#don't think i'll do this next year

[aniseandspearmint]

*makes a small batch of turkey*

*makes sides*

*remembers exactly how much i DON'T LIKE roasted turkey as i take the first bite*

*sigh*

why do i NEVER remember this? I like turkey as a lunch meat, but otherwise? meh

i will have forgotten this again by next year probably

[deathricedrawn]

i'm ready to try

[yunyin]

What a year it's been! Not a ton of personal work but I feel like that's starting to swing back around, at least in my head!

Template here

[vargaslovinghours]

And never let you go ♥

Bonus without the overspill lighting:

[stairset]

I think the portrayal of Spider-Man 2099 in Across the Spider-Verse is in-character in that aside from like Shattered Dimensions he's always been portrayed as a bit of an asshole who slips into anti-hero territory at times and generally has a "needs of the many over the needs of the few" mindset and given his specific circumstances in the movie it's not unreasonable to think he could take the actions he does. However it does kinda suck that since like 99% of moviegoers had no idea who he was before the movie came out their first impression of him is when he's in an antagonistic role and people think "antagonist" and "villain" are synonyms so now I'm gonna have to listen to people who've never read a comic saying he's a villain or isn't a real Spider-Man for the rest of time or at least until he inevitably changes his mind in the third one.

[blujayonthewing]

pitched battle inside my brain between the part of me that's desperately shaking myself by the shoulders going "YOU HAVE GOT TO ACTUALLY LIVE THE KIND OF LIFE YOU IMAGINE INSTEAD OF JUST SITTING AROUND IMAGINING IT UNTIL YOU DIE!!" and the part of me that's clutching my face going "is this allowed? is this allowed?? is this allowed???"

[skunkes]

if life is categorized by Before Loss and After Loss then I exist in the before but with a countdown to the after. and the countdown is always always present and debilitating. the loss will be debilitating too but i cant help myself. i will always suffer twice.

[desertduality]

who was gonna tell me i've been writing ad astra for eleven months. what.

[rindomness]

hello hi tell us about mementos and the security level

OH HELLO. Welcome to my personal hill to die on. This post is long. It's one of my out-loud rants in text form. Sorry in advance. There's a cut down there somewhere.

Thesis statement of whatever's about to come next is that Mementos fucks actually as a concept its execution was just horrible and also Yaldabaoth is a terrible final boss. OKAY LET'S GET INTO IT

First things first I really do think Mementos should have gotten a security level. The game plays "Mementos is the public's Palace" very straight, all the way to the end, insisting that Yaldabaoth is created by the public's desire for a status quo yadda yadda yadda. So like. Here's the screenshots actually

I didn't get the whole conversation mostly because I think I was streaming at the time and complaining out loud but like. He just straight-up says this? And then they do nothing with it???

Imagine this with me. Enter the imagisphere or whatever.

It's October. You've just defeated Okumura, and you just watched the mysterious black-masked figure you've been told cryptically about for a while now kill his Shadow. You watch Okumura have a mental shutdown live. It's horrific! It's worrying! What happened? What's going to happen to you? The Phan-Site meter starts dropping rapidly. You go to Mementos to prepare for the next Palace.

There's a security level.

NOT ONLY did this act make the public lose faith in you, but now you're enemy #1, and it's reflected in the collective unconscious. This Chekov's gun that they set up back in May goes off. You have to be much more careful in Mementos because if you aren't, you could get kicked out. The stakes are higher. Mementos, the public view of you, has changed. It's not just doors opening for you anymore.

THAT WOULD BE SO COOL. RIGHT? RIGHT??? BUT NO! No we don't get a security level until the depths, which contradicts itself, actually, because once you get to the depths, the whole POINT is that the public ISN'T reacting to you or your actions! Why the hell would they care that you're In There!

The obvious answer is that it's because the security level belongs to the Holy Grail/Yaldabaoth/the fuckass cup/whatever you personally call him. And okay, whatever, but the game goes out of its way to establish that the Grail isn't really a separate entity from "public desire," he IS "public desire," the status quo incarnate, so once again, I ask, why is this the only time you have a security level! (I know it's because this is the home-stretch to the final boss and mechanically it has to act like a proper Palace. I still think it's stupid.)

