#i am shaking your hand

[pickles4nickles]

"Gimmighoul, huh?"

[wanderingcas]

that anxiety about release dates is so real 😭 i hate when stuff gets announced like a year out for the same reason and i had never heard anyone else talk about it before. anxiety solidarity 🤝

i am so glad i'm not alone in this!!! I feel so silly whenever i get THAT anxious about it but it's like, that's in a year! girl SO much can happen!

[deadly-dallan]

“# not knowing what this is about and trying to decipher it is an experience”

that post was about Fire Emblem Three Houses!!! the pope in fe3h is a bisexual woman and the player character can get gay married to her

ohhh thats what that stands for. thank you! thats really funny and i should look it up

[darkhopping]

void for your color meme <<33

A IS FOR ANNIHILATION ON TOP 💪💪💪🔥💯

[mythicalcoolkid]

You don't wish your disability was worse or more visible, you wish your disability was taken seriously. Please stop confusing the two, I guarantee you would not get the support you need JUST by being more severe or more visible. Please listen to visibly disabled people when we tell you it isn't better on our side

[3zethe3zr]

Why did you leave these in the tags these are impeccable!

I love Sora because of the atrocities. The way unreconciled grief destroys someone, so wrapped up in a 'eye for an eye' than she became worse than the person she wanted to kill. I love the tragedy in that! I hope one day she sees her sisters spirit, and all Crane can do is look at her in disgust.

[kotikaleo]

My art got stolen, edited and used for commercial purposes

This store claims to be "official" Grian merch shop and oH BOI they are clearly not. The amount of stolen art on this store is simply owherwhelming. This is just an example.

They took my art, made 5 designs and slapped it on everything they could mass produce, resulting in more than 55 merchandise pieces with art they have no right on. And I am not even counting Grian Official (like TRUE OFFICIAL) mech, and some other artist I don't know, but clearly they haven't given their consent to this. Examples below.

Official Grian merch that was limited edition btw:

Artist I don't know, please help me find them:

This one is by TheElliPelli on twitter, here is the link

And if you think that i was kidding about erased signature... HA

I already contacted them, and asked to take down absolutely everything that includes my art, and also I emailed Grian himself, i don't know does he bother or not, but worth a try.

PLEASE SPREAD THIS POST

Thank you all uwu

[throughtrialbyfire]

NoSkipNovember

in light of the NaNoWriMo… trash fire, i decided i'd make my own event for myself. and if you want to participate, feel free! i know i'm making this post late as it's already november 1st here, but it happens AHAH. this is just a personal challenge i thought up yesterday evening, and it may help some other people!

Rules of NoSkipNovember

write every day of november, whether 1 word or 10,000.

that's it.

the point of NoSkipNovember is to build the habit of writing, even things that are small. it's to get you to sit down and, in whatever medium you write, to get in the habit of continuing to write.

what can you write?

anything! poetry, songs, outlines, plotting documents, books, short stories, as long as it's creative writing in some form, you are doing it right.

can i set a word goal?

yes!! if you want to set a daily word goal or the usual month goal, go for it! mine is the traditional 50k words, but you could set it for 500 or 500,000 or whatever you want. just be sure to take your time, and take breaks to stretch and move around.

does it have to be original fiction?

not at all, fanfiction is what i'm going to be focusing on, so if you wanna write that, you should!

i have another question

feel free to leave it in the replies or my inbox! i'm always happy to help. this is a very spur-of-the-moment, loose challenge, so feel free to make your own personal rules or stipulations. as long as you are having fun, getting some writing done, and feel accomplished, that's what matters.

that's it. have fun, hope you have a lovely NoSkipNovember!

[megalommi]

30+ Undertale fandom rise up

[danzafila]

#3h #Honestly liking edelgard for women's wrongs reasons is my curse #Oh yeah I love fucked up fire emblem women! Wow a girl character who's a fascist this is so rate! #Oh... Oh you think she's a communist revolutionary... #Oh...

PREV TAGS PREV TAGS PREV TAGS!!!

