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princekirijo · 4 years ago

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BRO, YUKARI. 👀👀

OK HERE WE GO STRAP IN FOLKS IT'S YUKARI TIME! Also a lot of this is kinda salty? I guess? So just a fair warning I just have strong opinions on Yukari 😔

Ok so Yukari. I love her so so much she's one of my favorite characters in the series and one of my trio of comfort characters (the other two being Akihiko and Mitsuru). She's such an interesting and complex character that gets heavily misinterpreted by a lot of the fandom (*cough* cishet men *cough*).

Like ok first off people say that she's mean but while she can be very rude and one of her big flaws is that she doesn't consider others' feelings she's not entirely a bitch either? I think the best example of this that not many people I've seen talk about is how she's the only character who objects to the protagonist and Fuuka joining immediately and wants to make sure they're not being forced into joining. While ultimately both of those characters join of their own accord, Yukari asks them multiple times if they're ok with joining, something the others never do (Mitsuru is guilty of being quite insistent on them joining but that's a discussion for another time). She also feels incredibly guilty for spying on the protagonist at the start, pointing out multiple times that it is a violation of their privacy. Both of these show that she genuinely cares about other people. Pictures are from you lol <3

On that subject when Ken joins Yukari is actually the nicest to him out of all of them, often making sure that he feels welcome and making an effort to talk to him. I think the only other character that does that (if my memory serves me right) is Fuuka. In her social link too she helps out that little kid that was crying in the middle of Paulownia Mall, staying with them until she found their parents or that they were safe. And even in Ultimax her relationship with Ken is just so cute she's so nice to him, she really is like his big sister. So to say that she's just mean and just a bitch is wrong because there's plenty of examples of her being a very nice person.

And actually a lot of people hate her because of how 'easy' her social link is to reverse (I've seen people on YouTube mention this a few times so I thought I'd talk about it). I think it's either rank 5 or 6 there's a scene where Yukari loses her purse and goes back to get it. You find her surrounded by a bunch of guys who are threatening her and are very close to hurting her. The protagonist steps in to stop them and then chases them off. Now I think it's only in the male route this happens (again my memory is bad so sorry about that 😞) but she gets annoyed at you for helping her and then you're given a few options. The correct one is to leave her alone (or something like that) but the one that most people go for which reverses the Social Link is the option to hug her. And people (male youtubers *AHEM*) get annoyed about this because oh yeah of course in this scenario hugging Yukari is a great option and why the hell would she get angry and reject them like that. Like jeez I don't know definitely not the fact that she's very clearly shaken up by the fact that she was almost attacked by three men (who could have done god knows what to her if we hadn't intervened). And definitely not because she's said lots of times that she doesn't like to rely on anyone (particular men) given the whole situation with her mother. The other thing is that I don't think it's outright stated but I really wouldn't be surprised if Yukari was super touch averse given the situation with her mother throwing herself at random men all the time. And (as we discovered lol) there's a very high possibility that her mother was an alcoholic because of this she says in the answer after Junpei's past where he talks about his alcoholic dad:

So like if her mother was an alcoholic there is a high chance she could have suffered some form of abuse which would lead her to being very anti touch. So it really drives me mad when people get annoyed about her Social Link being so easy to break because if you think for a second before doing anything, you'll realize it makes sense that she wouldn't want to be hugged.

But that's enough salt, I love Yukari for a lot of different reasons but the main one is (predictably given that it's me) her relationship with Mitsuru. Regardless of how you want to view it, they are so important and integral to each other's character development. From the tension between them at the start of the game to the end where they're so close, it's honestly one of the best relationships in the game in my opinion. You can really see how much they grow to care for each other. Yukari is the only character brave enough to call Mitsuru out for her bullshit and you can see how Mitsuru grows to appreciate that (because as much as I love Mitsuru, Yukari is absolutely valid to call her out for some of the stuff she does and she needs Yukari to do that). Yukari also ends up being the catalyst to Mitsuru's ultimate persona awakening. At the start of the game too, we're made to believe that both of them are very different. But as the game progresses we're shown that they're actually quite similar. Something I love that the movie does is this scene here (again thank you for pointing this out to me):

The way Yukari finishes Mitsuru's sentence so to speak shows that they actually have pretty similar reasons to awakening to their powers (Mitsuru in order to protect her father and Yukari to protect her father's memory and find out the truth about what happened to him). Yukari also helps Mitsuru open up to others (she's the only other person aside from Akihiko that Mitsuru calls by their first name) and Mitsuru helps Yukari (in a way I can't explain because my brain is failing me) to not judge people as much. They're so important to each other and their character development is so interlinked I just love it so much and it's a big reason as to why I love both of them.

And my other reason as to why I love Yukari is that she's allowed to express her anger in a way that isn't fake or cute (I honestly can't think of another female character who is allowed to do this but I'm sure there's other examples). The best example of this is of course the Answer which I've spoken about before so I'll do my best to keep it brief. I think Yukari's anger in the Answer is a very real response to grief. She's upset over the loss of the protagonist (whom she's heavily implied to have feelings for but I don't think it's outright stated) and she's jealous of Aigis because she inherited his power. She wants to save him so badly because she really cared for him so now that she has a chance and the others are stopping her (in her eyes) she feels betrayed so of course she's going to lash out. Now I fully acknowledge that what she was doing was wrong and she is acting very rude but as I said it's her way of dealing with grief. Something P3 does very well is show how different characters react to grief (eg Mitsuru closing off even more from the others, Akihiko deciding to take it in his stride, Ken having a similar reaction etc). And Yukari's way is no expectation and it's not bad because there's no bad or wrong way to deal with grief. Something people forget as well is that she acknowledges and apologies to the group after the Erebus fight for her behavior and she explains herself (another example of how she is actually a nice person and not a total bitch). I just really related to how she dealt with the whole thing and I love her for that. I also think that some of the other characters in the series (Ann mainly) should have been allowed to express their anger in a more... Real way? Ugly way? I'm not sure how to describe it but I would have liked to see them get angry in a way that wasn't cute (somebody pointed out that the negative reaction to Yukari's anger is probably what stopped future female characters from doing just this and it was an excellent point).

OK so this was super rambling and if you got to the end then wow thank you. I just really love Yukari and it makes me upset how a lot of fans treat her, either as a typical oh this is my persona waifu uwu or she's such a bitch I hate her with no thought process. I honestly understand why some people don't like her but I just ask that people think about how she reacts to certain things and why she acts the way she does before just essentially watering her down to a bitch with daddy issues. She's my emotional support bisexual and I adore how she interacts with the other cast (especially Mitsuru).

#persona 3 #yukari takeba #asks #kalidontskrrt #L i love you for this #ok i really hope i didn't offend anyone because that's not ny intention her #and if anyone wants to debate with me about anything here please feel free to im open to others opinions as long as you're respectful #i just feel super strongly about her because she's one of my comfort characters #and i do think she's such an interesting character too #there's so much more i could have talked about but this is so long #i hope the readmore works #and of course thank you L for the pictures #i hope this makes sense though 💀💀💀#and again if you don't like Yukari that fine and valid #just please don't reduce her down to a one dimensional character because she's really so much more than that #also idk how people feel about the sl on here it's just something ive seen youtubers say a lot #also i think it was andi who mentioned the thing about other characters not being able to express their anger in such a raw way because #of the negative reaction to Yukari #so if that was you then that point lives in my head rent free <3

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sunsetinmyvein · 4 years ago

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You Pick a Fight - P3

I have long since forgotten what prompts from the prompt list that we used for this, but as requested by @imagine-that-100, the third and final part of You Pick a Fight. Enjoy!

True to his word, Matty absolutely did give me hell for everything I had said and done while in hospital. Word spread pretty fast in our circle of friends about how soft I had remarked his hair was, much to my dismay. But my thumb survived, and that was the main concern. I could tolerate the berating for the sake of still having all of my digits. And to be fair, Matty was very helpful in hospital that day, as much as he didn’t tell anyone else about that half of the story. A part of my anaesthesia haze ramblings stayed with me even past that hectic evening. I suddenly felt like I gave that man too much grief throughout our friendship, maybe a few of my pranks were edging on too mean. Not that I was going to give up entirely on that side of our friendship, but I definitely had a feeling that it was time to pull back from how intense they had been becoming. When every interaction between us wasn’t laced with sarcasm and spent looking over your shoulder for what could be coming next, spending time with Matty was actually… fairly pleasant? I found myself actually wanting to be around him.

“Mattyyyy.” I spoke into my phone as I propped it up between my shoulder and my ear.

“Yes?” His voice crackled back down the line.

“I need to ask you a favour.” I started. At this point, Matty was no stranger to my random phone calls for help. I mean, come on, he was rolling in it and had connections everywhere, I wasn’t just going to let that go to waste.

“Mm?”

