here because idfk how i would tage this

TW/CW: uhh big robot centipede

their name is hal and they are the nicest robot ever they love people

fun fact: hal can extend its body to be 10x longer (they are quite big)

(art by me (gutshops), any characters shown owned by pynn (cattrucks/cultcats))

[cryolyst]

~

[kyuala]

SOOOOOO hard to go through everyday life trying to ignore the never-ending feeling that im just irreparably fucked up and therefore should just give up on everything

[lycankeyy]

Grggrgg I hope. For the few people who do read that fic (I assume more people might go back to it since the context is important for an rgb-centric thing lmao). That it's really obvious that Nene is 100% not in her right mind and having an extremely severe trauma episode. Obviously that doesn't make what she did okay or what she tried to do okay, but like. Idk. She is deserving of understanding and care

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[running-in-the-dark]

help I can't stop thinking about furniture. it's keeping me from thinking about the other way more important things I need to be thinking about (Jenkins, Dan Fielding, etc.)

[todayisafridaynight]

i was playing about dropping Fifty Drawings onto everyone's dashboard this week but the unfortunate reality is i am in fact being assaulted with images

[netscapenavigaytor]

me smiling serenely: i love house of leaves but i understand that its an incredibly difficult book to get into and is really, REALLY not for everyone, and johnny truant's... everything can make like half the book difficult to get through if you don't IMMEDIATELY click with his character

some complete stranger minding their business: house of leaves kinda sucks and johnny truant ruined the book. just skip his parts

me, crying screaming throwing up etc.: SHUT UP...... SHUT UP.............. LEAVE ME OLONE

[infizero]

im genuinely going to be INSUFFERABLE when chapters 3 and 4 come out like you have no idea.