Only related to a post I saw but it IS wild that

Things that Dimitri Fire Emblem can rightfully be criticized for:

Using excessive violence against his enemies

Dedicating a massive amount of his life to revenge

Actively seeking death when he’s made promises he needs to be alive to keep

Leading people who loved and were loyal to him on what is essentially a suicide mission

Being a dick to people trying to help him

(All of which are acknowledged by the story and he changes)

Things Dimitri gets criticized for:

Defending his home country against imperialism

Some bullshit “status quo” argument

Being mentally ill

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Teehee! (Spritesheets your Wangxian)

[divorcedfiddleford]

he's written thousands (image IDs in alt text)

[ryutarotakedown]

year 2024 can you all stop being fucking weird to aromantic people

[bakudekublogblog]

i'm sorry i dont think we're talking enough about the bkdk music video. they wrote a whole song full of yearning lyrics and holding hands and longing to be at each other's sides and miscommunicating but still wanting to be together, and then they put child actors in bkdk colors and hand them playing super heroes and holding hands. like bkdks were just given that. an official bkdk song and music video. hello????

[safeturnip]

thinking about how when Grian says "BigB treated me right" Scar's immediate counter to that is to say how he built the Jellie panda sanctuary. because he says it like it's something Grian should care about, when Grian never once thought the pandas were important, and it's just. desert duo at certain points in time manage to have the most fundamental misunderstanding of each other's thought processes. and it's not all the time, because sometimes they'll be on the exact same wavelength, and it's absolutely incredible to see, but a solid chunk of time, their trains of thought are running in complete opposite directions of each other. it's like they have different ideas of what's important, and automatically expect the other person to think that way too.

like Grian-wise, he's always thought the life series itself is the most important, especially during 3rd life where he keeps reminding Scar that he's red, that he needs to kill people, that killing people is his end and final goal. he sets up elaborate traps and plans all for Scar's sake, so that Scar can kill people, but it never was for Scar's sake, was it? he's never bothered to ask if this is what Scar wants, just assumes that Scar has the same priorities as him, is willing to go through the same methods as him to achieve those priorities. Grian's main goal has always been to survive, to win, to play the game correctly, and when Scar wasn't giving him that in double life, he went to go find a partner who would.

and on Scar's end, he goes and focuses on his sand monopoly, his llama, his bee, his Jellies. he plays the long social game, promises allyship to everyone he encounters, and although murder is always there in the back of his mind, it's never in the forefront, it's not the first action that he selects. in double life, he ignores the soulmates mechanic and chases after an allay, calls it his soulmate while Grian is literally right there, when Grian has been spending his entire episode looking for his soulmate and keeping the two of them alive. and even after Grian drags Scar off to the side and drops a stalactite on his head, Scar is still so focused on the Jellie pandas, wants to build something for them no matter how many times Grian shoots his ideas down.

and it's so crazy to me how Scar brings up the pandas in wild life like he thinks it's a winning counter argument! what is he going on about!! the two of them just completely misinterpreting each other is such a fun concept to me.

(idk this is just me taking a two-line exchange and running with it in a completely different direction than it was intended. desert duo make me insane they make me so so ill)

[daily-hanamura]

If Rise is a proxy for the game trying to give Yu a thinly veiled "default romance", then her parallels with Yosuke and the way they interact with Yu make for a fascinating comparison

(aka follow me down this weird delusional rabbit hole. Strap in because this is going to be a long and very weird one.)

1. Similar patterns of flirting

Unlike Rise, Yosuke is of course a lot less intentional and a lot more oblivious to what he's actually doing, but his behaviour is actually very similar to Rise's in some ways.

For example, the both of them find an in with Yu through "being shown around" Inaba.

(actually there's a scene with naoto's first day at the school, where a few girls are trying to flirt with naoto using the same lines of showing him around, so that's fun.)

There's a difference in context here - Yosuke is playing that senpai-adjacent role for Yu, whereas Rise is asking Yu to play it for her (even though Inaba is Rise's hometown, and when you take her to souzai daigaku she says she's always wanted to go there).

But this difference is also important because...

Yosuke's type is someone he can look after. (Btw, this is an extremely common male response in Asia - that men like dating someone they can look after. Remember this because it'll come up again later.)