“My high school reunion is coming up…” I stared at the invitation stuck to my fridge.

“And?” He prompted.

“And it would feel extremely vindicating to have a nice date to rub in everyone’s faces.” I finally suggested. Making this call wasn’t easy, I didn’t like the connotations that came with asking this. But, I did really like the connotations that came with rocking up with Matthew Healy in tow. And if I had to go, I wanted to have some fun with it.

There was a pause, and I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me at first. “Ooo, I’m not sure.” He eventually said, sounding like he was thinking on it. “But I can see why you’d ask.” He added.

“What?” I frowned in confusion, not that he could see my expression anyway.

“I mean, why wouldn’t you want to be seen with someone as drop dead gorgeous as me?” He said. I gave a snort of laughter in response, but he didn’t continue any further.

I let out a deep sigh, then said the thing I knew would get him to go, “There’s an open bar.”

“I’ll be there.” He replied instantly.

“Great. Thanks.” I nodded.

“My pleasure.” I could just see his shit eating grin through the phone. Hopefully this idea didn’t backfire on me.

* * *

After a few weeks, the fateful evening rolled around. As promised, Matty drove round to my place, dressed very smartly in a nice button down. Which, after the crocs getup I’d seen him in literally the day prior, this was a vast improvement. But I couldn’t help but notice the bags under his eyes, and the way his eyelids drooped.

“Are… are you feeling okay?” I asked apprehensively as I let him in.

“Huh?” He seemed pretty out of it.

“How long has it been since you’ve sleep?” I asked with a short laugh.

“A week?” He answered, seeming entirely serious about his answer.

“Jesus, Matty. Why? What’s keeping you up?” I asked in concern, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“Erm�� Album stuff, you know.” He shrugged nonchalantly.

“Are you sure you’re good to go to this thing?” He looked in no state to be on a night out. But as soon as I questioned his ability to attend, he perked up.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be fine.” He nodded quickly, running a hand through his messy curls. As much as he’d dressed up, it seemed that there was no controlling that hair of his. “C’mon, let’s go.” He said as he gestured back to the door.

We ordered an Uber, neither of us wanting to commit to being the designated driver and passing up on the free booze. Once we had clambered inside, I laid down a few ground rules about what to tell people if they asked. All the stuff about how we met, why we got together, the things that we had to make sure to agree on to get our story straight and seem believable.

“All right, so I’d appreciate if you tried to be a bit more tactful than usual.” I ended my spiel, giving him a serious look.

“Be as embarrassing as possible, got it.” He said with a firm nod.

“Can you please just listen to me for once?” I said as I rolled my eyes.

“Or-” He said, pointing a finger at me for emphasis, “I could not listen to you, and we could pull many fantastic pranks at this stuffy party.” He suggested.

I thought on this for a moment. “What did you have in mind?” I asked with an eyebrow raised.

“We can raise hell together - spike the punch, spread rumours, heckle the speeches, that sort of thing.” He elaborated with a devious smile.

The offer was tempting, but then I remembered that I was meant to be making a good impression. “No, no. I just… would rather be quietly impressive instead of causing a scene like we usually do.” I said, tearing my gaze away from him and looking back out the window.

“Whatever you say.”

When we rocked up at my old high school, it probably shouldn’t have surprised me that everything looked exactly the same as what it did when I was a student. The buildings were a slight bit more run down, the signs were starting to wear away, it was nostalgic in a very uncomfortable way. We followed the small arrows staked in the ground, making our way through the school to where the reunion was being held. As we approached the doors, Matty stopped me, looping his arm with mine with a smile before walking in. The gesture instantly reminded me of why I had been worried about asking him to come as my faux date. Other than him getting the wrong idea, I didn’t want to dredge up any repressed feelings since that day in the hospital a few months ago. This thought was quickly squashed once we stepped into the room and had the tacky decorations shoved right into our faces. I had no idea what theme they were trying to achieve, but if it was ‘awkward high school disco’ they had successfully done it. However, I was pretty chuffed with the stares that we were getting as we walked through the room. By the look of the whispers that I saw being passed around, clearly Matty was recognised. Most of the people I had spotted I didn’t overly want to talk to, so I was glad to have brought a plus one that I could hang out with to avoid stifled pleasantries with people I’d not seen in over a decade.

“Why is there a deer in the room?” Matty whispered in my ear as he gestured to the large buck that was sectioned off in the corner.

“School mascot.” I answered.

“What?” He asked with a frown.

“The football team, they’re called the bucks or something.” I explained, pointing out a banner on the wall with the cartoon version of the animal.

“So… they have a deer? A real live deer?” He continued with an incredulous laugh.

“Yep.” I nodded.

“Let’s go tie shit on its antlers.” He said eagerly, attempting to drag me towards the animal.

“No.” I quickly hissed, pulling him back towards the bar. “Let’s go get a drink.” I offered instead.

With a drink in hand, Matty was much easier to keep under control. We drifted around to a few conversations, dropping stories of accomplishments and various other brag worthy things. After about half an hour, though, he started to get restless.

“Hey, where’s the woodshop?” He asked quietly as his eyes darted around the room.

“Why do you want to know?” I asked back, narrowing my eyes in suspicion.

“No reason.” He said with a shrug. “What about the art room?” He questioned with a smile playing on his lips.

“What are you scheming?” I accused.

“Nothing!” He threw his hands up in defence. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom and then get another drink. You want one?” He asked.

I stared at him for a moment, trying to work out what idea was turning over in that head of his. “Sure.” I conceded, watching as he strolled off.

I was apprehensive about letting him wander off alone, what with his track record. But I had no reason to stop him. Once left to my own devices, I had to begrudgingly start conversations with my old classmates alone. I didn’t realise how much I missed having Matty to bounce off of in conversation until he wasn’t there. The time ticked by, and he still hadn’t returned. When I finally felt the need to go looking for Matty in case he got lost, I spotted him on the other side of the room sparking up conversation with a group of people. He looked very animated in whatever story he was telling, and then I saw him gesture to his thumb. Oh, no.

“Whatever he’s saying, he’s lying!” I called out, interrupting the person who had been speaking to me. Matty, clearly hearing my voice, looked up and waved with a smirk.

“Why did you even come with him if you were worried about his behaviour?” The guy I was speaking to huffed.

“I’m starting to forget.” I muttered, making my way through the crowd to work out what on earth he was saying. When I made my way to the small crowd that had formed around him, he was indeed telling the story about how I’d nearly cut off my thumb. However, he was telling it in a way I hadn’t heard before. He was embellishing the details about how helpful he was, about how happy I’d been to see him when I woke up, instead of his usual speech about how embarrassing it was for me. It felt pretty heart-warming to actually hear him acknowledge the other side of that night.

“That’s so sweet of you!” One of the girls from my English class cooed.

“She’s worth it.” Matty replied as he planted a kiss on my cheek. I instantly felt myself burning up, before plastering a smile on my face to try and keep up the charade I had concocted.

When I finally pried him away from his crowd, we went to go get another drink. What was the point of an open bar if you didn’t take advantage of it?

“You really think I’d throw you under the bus in front of your own classmates?” He asked as he nudged me in the ribs playfully.

“I just never know with you sometimes.” I chuckled as I grabbed a bottle of cider. “Are you feeling better, then?” I added, noting his much more jovial appearance than when I first saw him today.

“Hm?” He questioned as he took a swig from his drink.

“You looked pretty sleep deprived when you rocked up at mine earlier today.” I clarified.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Much better.” He nodded, glancing down at his dress shoes.

“What’s been keeping you up?” I asked in curiosity, starting to walk back over to the centre of the room.

“Well, if I’m honest-”

“All right everyone, take your seats.” A voice interrupted over the loud speakers.

Right, the speeches. People who had been notable in high school had been asked if they wanted to stand up and tell people all about where they were at now. Thank fuck I hadn’t been picked for that. We began shuffling over to the lined-up seats at the front of the room near the stage, Matty and I happily taking a spot near the back. As the speakers went to sit down in their chairs on the stage, all of the legs collapsed beneath them, sending the six people up there sprawling onto the wooden floor. A few quiet laughs came from the crowd. But I recognised that handiwork.

“Did you do that?” I asked, turning to Matty.

“I have no idea why you’d suspect me.” He answered, clearly trying (and failing) not to smile.

“Is that why you were asking about the woodshop?” I realised, my voice growing in volume slightly as it clicked in my head. Someone shushed me from the row behind us.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak dumbass.” He shrugged.

“Real mature.” I mumbled, turning back to the stage to see them bringing new chairs over. He just wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me into his side.

After that, the speeches continued without a hitch. I had to admit, at least Matty’s antics had brought some fun to the dull event. Because besides the chairs collapsing, the hour-long spectacle nearly put me to sleep. Once they’d finished up, they began playing the music a bit louder than what they had been and packed the chairs in front of the stage away, encouraging people to use it as a dancefloor.