And now that I'm talking about the Grail. Hi. Hello. If you've talked to me on Discord you already know this but I fucking hate the Grail. I think it's stupid. I think it's thematically inconsistent. I think its only purpose is to be the "Let's fight God!" final boss. I truly believe that if I hadn't gotten into Persona 5 through Royal, I would not still be into Persona 5, because I would have gotten so frustrated with Yaldabaoth that I would have dropped the game. I regularly complain for half an hour straight about this thing in voice calls. One person once told me the only thing they knew about Persona 5 was that this cup sucked because I wouldn't shut up about it.

I've somehow managed to not do this on Tumblr but I can't really talk about Mementos without talking about it so I guess we're talking about the cup

Narratively: Yaldabaoth just sort of comes out of nowhere??? The whole game is building up to Shido. The whole game. And you do it! You defeat him! And then... there's this other thing??? Apparently??? I was genuinely really confused when I got to this part of the game the first time because I was going ok we beat the final boss complete with eight hundred phases! Hooray! And now there's this other fucker. Going back through the game there's some foreshadowing for him? But it's kind of all concentrated in the start of the game, around Madarame's Palace, when you're just getting used to Mementos, and then it all sorta just disappears.

YOU KNOW WHAT IS FORESHADOWED, THOUGH? MORGANA.

Imagine with me x2 because this is where I thought the game was taking us when it went "btw we need to tackle the depths now"

Morgana has no memories. Morgana knows there's something in the depths that explains who he is. Morgana assumes it's because he's human, and will become human again if he finds out what it is. The WHOLE POINT of exploring Mementos was for Morgana's memories! And then he starts getting these really unsettling dreams, right, where he's a Shadow, or has a Shadow, or whatever. And then you get to the depths.

What I thought was about to happen was that we were going to find out that Morgana was more or less what the Grail claims to be(a being created by the wishes of the masses) and that Mementos was going to be Morgana's Palace. "Oh but Morgana has a Persona-" Morgana's already a weird case I could easily see him having a Shadow or being a Shadow himself while also having a Persona. I'm ignoring Maruki because we're talking about vanilla and Maruki didn't exist yet.

I thought our final boss was going to be Mona's Shadow and that by defeating him(the part of Morgana(as a Shadow/Metaverse being/etc) representative of what they were trying to make Yaldabaoth: wanting to let the status quo handle everything, more or less, the desire to let the system do what it's designed to even if that thing is "crush everything in its path") we would reaffirm that change is possible as long as we all work together. Morgana getting to be this very physical symbol of rebellion and force of will and getting to go NO I want to try even if it hurts me.

What actually happened was... a lot more underwhelming.

What we got was, in a game where one of the primary themes is "rebellion against systemic injustice, you can't just get rid of the One Guy and fix Everything," a final boss who was... one guy who if you got rid of him you'd fix everything?

And I get it Atlus doesn't want to actually shake the boat that much but at the same time Yaldabaoth comes out of nowhere and says absolutely nothing of substance in a game that, over and over again, gets SO CLOSE to saying something really powerful and then sinking back into what's comfortable. It's the aesthetic of rebellion without the teeth of it.

Anyway now that I've complained for an essay's worth here's some positive stuff

I really do like Mementos. It gets a lot of shit for being repetitive and boring and like I sort of get that but on the other hand it is a JRPG. I'm not sure what you expected from the area that is, mechanically, "Here's where you go to grind." I don't see a problem with having this area. I think the special floor events manage to spice it up enough that it's not all that boring. I like Jose being there in Royal, I think he adds a lot, actually. The implications of everything Jose says are fascinating to me. The fact it's impacted by the weather! Like, as a world component, Mementos is so so cool actually guys. I know it's a Persona game so "world impacted by cognition" is sort of the bare minimum but it's really cool!!! The aesthetics fuck! The only layer I really don't like is.. fuck, I think it's Kaitul? Whichever one gets unlocked after Kaneshiro's Palace, I haven't gotten there in my current playthrough yet. It's just... too dark to see, all the time, imo. Mementos feels(except for... 90% sure it's Chemdah) very oppressive and spooky and I honestly think that's great. It's a depressing place to be! For a game about how corruption and systemic violence hurts everybody, it's really good!