I think throughout the course of the game Yosuke is very much consistently someone that likes taking care of people - quite obviously he looks after Teddie, but he's also always looking out for Kanji and everyone else, actually.

But there's something that changes slightly between him and Yu - as their relationship develops, Yosuke becomes more willing to be the one being looked after, but by Yu especially! This is something that is picked up on by others in the group, such as when Kanji says that Yu tends to spoil Yosuke, or when Chie tells Yu that Yosuke is going to come begging him soon.

Neither Kanji nor Chie talk about how Yosuke asked them for help - because Yosuke, for the most part, is pretty resistant towards asking people for help... unless it's Yu. Yu is the exception in this regard, because where most people see Yosuke as being reliable, they also know that if Yosuke has issues, it's Yu that he turns to. And he does! In front of Yu, Yosuke lets himself be vulnerable, both in more serious settings but also in casual ones. Look at how Yosuke playfully ask Yu to "save him/them" (from Yukiko, Rise and Chie's cooking). It's a little dramatic. It's a little whiny. And it's all part of that role!

But this is exactly the kind of role that Rise is playing as well.

In Japanese culture, there is the concept of 甘え (amae), which is closely related to the (perhaps more commonly known) Chinese notion of 撒娇 (sājiāo). It's hard to explain this in English because it's not really a concept that exists in Western contexts in the same way, but I think it's important because Persona is ultimately a Japanese game, and so the cultural norms and contexts that inform the relationships there are important. It's been talked about in more detail by people smarter than me (see: Takeo Doi, 1971) but the tldr is that it refers to a kind of childishness employed as a means to seek indulgence from a loved one - it's a little bit affirmation, it's a little bit flirtation, but really, the point is looking for someone to care for them. And it works the same way for the other person as well - to indulge is to love! (Remember Yosuke's response of wanting someone he can look after? Yeah.)

When Rise drawls out the word "senpai" and whines a little, that's one example of her playing up that role so Yu would pamper her (actually I don't play in dub, so I'm not sure if she does this in EN too). But we see this with Ai as well, when Ai tells Yu to carry her shopping or buy her coffee. Ai is of course perfectly capable of doing both things, but the point is to have someone like you so much they do things for you.

Compare this to the way the others ask Yu for help - there's hesitation, and it's framed in a "if you have time, could you..." sort of manner and is markedly less playful. I think to some extent it's also their personalities, but that's kind of the point here.

I think it's important to caveat at this point that this "submissive" role during amae isn't, like, a fixed role that they assign themselves into in their relationship - critically, it's temporal, contextual and momentary. Yosuke and Rise are only playing up their childishness so they can get attention from Yu in that moment, but it in no way speaks to how they expect their relationship to function, because it's just brief instances of flirtation. For both Rise and Yosuke, their relationship with Yu is still primarily defined by their equalness and what they can do for Yu as well. It also goes both ways - Yu is also welcome to do the same with Rise and Yosuke! It's also very much a purposeful demonstration of vulnerability, because if you've read the signs wrongly, then it may not be perceived as flirting, just general annoyingness. Which is why...

I think they're both particularly sensitive about accidentally being a bother to Yu, and the way the both of them speak has these layers of boldness and shyness interspersed and folded into each other.

To put it another way, you can think of this indulgence as an extension of the love language of acts of service - and amae is essentially a way of pretending to be helpless to encourage that act of service. (this is an extremely dumbed down definition stripped of nuance)

The point here as Rise flirts with Yu in this manner... I think so does Yosuke, even if he's not totally conscious of it.

2. The shared fear of loneliness

Both Yosuke and Rise express this same fear - Yosuke's shadow reveals his fear of being alone so he actively surrounds himself with as many people as he can, while Rise reveals in her slink that she was a shy, lonely child and became an idol because she thought it would help her connect with people and make more friends. There's this powerful desire of acceptance on their part that forced them towards behaviour that they felt would make them desirable and liked - Yosuke makes jokes and buys food for his friends and tries to be a dependable big-brother type, and his shadow says he's only like that because he's terrified of being alone, while Rise's idol image is about being bright and enthusiastic and bubbly, but her vulnerable moments reveal her to be withdrawn and she says it was all an act.