“Do you have any idea on how frustrating you can really be?” I frowned as we made our way over to the corner of the room to speak without people overhearing us. “You could’ve hurt someone.”

“Come ooooon.” He said, rolling his eyes. “You know you want to make this place a bit livelier. You’re never gonna see these people again, right?” He continued, leaning against a rail.

“Right.” I agreed.

“So, let’s have some fun.” He grinned. “You know we make a good team.”

I thought about it for a moment, and he had a point. This event was pretty boring, and we were a good team. Matty had been going out of his way tonight to do what I had asked of him, the least I could do was let him get some enjoyment too. “Fine.” I agreed. Watching as the large buck began chewing on Matty’s arm. “You might wanna keep an eye on your jacket, though.” I said as I gestured to the animal.

“Huh? Oh, wha- Hey!” He shouted as he yanked his sleeve out of the deer’s mouth.

Once he had been given permission, Matty kicked into full prank mode. Shoelaces were tired together under tables, lettering on signs were rearranged, jackets and hats mysteriously changed tables. Most of what he wanted to do was harmless fun, and it was entertaining to watch him dart around the room and work his magic. Tonight was actually turning out to be pretty fun. I had thought that maybe Matty might feel awkward about it, or maybe I’d feel awkward about it, but things were going really well. It was nice to get the chance to have an evening with just him. Normally it was a group of us and I always felt mildly attention seeking for taking up his time. To have his undivided attention for the whole night left me with a warm feeling. Matty eventually wore himself out, and guests were beginning to get suspicious of the guy who seemed to constantly be in the background of every minor inconvenience. When he seemed satiated prank wise, he managed to con me into getting onto the dancefloor with him. Normally I’d be pretty intimidated about dancing in front of such a judging crowd, but between the good company and the many drinks I’d had, I didn’t really care.

Suddenly, a bunch of glitter starting spewing out through the vents onto the dance floor. The music stopped, drawing everyone’s attention up to the sparkly downfall. To be honest, this looked far better than any theming the school had done themselves. But I knew this was not something that they had planned.

“I admit, this is pretty impressive.” I said quietly to Matty, who just had a very proud smile.

“See? I told you that we should raise hell.” He laughed loudly.

“I guess it was pretty fun.” I confessed.

“You should really listen to me more.” He said softly, taking my hand in his. I watched the glitter fall for a moment, before looking back down to see him still staring at me. I frowned at him, waiting for him to say something. “You have the cutest smile I’ve ever seen right now.”

“You’re looking pretty starry-eyed yourself there, mister.” I shot back, figuring that he was joking.

“Well, it’s hard not to be when you’ve got the best date in the room.” He added, tugging on my hand, pulling me closer to him.

“Wasn’t that meant to be my plan?” I said with a chuckle.

“After speaking to your classmates, I’m pretty sure you got it backwards.” He answered as I placed a hand on his shoulder.

A moment or two passed before Matty took in a deep breath. “I was up all week because I was worried about ruining this for you.” He blurted out. “I didn’t want to be a disappointment.”

“You’d never disappoint me.” I dismissed.

“Things are always more daunting when you’re doing them with someone that you’re into, you know.” He explained.

“I�� you… what?” In my surprise, I couldn’t get my words out right. Had he not been kidding for the last five minutes with everything that he was saying? A lot of moments over the last six months suddenly made a lot more sense.

“You’re not getting me to say it twice.” He said with a small smile.

“How long?” Was all I could manage to ask.

“For ages.” He said simply. “Why do you think I stayed with you in the hospital? Why do you think I spend so much time with you? Why do you think I bother you so much? You think that it’s me who’s teasing you to the guys, but it’s them teasing me about you.” He answered.

Everything that I had felt in the hospital was now in the forefront of my mind. Maybe I hadn’t been so crazy to want to flirt with Matty then. Certainly, in this moment, his confession had my heart rate picking up and my mind reeling. “Then what was with all the pranks?” I said, shoving his shoulder slightly.

“Kept your attention, didn’t it?” He chuckled.

“I suppose so.” I agreed. “I think I’m into you too.” I said quietly.

“I know.” He nodded.

“What?”

“You told me so when you first woke up in hospital. You slept for a few hours after that, though.” He elaborated. “You don’t remember?”

I shook my head, but for what I did remember, if I had said that, it made sense. “So… is this a real date then?” I asked out of curiosity.

“It can be.” He shrugged.

“I’d like that.” I smiled, leaning up slightly to catch him off guard and kiss him briefly. “But first, we’d better get out of here before they realise what you did.”

Part One

Part Two

#Matthew Healy x Reader #Matty Healy x Reader #sunsetinmyvein #Sunsetinmyvein prompts #Sunsetinmyvein requests

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au-tumn-al · 5 years ago

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So after 110 hours, I finally beat Persona 5 Royal. Before going into complete FFVII mode, I wanna lay out all my thoughts.

Blah, blah, blah, spoilers for everything under the cut.

To start off, I loved Royal. The gameplay was so much fun and it felt like such a natural evolution from vanilla P5. Probably my favorite change was what wad done with Baton Pass. Trying to pass to your entire party was very fun and very satisfying, especially if Joker got the ×4 or even ×3 and got to abuse a possibly charged Hassou Tobi lategame. It was pretty broken, but I don't mind things being broken once you go to the effort of figuring things out. Speaking of broken things—

Showtime attacks are super cool. I didn't know what to think of them at first because of how stupidly strong they are, but after I got to some harder boss fights where doing about 1k damage per attack would only get rid of about a small fraction of the shadow's health, I wasn't complaining.

(Also, I never actually got to see Joker and Violet's showtime. Oops.)

The fact that the damage scaled like that was really good, especially once you get into the third semester where party members have severe and colossal damage moves and even healer Morgana can do 150 damage per basic attack without buffs on an enemy without debuffs. The enemies' damage output remained kind of sad though, but uh....you can't win 'em all ;;

To finish showtime talk, Joker and Crow's showtime was heccin' great. I never skipped it. It was Batman in my animu JRPG so it was 10/10. It also did way more damage than most of my party members' showtime attacks so ey. It finished off that Yoshitsune request boss too with around 2.4k damage so I'm obligated to like it. On that note, how is showtime damage calculated? Do certain showtimes do more damage, or does it just depend on the offensive stats of the party members using it?

Technical damage was beefed up too, and I probably should have tried to take advantage of it more than I did but I never figured out how to make technical damage reliably knock an enemy down. I know that there was a way to do it but I never figured it out. Yes, yes, I know it was because I skipped tutorials but everything else was so busted, I never felt the need to go back and read said tutorials. I did read that book about technical damage though in-game, but it just added more technical combinations.

Onto other changes though, it could have been because I was playing on hard, but status ailments became about 10 times more useful. ...Actually, no, it was definitely because I was playing on hard, but even so, I felt like more bosses were weak to them when compared to P5. They went back to being mostly immune to them, especially in the new semester, but during and before October or so, status ailments became invaluable. It could have been because I sucked that much, but my party members, and even sometimes Joker, would get left with double or even single digit HP by near everything, even if I debuffed and buffed. Queen got regulated to a forget bot, but man it carried me through some boss fights. ... i.e., Kaneshiro's fight. Well, that and Mona's confuse.

I liked the Will Seeds too. They were a fun way to kind of change up the palaces and for me to hunt down. Even though yeah, they are pretty broken (especially with the accessory you get from the 2nd palace being able to get rid of elemental weaknesses for whoever has it equipped, not to mention the ability to give charge or concentrate to another party member), I still can't say I used them over my SP adhesives most of the time. I used the one that got rid of elemental weaknesses on Crow, but that was just because I could only use him and Joker at the time and did not want enemies to get another move on him to get another chance to hit either of them.

The changes to Mementos were amazing. Like the rest of them, they were pretty busted, but still. Amazing. I feel like I'm in the minority with this, but I didn't mind Mementos. In fact, I kind of liked going through the grind of going through it. Although...tbf, I kind of liked Tartarus too. Its 264 floors were a bit much, but I liked being able to turn off my brain, put on a podcast or YouTube video in the background for me to listen to then go through Tartarus in one or two in-game nights.

Back to Mementos, collecting stamps and flowers for Jose was fun, and being able to change the cognition for Mementos was busted. Since you can get EXP from auto-killing, you get over-leveled very fast. It doesn't help that you have to backtrack floors for stamps since they randomly generate, so you get even more money, experience, and items. On the bright side though, no, I didn't need to wander around singing "I've Been Working on the Railroad" with Mona and Skull for an hour and a half trying to find the materials for the Eternal Lockpick (which was renamed in Royal to Permapick ... I guess???)

