#honestly what mob this show a trauma filled joke no matter what character it is

[sarasidles]

i'm a soap fan and a swanfire shipper, so please don't take this the wrong way, i'm genuinely curious. one of the reasons i don't like j*sam (or j*son for that matter) is because he'll literally always choose sonny and the mob over even being with his kids. i'm a scrubs fan who's always glad robin broke up with j*son for this reason. and soaps being soaps, i ship a few pairings who are trainwrecks lol, but i hate that sam is always putting herself and her kids in danger. i'm just not a fan of general mobspital overall i guess. what are your thoughts on the mob element of the show?

I mean, I don’t agree with you at all and I don’t typically feel like explaining myself to someone who hates my faves and shows little to no chance in changing their minds but - I’ll bite. 

I think the biggest thing is that all of the characters on this show live dangerous lives and put their families in danger, so the “mob” aspect is pretty moot to me. Like I really don’t give a fuck about it. Sam is also a Cassadine. Her dad is the one who almost blew up Jason and Danny up a few months ago. Her mom has slept with every bad guy on the damn show. She was a con artist and a PI and has enemies from both, her life was always dangerous and always will be regardless of Jason. And in the end, it’s been mostly things that have had NOTHING to do with the mob that have put her kids in danger. Danny being switched at birth didn’t have anything to do with that, neither did Heather kidnapping him, or that guy who thought he was a vampire kidnapping him, cancer can happen to anyone. The most recent incident was because of Julian, who says Sam and her family are safe from her dad and his enemies if she’s not with Jason? Yeah it’s the mob but it’s not Jason’s mob business it’s her father’s. Wasn’t it her own aunt her tried to kill her when she went into labor with Emily? Any threat from Shiloh was because Kristina accidentally joined a cult, and Shiloh hated Sam from her con artist days. Sam’s kids aren’t in danger because of Jason, they’re in danger because this is a soap opera where basically every person in town has murdered someone at some point. Honestly, half the time Jason and Sam are running around with guns it isn’t mob related at all, it’s because of other nonsense and they’ve gotta protect people because lord knows the PCPD can’t. Half the time it’s genuinely like - what mob? Like seriously, most years I couldn’t pinpoint an actual mob story if I tried. And when they finally do actually do a mob story, they’re usually pretty dumb and end in less danger than anything else this show does. Also, I think saying Jason puts the mob and Sonny before Sam and the kids is a pretty false talking point that people like to throw out there just because they hate him. He’s actually shown time and time again that he’ll go to them first and that he’ll do anything for them. “It’s not about you being second, it’s about Sam being first”. Usually Sam is the one telling him to go, or recently he went out doing mob stuff directly because Danny was threatened and he needed to find the truth and keep him safe. He’s even offered to leave the mob before and Sam said no. Up until the recent mess of a storyline, Sam has always maintained that he’d still have enemies regardless and they’re safer just staying put and doing everything to protect their family. 

Scrubs aren’t saints (don’t take that the wrong way, they’re my second fave couple). Patrick had that affair with Lisa, we know how that turned out and she was hella dangerous. Anna still has enemies and gets put in danger and that can trickle down (the whole Peter mess comes to mind right now, Emma comes and stays with her and she’s around all that). Robin has always remained friends with Sonny and Jason and defended them, even in dangerous situations. Etc.  

So like, the mob? Who cares, imo. Psychos are gonna psycho. Jerry is gonna poison the town. Ava is gonna switch peoples meds. Julian is gonna plant bombs. Desperate people are gonna kidnap babies. The Kristina’s of the world are gonna join cults. Serial killers come around pretty often. Cars crash a lot (as do buses and planes and boats). Cassadines are gonna Cassadine. I mean, this show has had aliens and evil weather machines and whatever the fuck the toxic balls story was. It never ends, and it rarely is mob related. 

So to summarize: I don’t think Sam puts her kids’ lives in danger (not any more than any other character). The danger has almost always been a weird external element. She and her kids have never really been in MORE danger because of Jason than they would be otherwise and so the mob itself almost never factors into what I think about them as a couple. Or what I think of the characters on the show in general. 

[tumblunni]