In conclusion... don't ask me about Mementos unless you want an essay LMAO in seriousness I understand why Mementos gets shit but I think it should get less of it. And also that I could have fixed it(the cup. The cup is the big bad part of Mementos. Not the grinding you're going to get that with a JRPG no matter what you do you signed up for it when you launched the game.)

[silverior968]

Tfp gijinkas (1/4) Dad squad (aka I binged a childhood favorite show in 3 days and the special interest won) Zoom in to the image for more details (especially the faces, that's where I put the most details)

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[Image ID: A character sheet with two characters on it. On the left side is a human version of Optimus Prime from Transformers Prime. He's tall and muscular with tan skin and blue-tinted black hair that is visibly grayed. His hair is around shoulder-length and tied into a short ponytail with a red hairtie. His expression is neutral and his eyes are dark blue. There are several scars on his face and hands, and the lines on his face show his age. He is wearing a black turtleneck, a red, cropped bomber-style jacket with white lining and a blue autobots logo embroidered on the left shoulder, blue trousers with gray patches and dark blue combat boots with black soles. He has two swords holstered on his back with connected shoulder-holsters. Placed around him are character design notes, reading as follows: "I turned his eye notches into scars - at first I thought of eyeliner but it didn't feel right". "I tried to simultaneously give him the vibes of a hands-on leader, a father figure and a dignified man in his twilight years - and I have no idea if I succeeded!". "I made both him and Ratchet appear somewhere in their 50s." "He accidentally ended up looking a lot like my design of Anton Shudder". "Making an outfit for him was tough because as a kid I thought his design made him look like he was wearing a cropped jacket and denim short-shorts. But I can't have him fighting decepticons in that, think of the asphalt burns! It was hard to unthink that, though". A tiny version of the Sonic the Hedgehog "my fucking god! these bitches gay! Good for them, good for them!" -meme is placed to his right. On the right side of the page is a human version of Ratchet from the same franchise. He's a stocky white man with pale skin and a few freckles here and there, but not many. His hair is mostly white, with some ginger streaks still visible. It is short and somewhat spiky near the back. He also has sideburns, a beard with no moustache and thick eyebrows. He looks grouchy and he has several facial scars and his face is lined. His eyes are cyan. He's wearing a red-and-white uniform, reminiscent of a first responder's outfit. It consists of a zip-up jacket, a thicker jacket on top, trousers, gloves and boots. The zip-up is white with a red zipper, and the jacket has four pockets and is mostly red with white shoulders and sleeves with heartbeat-reminiscent patterns. The jacket also has a white belt. The trousers are white with similar red stripes. The entire outfit has reflective stripes. The boots are mostly white with red heels and soles, and metal-enforced toes. He's holding a scalpel in one hand. There's a red autobots logo on his jackets over his heart. The design notes around him read as follows "He needs a strong nosebrideg because he's going to be pinching it a lot." "He came out looking like a middle-aged Roskilde paramedic named something like "Fredrik" or "Søren" who claims to have Manchester Orchestra as his favorite band (which isn't entirely false but) spends more time listening to ABBA and Radical Face." "Reflective stripes - safety first!". A meme with the text "Dad: doesn't want dog. Family: gets dog anyways. dad and dog:" and a picture of a man and a dog grilling. /end ID]

[folkloregirlfriend]

i hate feeling ambitionless aimless the future is so bleak

[faithfromanewperspective]

controversial opinion but i really think the best way to enjoy a taylor swift song is to hear it and apply it to your life and have no idea about the actual taylor lore inspiration for the song until maybe 10 years later. that's what i did for every album release cycle i've been around for from speak now to evermore and i've really missed it during midnights and ttpd

[front-facing-pokemon]

[hella1975]

ive never felt more rural than i have in the past few weeks since hanging out with a lad who has only ever lived in cities. what do you MEAN YOU'VE NEVER DONE A MORRIS DANCE

[enigmaticagentalice]

dahlia and roses from my garden

[fantasy-costco]

Can not stress enough the value of having physical copies of photos in your home. First thing we did at our apartment was put up a gallary wall and we've been adding a few more pictures over time and it's so nice. Really lovely reminder of the people we love and who love us.