Because of the changes you can make to boost item, money, and EXP gains, Mementos became the prime grinding area. Even more than the card shuffle thing in P3. Since you got so much EXP from ramming shadows even without leveling up EXP gain. I put all my stamps into getting more items and money until I couldn't anymore and I had near max every single crafting item, and never had to worry about the cost of anything ever. Combined with the money gains from killing shadows, you can also pick up sellable treasure from the item cubes in Mementos and it can end up selling for well over a million yen. So getting to max didn't even require Joker abusing the confuse status ailment or abusing the shadows with "You can do better than that."

I didn't mind the Mementos music, even when I was playing the game without something else playing for me to listen to, but now that Mementos does have new music, yeah, I realize now how much better it is. I wouldn't listen to it alone like I would Rivers in the Desert or anything, but it was a nice change. I listened to one of the songs before the game had its western release and didn't like it all that much, but actually playing the game while hearing it made me actually like it.

I got to level 99 though before the game was over. It made it so Joker and Crow were able to tag-team the Reaper then kill it in 3 turns. I had thought that trophy would have been a lot harder to get lol. It was pretty weird seeing the Reaper in such clear lighting though due to the new Mementos area though, I have to say.

Onto the bosses though...

I loved the changes to the bosses (except the 5th one but that's just because I hate everything about the 5th palace, even if Royal did make it about a million times more bearable).

Kameshida having cognitive Shiho and Mishima as helpers for the boss fight was such a good change, and made him about that much more hateable.

Madarame's boss fight in vanilla P5 was the hardest boss in the game for me, even on normal mode, but it was made so much easier in P5R. Madarame didn't bring back his painting form, but instead brought back elemental versions of himself specifically so the player can abuse Baton Pass. Baton Pass combos are extremely satisfying to pull off, so I enjoyed it immensely. Honestly, having that as the second boss in the game was so much of a better decision than what was in P5. That, or I'm still salty about all the deaths I had from fighting him the first time.

Kaneshiro was definitely harder, and I was a little stuck when he called his cronies out to guard him. Mona and Queen using confuse and forget while Skull and Joker attacked Kaneshiro made it a lot more bearable though. I also kept using spotlights on Joker so the enemies would attack him. He had Shiki Ouji equipped and they only ever did physical moves when my status effects missed, so I was never at risk for losing the fight. ... And then of course Skull and Queen finished it off with a showtime attack after Mona got yeeted.

Sphinx mom was a lot easier. I didn't know that the right dialogue choices made it so Oracle would guard you until someone told me, so I was sitting there surprised at how much easier it was lol. I did get stuck at the end though because it didn't look like I was damaging it. I thought Oracle needed to bring back the crossbow so I just kept buffing and healing. It took about 10 minutes for me to get bored and start attacking it again and it turned out I could attack it, but it was just that sphinx mom's HP wasn't visually moving before eventually going down. Joker still used Shiki Ouji which had learned an immunity to wind so. Easy victory (ignoring the part where I'm a dumbass).

I switched to easy mode for Okumura. I just did not care at all. I hate his palace, I hate the music, and the enemies could range from being easier to kill than the enemies in the first palace to being a pain in the ass, so I wanted to have it be over. If I didn't have an unreasonable hatred for the 5th palace though, I probably would have liked the change. It was challenging without being complete BS, at least much more challenging than how it was originally in P5. Having the enemies run off though did get pretty annoying when I was trying to beat it legit but I was just so done at that point, it was more on me than the game lol.

Part of the reason why I was so eager to get through Okumura's palace though was to get to Sae's palace. Because I love Sae's palace, and just in general, the entire month of November. It has amazing story bits, still the height of P5's story if you ask me, a great palace, and Whims of Fate is one of my favorite tracks from P5's OST. Sae's boss was even changed to when she spins the wheel, whatever element it goes to, she uses that element and her resistances would change. I loved that, and it was extremely fun to take what you more or less should have learned about enemies' attacks and their correlating weaknesses and use them for a boss fight. So much better than the original where you don't need strategy at all other than "hit her hard lol."

Shido's boss fight was changed to be super climactic. They made it easier for the sake of Joker being able to confront the dude that got him a criminal record and directly ruining his life, and I can't complain. It felt amazing to 1v1 him. The game fixed the possibility of being screwed by it by having him attack in a certain order like the twins do in their special fight, so that was nice at least.

Yaldabaoth's boss fight was the same. Still easy enough, as long as you're careful. Or...not careful but extremely lucky. I wasn't able to finish it off while it was charging up its almighty attack, but my entire party ended up dodging it so it didn't even matter lmao. Now that I think about it, it very easily could have been because of that one Will Seed accessory that makes you dodge attacks but... I don't care. I was still super lucky I didn't get wiped and be forced to start the fight over starting from the Holy Grail.

The new boss... Uhm... It was taking way too long so I ended up cheesing it with Haru's third persona's new move that basically makes you invincible for a turn halfway through the fight. ^^; Noir was a Vault Guardian bot, Queen just healed and took advantage of one of the tentscles' nuclear weaknesses to Baton Pass to Crow when she could, and then Joker and Crow did all the work. Crow's third tier persona's almighty move kicked ass and you know what else kicked ass? Hassou Tobi abuse. The other 2 phases weren't even really fights, so at least that kept it from dragging too much, despite all the phases it had.

When Joker and the boss had that punch-out fight though, I lost my shit. I was laughing so hard I started to cry and my back was hurting. I don't even remember why I thought it was so funny, but I was laughing my ass off. I couldn't even press X to get Joker to punch because I was laughing so hard. Right before it happened, I joked to my sister that a tutorial would pop up and suddenly the gameplay will have the controls from that P4 fighting game and you have to learn that in order to have one last showdown. And then I got the prompt to punch. Then Joker punched. And I started laughing.

11/10 would punch Adam Kadmon man again

On the topic of the new stuff though...

Kasumi/Sumire/Violet was pretty fun to use but badly, badly overshadowed by both Joker and Crow, at least during boss fights. She offered to join the party before Shido's palace and she really should have joined then. Maybe she would just be absent for the Mementos dungeon & Yaldabaoth/Holy Grail boss fights, but she should have been there for Shido's palace. I liked her wanted gimmick of being the crit'er, but when you get her, Mona's third tier persona learns an AOE Lucky Punch, Joker already has high crit, and I would always baton pass to Crow because of his severe almighty AOE ×3. Plus, the way I built my Joker with practically exclusively two personas, Yoshitsune and Kuguya Picaro, he was already the phys and light attacker except with the addition of being able to have an auto-concentrate at the start of every fight (I have no idea why—it's something with Yoshitsune but idk what it is), the charge skill, Yoshitsune's nature of tripling the effect of charge, and the additional electric damage. She should have been a party member before the new semester. Obviously this isn't the case for everyone, but for me personally, I didn't often find use for her, especially since she can't do colossal or even severe magic damage. She is a very good physical party member, but again, Joker already covers that better than any other party member can, including Skull.

Crow was a great party member though. I used him in every request and boss fight after I got him. I was a little salty he couldn't switch back and forth from Loki and Robin Hood but I suppose if he did, he'd make Violet even more obsolete lol. I liked Loki while playing P3, so I'm glad I was able to use that persona again. He had Debilitate which was amazing. Queen learns Checkmate when getting to the third tier persona, which is an AOE version of it, but honestly, whenever I was fighting a boss that I thought needed it at that point in the game, I didn't need it to be multi-hitting. Plus, it costed about 90 SP and no way I was using that over her healing, defense buffs, and nuclear damage.

But anyway, back to Crow, I loved using him. He basically turned into my almighty damage dealer, even with his somewhat weaker magic, at least compared to his strength stat, but considering the final boss fight, it was extremely helpful. It did take up a lot of SP, but I had 5 Somas, a ton of SP restoratives, and had basically asked Kawakami to make me either curry or coffee every single night I was able to, so I pretty much had an infinite supply of it.

It helped that P5R made Akechi a much more likable character too. I liked him all right in P5, but didn't find him all that sympathetic, and thought that the characters treating him so sympathetically was extremely jarring considering all the horrible shit he did (which includes making orphans of both Haru and Futaba). That still kind of holds true, but since you can actually build a social link with him outside of the story, you can see more of his character and it improved him in leaps and bounds. Not to mention that his 8th confidant rank was....something else ^^; having a section of the new story too with just Joker and Akechi, (and kind of Sumire too, but mostly just those two) was awesome. I loved seeing them team up to punch Adam Kadmon man in the face. Plus, having more time with him in the Phantom Thieves without pretense had him going "I am surrounded by idiots" basically the whole time he was there. Like—I even felt disappointed that Akechi was actually dead and he didn't survive. That's a huge improvement over from me wishing one of the dialogue options was "fuck you lmao" during his death scene at the end of Shido's palace when he asked the Phantom Thieves to promise him to change Shido's heart.