OH MAN I somehow ended up unironically adoring Junya Kanashide??? He's seriously my fave p5 villain so far. Man we REALLY needed a good comic relief case after yusuke and makoto's sad back stories. So uhh yeah.. Spoilers for the third case of the game! But not really spoilers that matter or anything, unless you really wanna be surprised by the exact lunacy of Mr world's most ridiculous boss fight XD OKAY RIGHT LET ME BLABBER Like... It was SO GOOD that he's a complete outside context villain who has no connection to anything and just does stupid ordinary mafia crimes. It was great as a sort of framing device excuse to focus more on makoto's redemption arc/search for her own definition of justice. And it didn't really matter that she got her persona from fighting a guy she only just met instead of someone emotionally relevant, really her biggest enemy was her own self hatred and it symbolized her breaking out and showing her true personality for the first time! So yeah it worked perfectly that we had a stupid funnyman with no motivation except money, who gets like 5 minutes of screentime in his own plot. Makoto's was kinda the 'villain' for this whole arc anyway, it was so triumphant to finally see her join the team!! Thank you terrible money man for making this happen! Oh and BTW I seriously need to take a second to mention how makoto is literally the only character who had any sort of combat training before becoming a phantom thief. She spends ten hours filling the role of 'cliche catty student council president sitcom nemesis' and then suddenly 'oh BTW i know aikido' *runs off to punch shadows without a damn persona* And then instead of being all traumaness in her transformation sequence she just rips the mask off before the damn thing is even finished, and SHATTERS THE FLOOR TILES WITH EACH STEP! Shy nerdy sassy girl just EXPLODES into angry badass who's been hiding behind this prim and perfect mask for so long! And her persona ISNT EVEN A PERSONA?? She JUST punches shadows. Her persona is a fucking motorcycle that's like distant support friend compared to everyone else. Popemobile: "kick his ass honey I'll hold yo flower" ITS LITERALLY A POPE MOTORCYCLE IM NOT EVEN MAKING A JOKE!! so she punches fucking shadows and then drives her magic motorcycle out a window so hard they break thru the metaverse and land back in the real world sorry I CAN NOT GET OVER how much I love makoto!!!! ... Sorry that went offtopic. .. ANYWAY that's why terrible funny trash villain man works well as an excuse for her plot to happen. But I still enjoyed him a lot on his own merits! He's introduced as this honestly kinda scary and cool mob boss for like five minutes. I dunno if I would have preferred if he was actually a decent enemy like that? Like literally the ONLY time I've ever seen a fat mob boss character not played for laughs is the kingpin in spiderman. So seriously its an untapped market! BUT I do really adore his random subverted expectations terrible shadow self that is terrible in all the right ways~ The closest we get to any sort of personality description for this guy is that he's someone who pretends to act tough but is really just a selfish child who wants to live in the lap of luxury at any cost. Which might explain why his regular world design is honestly kinda inexplicably adorable?? He's got a total baby face when every other fat character in persona is drawn like frankenstein's monster. Its really rather creepy having this tiny chibi face on the evilest of all evils! And it is kind of a shame that he had a rather unique polite and soft spoken voice in his scary mob boss form, that was genuinely terrifying! They shoulda made his comedy shadow self sound even slightly similar, there's a million ways to do a funny version of that voice. Like an exaggerated nerd one! But every shadow seems to share the same voice actor for some reason?? Or else the distortion effect is so loud they all sound the same. ANYWAY His shadow self is just himself but dressed up like a banker with a fake mustache. Its hilarious cos he's still like a friggin 5ft tall 16 year old?? Also he's purple??? What??? And then he has this big fakeout demon transformation and his deadly sins form is just... The same guy with fly wings. Beelzebub is the most horrifying bonus boss in EVERY OTHER SMT GAME and this is what we got! I CANNOT BELIEVE And then (no joke) he starts doing terrible white boy rapping, and pulls a GIANT ROBOT out of nowhere to make up for his lack of boss form! The 'piggytron 2000', a giant death star piggy bank that shoots eyeball lazers. And then (NO JOKE) his ultimate move is turning it into a disco ball and COSPLAYING GANGNAM STYLE TO KILL YOU. Yes. This is a canon occurance in the persona universe. And then its just the most fun and low effort boss fight to make up for his deadly hard super long dungeon. It was over too fast! 10/10 would crush beetlejuice psy under a giant disco ball again And what is weird is that this terrible nonsense shadow is also like the most competent one they fought so far?? His dungeon is SO AWFUL and he actually spots you sneaking in and actively fights against you the whole way. His shadow self has ten times the screentime of the original! And he actually has the last laugh by not repenting at all, even though the real version of him is still gonna end up confessing his crimes either way. He just fades away with a big ol shit eating grin after revealing some important plot stuff to the heroes. Like.. Real junya was completely incompetent but his infinitely sillier shadow has apparently been operating independently of him and knows all about the phantom thieves and was making deals with some mysterious ultimate villain guy we had no clue even existed??? And now we're left with no answers to that, and shadow junya is probably still wearing that asshole grin in hell. Also his Treasure turned out to be completely worthless, its literally monopoly money with his face on it. Not even an intentional troll move or anything, that was LEGITIMATELY his single most important possession! Completely free of all character depth, right to the very end~! Oh god, everyone's FACES as they try and justify 'well its probably a metaphor about how he was a kid pretending to be badass', and then deciding the briefcase is probably worth more. Best ending to a thoroughly enjoyable brief moment of levity in a sad sad game! I salute you, gangnam Beelzebub! ... Also this mysterious villain ringleader person would probably be kicking the self if they knew the phantom thieves only found out about their plan thanks to disco monopolyman. This is why you don't make deals with comic relief, yo! XD