I think there's a really interesting parallel here, because they both learn that it doesn't really work the way they hoped - the relationships that they had previously formed can be superficial (Yosuke talks about this point with Marie and Yu on the rooftop, while Rise learns that people only see Risette but not her), or temporary and easily forsaken (Yosuke doesn't really have anyone calling him back after his move, while Rise talks about how quickly people moved on from her).

Critically though, it's also in how they are resolved, and in both cases, Yu is the catalyst that helps them understand that not only is that desire normal and understandable, but that both that desire and their responses to it are all part of them. Yosuke's and Rise's cheerfulness and care are not any less meaningful just because of where that sentiment came from. There's no real Yosuke or real Rise, and while this is also a theme for the rest of the IT, I think it's with Yosuke and Rise especially that this particular thread of a fake self created to be accepted and help them make friends is especially pronounced.

(for Kanji, his violent, abrasive self was created to hide away and push people further away, while Naoto wasn't seeking acceptance amongst peers, but their individual ideal of whom they should be).

The distinction here is meaningful insofar as it then speaks to how Yosuke and Rise subsequently perceive Yu in relation to themselves and the rest of the team. For both of them, Yu was the first person where they actually felt Seen with, and in Rise's case, it's what sparked her attraction to him, with her starting to flirt aggressively with Yu after her rescue. I think that in Yosuke's case it's very much the same thing as well, which is how we have Yosuke calling Yu his 相棒 (aibou) shortly after the fight with Yosuke's shadow. I can't place exactly when Yosuke starts doing so, because it can be as early as Marie's slink rank 1 if you did it right after, but in their conversations after the fight at the liquor store, I think the foundation is already there.

In English, 相棒 is translated as partner, which I guess is a fair translation that is captured by the sentiment of "partners in crime". It's a term that is also used in, say, buddy cop pairs (like Reno and Rude in FF7. It's also how Adachi refers to himself, as Dojima's aibou), but it's intended to capture that essence of someone that you trust above and beyond everyone else. Working on a case and your boss and colleagues say no? Doesn't matter, you aibou's got your back. It's the person that you share this absolute connection with, that knows you like you know them, maybe even knows you more than you know yourself.

But imo there's a bit of nuance that is lost, because there's also the weight of exclusivity inherent in the term - you can have a lot of friends, but only one aibou. It's one of the highest, most intense and exclusive relationship that you can have with someone... platonically.

Kick that platonic label off and we find that Yosuke and Rise are the only two that end up attached to Yu with that same, absolute intent, and hold this similar wish for some exclusive relationship with Yu. By helping them understand their loneliness and what the intimacy of being seen means, Yu has triggered the same reaction in both Yosuke and Rise - just coloured slightly differently, romantic for Rise and platonic for Yosuke. But Yosuke's route wasn't even intended to be necessarily platonic so

3. They're the two that ask Yu about his type the most

I think that with a heteronormative lens, it's easy to interpret Rise's question as one coming from romantic interest and flirtations, while Yosuke's questions are coming from patterns of locker room talk, but fuck that, I think they're both testing the waters of romantic interest and looking to see what Yu would say.

Of course, if Yu takes that one opportunity he has to say Yosuke is his type, Yosuke gets flustered and his hair-trigger nohomo reaction kicks in... but then he goes into a thing where he talks about how yeah, he'd make a pretty good boyfriend! He likes Yu's answer here, he even has the little flower animation of happiness!

In contrast, if Yu picked Kanji, the conversation derails into a thing about Kanji's manliness. Furthermore, considering that Yosuke's romance route was cut but all of the previous conversations and interactions remained, there's no reason not to think that Yosuke wasn't responding positively to Yu's affirmations, even if he didn't necessarily understand what they meant at that time.

In the same way, if Yu responds positively or goes along with Rise's questions, Rise is also noticeably happy about it.

Because at the end of the day, they're not actually asking because they want to know what it is - they're asking because they want to hear Yu say that they are Yu's type. And I think Yosuke is guilty of this, even though he hadn't realised it yet.