For Sumire though, she had a good character arc. Like her gameplay though, she was badly overshadowed by both Akechi and Maruki. Even still, I liked her character arc and everything, and her social link. Even if I ended up liking Kasumi more in the end anyway rip

That's kind of all I have to say about her, oof. She was good, but other elements took attention away from her pretty badly.

Maruki though... Maruki was amazing. He was a fantastic antagonist because I got to punch him in the face, his palace was amazing, I loved the music, the different sections were cool, and I even liked the color maze bridge puzzle thing. I definitely wouldn't like it so much if I ever replayed it, especially if I try to get that final Will Seed, which wasn't hard, but did take kind of a while, but I don't think I will be so it's not a problem.

He had such good motivations, and the fact that he didn't ever actually hurt anyone other than when he punched Joker in the face made him really sympathetic and redeemable to me. At the end of the day, all he actually wanted to do was make people happy and not have to suffer, and was willing to destroy himself in order to achieve it. But just like with every belief, it went too far and he took away people's free will and ability to pick for themselves. The kind of moral question about the entire thing was very interesting, and I kind of wish it was more further addressed. There should have been Sojiro or some other character that was perfectly happy in Maruki's alternate reality so they could challenge the Phantom Thieves in a way Maruki wasn't able to. Still, what was done was really good and I liked it a lot.

...

Even all that said, I have no idea why the hell Joker could not use Satanael. There was such a perfect opportunity to use it once Maruki evolved his persona to Adam Kadmon, a giant persona. Hell, it was still small when compared to Satanael. It's after beating Yaldabaoth so Joker should have access to it. It would have been epic to be able to use a giant Satanael in a normal-ish boss fight. I'm sure there are some explanations as to why, but the game never mentions it or even acknowledges Satanael so it doesn't count and I'm still bitter. The writers forgot that Joker has a persona literally as big as a cognitive god and that kind of broke some immersion for me. Immersion completely went out the window once Joker and Maruki started punching each other but STILL. Satanael's not that great a persona, but having it show up in the story again would have been so awesome to use a persona about as big as Shibuya more than once.

Hardly comparable to my beef about Satanael, but I wish that while the party members were acting as Phantom Thieves, or at least while they're in the metaverse, the names on their text boxes would change to their Phantom Thief names. There's no reason why they didn't, especially since the characters exclusively use their Phantom Thief names to call each other anyway. It's not a huge deal or anything, but I would have liked it.

I loved Royal, and totally think it's better than P5 vanilla. Its new semester kind of takes away from the superb ending of the vanilla game, but the new stuff still makes up for it. Don't get me wrong, you can still get the original ending from the vanilla game in Royal, at least I'm pretty sure you can, but it involves you missing out on all the new content, including Violet as a party member and getting Crow back, plus Joker's showtimes so it's not worth it imo

I wasn't actually looking forward to the game when it was announced, or even planning on getting it, but I had the Phantom Thieves' edition pre-ordered for me as a Christmas present so I wasn't going to...not play it lol. I'm extremely glad I got it though, even if I otherwise wouldn't have, and now that I have finished it, I'm very happy with the game. The gameplay's improved by leaps and bounds, and the new content was all amazing.

... And I got to punch Maruki in the face.

I did end up getting the platinum trophy for Royal too, so despite the Phantom Thieves den thing, I don't see myself going back to it, at least any time soon. It was an amazing experience, but I can set my sights back to FFVII now lol.

...Although, I did hear you can fight the twins and Lavenza so uhhh maybe i won't be shelfing it so soon—

#persona 5 royal #persona #p5r spoilers #personal #long post

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douxreviews · 6 years ago

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Charmed - Season Two Review

"Our job is to protect the innocent, not punish the guilty."

In a lot of respects, Charmed's second season is stronger that the first. With no real "sophomore slump" to speak of, the series quickly settles into a fantastic run of episodes that make great use of the groundwork laid by the debut season. Spoilers and Gordon bashing ahead!

Season opener 'Witch Trial' is brimming with confidence. There's such an ease to how this season uses each sister, and how they interact has never felt more organic and fun than it does here. Following the previous season's finale, Andy's death is still causing ricochets through the Halliwells' lives, and Prue's struggle to get back on the “witch's saddle” is played really well. There's a heartbreaking monologue in the premiere in which Prue voices her struggles with her ability to do good, when she feels like she's responsible for her first love's death. Shannen was always one of the strongest cast members, and that scene always springs to mind when I think of how great she was in this role. The way Piper and Phoebe comfort Prue in this moment feels so right, too. I love these three gals.

The best of episode of the season (and a series highlight) is 'Morality Bites', an even more affecting hour than the premiere. It features the show's third major brush with time travel – this time to the future – where a decision to punish a guilty man leads to Phoebe literally burning at the stake. Though it relies on some simple ideas, there's a powerful lesson to be learned, with the sisters facing the hard truth behind why they can only use their powers to protect, not punish. That one line always hits me where it hurts: "The wrong thing done for the right reason is still the wrong thing.". 'Morality Bites' is also Alyssa Milano's best work; you can really feel Phoebe's pain throughout. There's a further brush with time travel later on in the season as well and although it doesn't resonate quite as much as 'Morality Bites', there's still a lot of fun to be had. 'Pardon My Past' toys with the theory of past lives and how souls can grow and evolve over time. The hour neatly ties into that recurring theme of Phoebe's latent dark side, a concept that was explored to great effect in last season's 'Woogy' episode. And who can resist an opportunity to dress up the cast in 20's garb?

Season Two also picks up where episodes like 'That '70s Episode' left off, delving further into the intriguing Halliwell family history, notably in 'P3H2O', a powerful chapter that reveals the girls' mother's affair with her former Whitelighter Sam (a twist that becomes quite significant – and very useful for the producers – come Season Four). The episode itself features some beautiful and heart-breaking moments for each sister: Piper falling into her mother's footsteps with Leo and eventually realising that she has to let him go; Phoebe being forced into reliving her mother's final moments in order to stop the demon who killed her; and Prue confronting her fear head on and eventually avenging Patty's death. There are some lighter episodes that make great use of the dynamic performances of the core cast, too. Despite some questionable examples of this ('She's a Man, Baby, a Man'), episodes like 'Astral Monkey' and 'Chick Flick' are a lot of fun, with the latter standing out as one of the best examples of how inventive and sharp the writing team could be when they really wanted to.

What lets the second year down is the introduction of the series' first truly sucky characters: Dan and Jenny Gordon. The latter's brief run of episodes seems to serve very little purpose other than to throw in a younger person's perspective into the series and force Dan into the Halliwells' lives. Her barely explained disappearance after just a handful of episodes seems to indicate some sort of an awareness of how grating a character she ended up becoming. As dull as he is, Dan isn't necessarily as problematic as the storyline he represents; the show's worst love triangle. He's a total bore, but I feel like he's more of a victim of circumstance than anything else, primarily serving as a c*ck-block between Piper and the then well-established Leo, who were clearly the end-game couple of the series. His hasty exit at the close of the season is probably the only reprieve where his arc is concerned, allowing Piper and Leo to properly pursue their love affair, which leads to more threatening, and subsequently more interesting roadblocks in Season Three. I do feel obliged to point out how awful Leo is for a significant portion of this arc. He's unfair, judgmental and forces Piper into some very uncomfortable situations just to prove a point. Give a girl some room! Leo's struggles with his temporary transition back to human form are mildly interesting, though they don't last very long and are drowned out by the melodramatic hoopla of the love triangle.

An unfortunate amount of this season’s run time is spent on Piper's conflicting feelings for Dan and Leo, but we do get some great character work elsewhere. Piper's professional life sees a major overhaul following her decision to quit her job at Quake last season, as she transitions from restaurant manager to club owner. Said establishment, P3, is a fun hub of activity for the girls, and a handy way for the network to parade a multitude of musical guests onto the show. It also feels like the right move for a character who's starting to really come into her own and take control of her life. Prue's deconstruction from the uptight matriarch of the family continues this season, with episodes like 'Ms Hellfire' playing with her wild side. In that regard, her decision to leave her by-the-numbers job at Buckland's to pursue her actual dream of becoming a photographer makes total sense, though it still baffles me how an inexperienced photographer like her managed to worm her way into a job at an established magazine. Phoebe's arc weirdly feels like it's bringing both Prue and her back to some kind of middle ground; just as the eldest sibling starts to let go of her inhibitions, Phoebe makes the decision to start becoming more responsible and actively pursues her unfinished college degree. Gone are the days of the hotel lobby psychic! Like Prue and Piper's arcs, Phoebe's also feels natural and right for her character, and is satisfying for those who have been following her journey since the first episode.

Potions and Notions

Darryl is brought in on the magical secret in 'Ms Hellfire', which thankfully curbs the risk of any repeat of the antagonism the girls faced from a frustrated Andy last season.

Prue is the first sister to develop a whole new power this season; Astral Projection. It's actually a fairly cool advancement and it's used really well.

The Source, the leader of the underworld, is mentioned for the first time in ‘Give Me a Sign’.

Spells and Chants

Phoebe: "The wrong thing done for the right reason is still the wrong thing."

Prue: "I know someone who can see anything." Phoebe: "Oh, no. Wait a minute. You tiptoe around the subject of Mom, you deny looking like her, you can't even go to the end of that dock because you're afraid to walk in her footsteps and now you want me to relive her last moments? How is that fair?" Prue: "It's not. None of this is. Mom's death, Sam's guilt. But I'm asking you to help me end it."

Piper: "Wait, Phoebe, you enrolled? This is huge!" Phoebe: "Hugest thing I've done since I came back home. I mean, aside from vanquishing demons and saving the world from evil, of course."

Billy: “Don’t you just hate exposition?” Phoebe: “Tell me about it…”

Best Episode: Morality Bites.

Honorable Mentions: Witch Trial, P3H2O, Ms Hellfire, Pardon my Past, Murphy's Luck, Chick Flick, Astral Monkey.

Worst Episode: They're Everywhere!

The show's second year is permeated by some drab and drawn out love-life drama, but it's largely a solid follow-up to the show's charming opening season, one that ups the ante and includes several episodes that are among the series' best.

8 out of 10 magic monkeys.

Panda

#Charmed #Prue Halliwell #Piper Halliwell #Phoebe Halliwell #Charmed Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews #something from the archive

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cardcaptorcoconut · 7 years ago

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Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card Arc Chapter 22 Translation

Hi everyone! Thanks for your patience with the chapter translation this time, especially when it’s such a big one. Some of you know, but I’ve been having a very difficult few weeks and have been running around a lot these past 3 days and will be for the next week as well. I really appreciate your patience! :) The CCS events have really been helping keep me busy in a positive way though, so that’s been great.

I translated this really quickly when I got access to the chapter and haven’t proofread as carefully as I normally try to, so if I find out later that there were any typos, I’ll repost with those. Thanks again for understanding in advance!

[EDIT] Sorry it looks like the airport wifi messed up the formatting and the wifi on the plane will be broken... :( I will correct it when I land.

[EDIT #2] I’m finally back on solid ground and have updated the post. Sorry for the delay and weird formatting! Also, due to a couple typos and one mistitled line, I’ll be posting a quick update shortly.

☆★Translations Notes Reminder★☆

Disclaimer: These are just fan translations. Please support the official release.

Chapter 22

Cover Page: “Let’s always, always and forever be close with one another.”

P1 Touya: I’m home. Fujitaka: <on phone> What!? She collapsed!? Fujitaka: Oh, she came to soon after. I see. That’s a relief. Fujitaka: Okay, I understand. Fujitaka: Please take care of her. (I will talk to you later.)

[Lit: 「失礼します」or “Excuse me/Goodbye.”]

Touya: You said… Sakura collapsed?

P2 Fujitaka: Yes. But it seems they had a doctor look at her right away and she’s alright. Touya: She was mixed-up in something again… Fujitaka: Hm? Touya: She went to mom’s grandfather’s place, right? Fujitaka: That’s right. Fujitaka: Because he has something to give to Sakura-san. Fujitaka: One of the two (things) is really huge, so I asked him (not to give it to her) for now. Touya: <quietly> Large?

P3 Fujitaka: It’s the house she’s visiting right now. Fujitaka: It seems it was one of Nadeshiko-san’s favorite (summer homes), and (he) wanted to leave it to Sakura-san. Touya: To a middle schooler? Fujitaka: Yes, but he gave up on that for (me). Touya: Does great-grandpa look like mom?

P4 Fujitaka: I wonder… I think that (they have the same) eyes though.

[Lit: I think that their eyes are similar though.]

Fujitaka: According to Sonomi-san, Nadeshiko-san looked exactly like her grandmother. Fujitaka: Touya-kun, he wanted to meet you too… (that) Masaki-san. Touya: If the timing works out… Fujitaka: You’re being shy? <Text reads: “Bull’s eye”>

P5 Fujitaka: You might look alike. Touya: Hm? Fujitaka: Masaki-san and you. Touya: <pointing to himself> Me? Fujitaka: We should line the two of you up next to each other and compare. Fujitaka: You’re related by blood so it makes sense that you would look alike. Touya: I’ve recently been thinking that Mom and Sakura look similar too. Fujitaka: I think so too. Fujitaka: Their smiles are growing more and more similar. And also…

P6 Fujitaka: (Their mysterious abilities too.)

[Lit: That mysteriousness about them too.]

Touya: Huh? Fujitaka: Nadeshiko-san was a (strange) person who could talk to (things that weren’t) there and understand the feelings of things that can’t speak.

[Lit: “Nadeshiko was a myterious person who could talk to something that wasn’t…”]

Fujitaka: But that’s the same as you, Touya-kun.

P7 Touya: Didn’t you ever think it wasn’t believable? Fujitaka: Not at all. But I’m not the kind of person who senses or hear things, so it was a little lonely. Fujitaka: I can’t (see or hear them) for Sakura-san either.

[Lit: I can’t give Sakura-san my understanding either.]

P8 Touya: …You knew? Fujitaka: Nothing specific. Fujitaka: But I knew that it wasn’t something I could resolve and I realized to some degree there were many difficult things happening since she was (about) in the 4th grade. Touya: Dad, (as expected) you’re amazing. Fujitaka: What is? Touya: The fact that you realized something was going on, but let her act freely without asking her about it.

P9 Fujitaka: Because it’s Sakura-san after all. Fujitaka: She’s someone who cherishes herself and those around her. Fujitaka: Plus, whatever happens, she has a wonderful older brother too. Touya: (That goes for you too, dad.)

[Lit: “And you too, dad.” – The nuance here is that Fujitaka is here for Sakura too.]

Fujitaka: Well, I’m not (very helpful) right now…

[Lit: I’m a bit helpless right now.]

P10 Fujitaka: <looking at Nadeshiko’s photo> There’s surely a reason why Nadeshiko-san hasn’t (appeared) lately as well. Touya: What? Fujitaka: (It’s nothing.) Fujitaka: I was just thinking how happy I am to have such a great wife and kids. <Scene changes to Masaki’s house>

P11 Sakura: I’m alright now. The doctor just now said nothing was wrong too. Masaki: But… Sakura: There was something you wanted to give me, right? Masaki: Oh, that’s right. Can you wait for me for a moment? Sakura: Okay! Syaoran: You’re not pushing yourself, are you? Sakura: Not at all. I’m sorry for making you worry too, Syaoran-kun. Syaoran: I’m fine. But, really… If you’re in pain or are hurting even just a little bit, please tell me. Don’t hide it.

P12 Sakura: You too, Syaoran-kun. Syaoran: Huh? Sakura: I want you to not keep things hidden and tell me. <Masaki re-enters the room>

P13 Sakura: A box? Masaki: Please open it up. <Sakura finds a pendant-like clock inside>

P14 Sakura: A clock? Masaki: It’s something that Nadeshiko always treasured ever since she was a young girl. Masaki: My wife and I - Nadeshiko’s grandmother - brought it back from overseas. Sakura: From where? Masaki: From England. Syaoran: <thinking> England… the place Hiiragizawa is now.

P15 Syaoran: And that person too…

[Note: Syaoran isn’t saying Kaito is in England, but is just making the connection that both he and Eriol have roots there.]

P16 Eriol: It’s been a while, Cerberus. Kero: Indeed it has. Because you haven’t been replying to us. Kero: We’re pretty ticked off about it. Eriol: I can understand that very well. Especially from (the expression) on Yue’s face…

P17 Kero: Sending an image of your magic circle and appearing in this form must mean… Yue: You’re ready to tell us (what’s going on). Eriol: Yes. Yue: Explain everything. What is happening to our mistress?

P18 Eriol: The thing I’ve been fearing the most is (occurring).

[Lit: …most is becoming reality.]

P19 Sakura: I’m sorry for making you worry. Masaki: I’m sorry too, for (calling you out here) so suddenly. Thank you both. Syaoran: <bowing> Thank you for having us. Masaki: Please come visit again. Sakura: Okay! Sakura: I will treasure mom’s clock.

P20 Masaki: <to Syaoran> Please take care of Sakura-chan. Syaoran: <surprised, but then determined> …I will.

P21 Kero: You mean that magician who’s with Akiho? Yue: Did you ask the Magician’s Society? Eriol: More or less. Eriol: Well for the most part there were no responses, but one answer did come back clear. Eriol: It was that “Yuna D. Kaito was excommunicated one year ago.”

P22 Kero: From that society? Kero: It’s that kind of crazy place where as long as you have strong magic and carry out the society’s requests, for the most part you’ll go unquestioned… Kero: What did he do to be excommunicated from there!? Eriol: I don’t know. Eriol: But (my search took a different route).

[Lit: But I tried searching a different route.]

Eriol: The Li Clan assisted me. Eriol: It seems he was excommunicated for losing a (magical tool enshrined by) the Magician’s Society.

[Note: 門外不出 means “to treasure something by never removing it from the premises”. I decided to go with “enshrined” as it sounds simpler, but the literal translation would be: “It seems he was excommunicated for losing a magical tool that was not to be removed from the Magician Society’s premises.”]

P23 Kero: What!? Lost?? How incompetent of him!! Eriol: It’s what they’re saying (to cover it up). Eriol: He absconded with it. So it’s a complete lie. Yue: Can something like that be forgiven? Eriol: There’s no way it can be forgiven.

P24 Eriol: It can’t be returned. Eriol: Because no one can win against a Magician who has (earned) the Title of “D”. Eriol: It was a magic tool kept hidden by that society. It’s likely that it was taboo to come into contact with it.

[Lit: 「おそらく『禁忌』に触れるものだろう」 so it could also be “it was taboo to touch”]

Eriol: The society fears his power and that he might use that tool, so they’re unable to take action.

P25 Yue: So, he’s (that) strong? Eriol: If you mean stronger than I am now, that’s a yes. <Both Kero and Yue react with concern>

P26 Yue: And (our) mistress… Yue: What about… our mistress… Eriol: Sakura is…

P27 Eriol: She was able to collect the scattered Clow Cards and return them to their card forms, as well as change all of them into cards that draw from her own magic.

P28 Eriol: However, it seems (even) that wasn’t enough to finish things. Narration: The truth about the past that Eriol knows is…!?

#cardcaptor sakura #card captor sakura #cardcaptor sakura clear card arc #card captor sakura clear card arc #clear card arc #ccs #translations: clear card arc

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panda-noosh · 7 years ago

Text

Bad At Love{P1} {Photographer!Keith x Prodigy!Reader}{AU}

Words: 5344

Summary: Keith Kogane was known for being the good-boy-gone-bad. You were known for being the emotionless prodigy that only ever showed up to school to stop her foster parents from getting arrested. Whenever you two are put together on a school project after briefly meeting during detention, you find your world tipping upside down as you realise that there’s more to life than science and logic.

Pairing: Photographer!Keith x Prodigy!Reader

Warning: Keith swears a lil bit.

Notes: p2 - p3 - p4 - p5 - p6 - FINAL; CHAPTER 1 OF MY NEW KEITH FIC! PLEASE GIVE ME FEEDBACK!

Chapter 1

“Did your massive IQ get you in trouble again?”

The words at the first thing you hear as you step through the door of the foster home you had been cooped up in for nearly two months now, occupied by the all-so-friendly Ann Marie Park who insisted on asking the exact same question every time you walked into the kitchen.

It was exhausting. Sitting down at the kitchen counter and reminiscing on the most-likely-awful day you had just charged through. You never lied about it – the only reason you were in the foster system, from the loose papers you had stolen and memorised from the offices when you were 5, was because your mother and father couldn’t handle a child genius.

That was the label they had put on you in black and white ink, on official papers. Even at the age of five the words hurt. Reading about how you had crafted an entire doll house when you were three year olds, how you were speaking in full sentences by seven months, how your intelligence had scared off the people who were meant to be with you at all times.

Today was no different.

School was the same old, pointless array of regurgitated information that you saw as common sense. Your notebooks were filled with the same old, stupid doodles that were the only thing that kept you from collapsing from both boredom and the exhaustion that waking up at 6am brought upon you.

You slump down against the counter after tossing your bag carelessly against the sofa that was littered with your foster-siblings own school work which he was clearly struggling to get through. Patrick hissed at you as your bag barely whizzed past his head, nearly knocking him out cold.

“Teachers get so butthurt,” you find yourself mumbling, a loose reply to the question Ann-Marie had asked you. “I corrected Mr Blanchard on his spelling today and got deemed disrespectful. An absolute joke.”

Ann-Marie sighs, placing a steaming cup of tea in front of you. You instinctively push it away, your brain already going through every single thing that the second-hand kettle would be pouring into your cup.

“What did he say to you?” Ann-Marie asks.

“He said I had no right to shout out in class and that my input was unnecessary. He then proceeded to give me a detention.”

Ann-Marie sighs, letting go of the breath she was holding in. She was clearly expecting the final piece of your story – the detention. The detention which you seemed to be assigned every other day all because of the fact that you didn’t feel things in the way others did. Your sky-high IQ, your label of genius wasn’t all it was cut out to be – your emotional effort was way too low, meaning you very rarely knew when to bite your tongue and keep quiet. The idea of being scolded didn’t scare you like how it scared other kids, meaning you said whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted and would only react whenever the punishment was given to you.

“What time do I have to pick you up at?” Ann-Marie asks.

“I don’t plan on going, Ann-Marie. It’s was unfairly given to me by-“

“I’m telling Mr Blanchard you said that!” Patrick wails from behind you. You turn in your chair, eyebrow raised as you look at the boy behind you – half your age yet he still managed to be the only one who could grind your gears in the way he did.

“You can tell Mr Blanchard all you want – I won’t be there to see his facial expression.”

Ann-Marie grumbles, grabbing your arm to snap your attention back to her. You turn back around in your stool, take a handful of grapes from the fruit bowl and proceed to pop them in your mouth one by one.

“You’re going whether you like it or not. The only way we’re gonna break the surface with you is if you see what the punishments are really like.”

You raise your brow, speaking through a mouthful of grapes. “Break the surface? Ann-Marie, my own parents couldn’t handle me whenever I was an infant. There’s no way a detention is going to suddenly boost my EQ levels.”

“What are EQ levels?”

“Be quiet, Patrick.”

Ann-Marie shakes her head at you, her beady blue eyes glaring directly into yours in the way they always did whenever she was giving you a warning. You simply shrug, leaning back against the stool, wanting nothing more than to just get up and leave. Being around people brought up your lack of emotions. It exposed you against your own will, and the only way to soothe it was by being on your own.

You wanted to be on your own.

“You’re going,” Ann-Marie repeats, more stern this time. “I’ll call up the school and find out what I need to find out, and then you’re going to sit through that entire detention whether I have to handcuff you to that chair.”

“That’s actually a form of hostage capture and-“

“Y/N!” Ann-Marie hisses. “Enough. Now, go upstairs and get out of those clothes. Dinner will be in an hour.”

If I break out of her grip in exactly five seconds, and run by lunging, I could be out the exit door in no time.

Ann-Marie yanks your arm, silencing your overactive thoughts as she drags you through the hallways of the high school you were sure you had escaped for at least another two days whenever you had left on Friday.

And yet here you were – trapped in the confines of your foster-mothers arms, wading through the empty halls whilst the teachers smile at you as they pass, pretending they didn’t make your life a living hell. They had Ann-Marie fooled. You could tell by the way she chirped up every now and then, commenting on how, “Polite these people are!”

It made you sick, quite frankly.

“You know they’re only smiling because you’re the one keeping their bills paid, right?” you comment, not bothering to lower your voice.

Ann-Marie groans, tugging on your arm again. “This is what I mean, Y/N. You have absolutely no filter.”

“I didn’t tell you that you yanking on my arm is only making me stumble even more, so I think I’m improving. Can we go home now?”

Ann-Marie doesn’t even reply as she turns the corner, coming face-to-face with Mr Blanchards ICT room. The computers line the wall, none of them on bar the big monitor that sits high and proud on Mr Blanchards desk.

You scowl upon seeing his small head popping above it, him immediately flashing a large grin at Ann-Marie who gives it right back. He even has the nerve to smile at you – you simply roll your eyes, folding your arms and leaning against the door.

You would never understand people who did that. Could change personalities completely within the space of two seconds, all depending on who they were talking to. Perhaps it was your low emotional levels, but you treated everybody the same. It was just how you worked.

Ann-Marie and Mr Blanchard spoke for a good few minutes before Mr Blanchard finally turns to you and asks you to take a seat. You grumble out a, “Thank you, good sir,” before stowing off to one of the desks in the centre of the room. You set your bag down, pull out your notebook and get to doodling – just like you did every lesson.

You had been caught most times. The teachers always noticed the way your pen moved back and forth at a fast pace, a clear indication that you were colouring rather than actually writing. You took great pleasure in showing them the notes you had already jotted down from nothing but memory. Their faces would turn blank and they would hand to you their favourite comment they used on every smart kid:

“Your notes can’t be correct if you jotted them down so fast.”

You didn’t mind. You got even more pleasure as you watched them read over your notes to see that they were even more detailed than the ones they had written on the board. You had even gone as far as to provide detailed examples, and continue on with the topic long before the teacher had a chance to teach you the criteria.

Clearly, though, not all teachers appreciated having somebody smarter than them in their class. It belittled them.

The clock ticks by with you subconsciously counting the milliseconds, just like you always did. An hour of silence between you and the teacher was enough to make you feel like you were going mad –

But that silence was abruptly cut off at exactly 3:27pm. You had counted.

The door to the room swings open, and even Mr Blanchard shoots upright in shock at the sudden disturbance. You had noticed a shift in his demeanour at around 3:20pm, with him continuously looking at the clock, pouting to himself before looking back down at the paper work on his desk.

Apparently the boy in red who was currently wading into the classroom was the reason behind Mr Blanchard’s confusion.

“Keith,” Mr Blanchard exclaims, standing up almost immediately. “You’re late once again.”

Keith.

You nearly gape as you look at the student in front of you – in your year, you knew. He had been the end of rumours for months now. Keith Kogane, photography student, good boy gone bad for a reason unknown.

You had avoided him at all costs, not seeing the point in wasting time on a friendship with somebody who would clearly do nothing but drag you down this school year. You had even gone as far as dropping photography club – a class and a profession which Keith Kogane was known for.

Taking pictures was his specialty, and he didn’t hide that fact. His camera hangs limply around his neck even now, even though it’s off and there’s hardly anything to capture in this dimly-lit room with simply computer monitors around the place. His black hair is ruffled messily in the back and slicked neatly in the front, his red jacket stained with a yellow sauce you can tell is mustard.

Had he stopped at the cafeteria before he got here?

“Sorry,” Keith utters in response, and you’re surprised at the lack of hostility in the apology. He almost sounds genuine.

Mr Blanchard’s eyes soften as Keith ducks his head down, kicking the door shut behind him and stepping into the room. You watch him closely as he takes a seat at the desk opposite you, immediately putting his head back down, his nimble fingers delicately holding his camera.

Mr Blanchard opens and closes his mouth for a moment, clearly wandering what to say to this boy who was so well-known amongst the school and yet he walked alone through most of the day. You had only ever seen him with people during lunch hours. After that, he disappears into whatever corner of the school he finds most aesthetic to lose himself amongst pointless pixels.

Eventually, the teacher gives up, shakes his head and exits the room completely. Not before giving you a stern look of warning which you give back just as sternly – and then the door has shut behind him and the only two people in the room are you and Keith, alone.

In silence.

Your eyes never leave him. You sit, leaned back against your chair with your eyes focused on him, unable to focus on anything else. He just seems to strange. So far from what you expected him to be. You expected him to be like a rabid bull walking into detention – kicking chairs over and yelling about how Mr Blanchard isn’t his father and he can’t tell him what to do and spraying every curse word under the sun like profanity was his second language.

But here he was in front of you now, eyes never leaving the small screen on his camera. The only noise in the room is the consistent beeping noise which comes from the device as he flicks through the photos he’s looking at. He seems so intrigued by them, and you find yourself half tempted to ask him what he’s doing.

But that wasn’t you, was it? You didn’t care about what Keith Kogane was doing. Just because he surprised you this one time doesn’t mean you should jeopardize your school career by getting involved with him and whatever bad luggage he brought with him.

You slide down further in your chair, pulling your hood on up over your head and deciding to lose yourself counting the tick of the clock again.

Twenty minutes. Thirty seven seconds. Ten milliseconds.

The time would pass by easily. It had to. You had your doodles here with you, an overactive brain to keep you company. Science and maths was a lot better company than the man sitting across from you.

Nineteen minutes. Fifty five seconds. Fifteen milliseconds.

You could ignore him just fine. The fact that he was currently breathing extremely heavily was nothing for you to care about. You had never spoken two words to him before. He was nothing to you.

Nineteen minutes. Fourty six seconds.

There was no reason for you to want to know more about him. No reason for you to ask him about the rumours that went around, inquiry him about how he had gone from a straight A student to somebody who very rarely even showed up to class.

Eighteen seconds. Fifty seven seconds. 12-

“Son of a bitch!”

You nearly yelp, your eyes darting up from your lap to click onto the pair of brown ones which are currently flying around the room in a frantic search for whatever the boy had just dropped.

You had heard the clatter but it hadn’t startled you as much as Keith’s voice had.

You straighten up in your chair, letting your hood slip off of your head as you do. Keith barely acknowledges your existence as he roughly pushes a chair out of his way so he can duck under the table.

“What are you doing?” you find yourself asking.

Keith doesn’t look up. He doesn’t even reply to you. He simply keeps cursing lowly under his breath, his hands feeling up the floor.

You stand up slowly, looking over the top of the round table you’re sat at. “Did you drop something?”

“No, I’m just crouching on the floor because my arse got tired sitting down,” Keith shoots back. He looks up at you, rolls his eyes as if you were the stupidest human being on the planet. “What are you even doing here anyway?”

You raise a brow, shocked and intriguied by this sudden change of attitude. You couldn’t help but chuckle at yourself – how you had thought for one minute that maybe the rumours were all false was beyond you. With an IQ of 160, you thought you’d have caught on by now that high school rumours held a lot more tact that TV gave them credit for.

“I’m in detention too, smart ass,” you reply. “That’s usually the reason why students look miserable whenever they’re forced into school on weekends.”

Keith rolls his eyes, letting out a small scoff at the corner of his mouth before he goes back to searching for the mysterious object he had dropped.

You aren’t entirely sure what to do or say afterwards. Do you help him look? It seems, morally, like the correct thing to do, but your lack of said morals was hard to fight against. He had treated you like shit for no reason, so you would do the exact same thing to him and not regret it.

You fall back against your chair, fold your arms over your chest and quietly hum to yourself, letting your head swing back to look up at the ceiling. You can feel Keith’s eyes glaring at you as you hum, clearly getting irked by the small noise you’re making – that was your plan. You knew how the human brain worked. You had known how the human brain worked since you were 7 years old. Little noises that you had to strain to hear were what your brain was attracted to. Your brain wants to pick up on the small noises, even if you aren’t entirely keen on trying to listen to them.

You had lowered your voice to just that perfect level, knowing full well it would drive Keith mad.

And it had, apparently.

Keith slams his hand against the floor, shooting out from under the table with tired and annoyed looking eyes. You smile at him, stopping your humming for a moment.

“Can you be quiet? This hour is already gonna drag for me, and you’re really not making it any better.”

You shrug loosely. His comments did nothing to you. “I’m not here to make your hour any better. In fact, I think detention is the only place where it’s acceptable to make a persons life hell.”

Keith’s eye twitches. “Are you serious?”

You smile, nodding.

Keith shakes his head, hollowing out his cheeks. “You don’t happen to be the child genius chick everybody goes on about, are you?”

Your smile fades, a twisting feeling pinching the inside of your gut at the two words which shouldn’t have gone together. They crossed his lips so easily – he didn’t even seem shocked, and yet the two words brought back memories that you had forced down over the past few years.

You cough and look away, suddenly feeling uneasy. “I don’t-“

“IQ of 160 or something like that,” Keith continues. “God, you must feel some sense of superiority in this hell hole, don’t you? Smarter even than good ol’ Mr Blanchard.

“His IQ isn’t difficult to challenge.”

Keith scoffs. “I can tell. The old bastard caught me taking pictures of the tree outside his room and put me in detention for it. What a stupid reason, huh?”

“I’d rather not talk about my intelligence, thank you. It’s quite a – uh – personal thing.”

Keith raises a brow as he lifts himself up off the floor. He wipes the dirt off of his black jeans, never taking his eyes off of you and suddenly it feels like the tables have turned. All because he had brought up the one thing you wanted people to forget about you – you were a certified genius. You had an IQ that was higher than anybodies this school had ever seen, and you couldn’t help it. Your brain had been overstimulated from a very, very young age and now you were forced to deal with the repercussions – trust issues, questions, teachers who despised you for the soul reason of you being smarter than them.

You hated talking about it when you didn’t need to. Talking to people in general was a hard enough task for somebody who had zero emotional quota. Talking to them about the one thing that was enough to trigger something inside of you was even harder.

“I go to school with you,” Keith says once he has stood up fully. You notice how he holds his camera protectively against his stomach as he speaks to you – a mark of denial. Perhaps he had some anxiety hidden beneath the tough-boy surface. “Surely knowing about your intelligence comes with the package of being a student with you.”

“We don’t have classes together,” you point out. “Nothing but ICT and biology, and it’s very rare you even show up to those.”

There goes that filter again, Y/N.

You try to cover it up as quickly as you can. “But I suppose I shouldn’t be the one to talk. I’m not usually very vocal during lessons.”

“Bullshit!” Keith nearly yells, startling you. “You’re constantly putting teachers in their place, aren’t you? I heard from my friend Pidge that you corrected Mrs Leech during one of her maths lessons once and you basically took over the class. That’s not something somebody with social issues does.”

“I don’t have social issues as much as I have a low emotional quota.”

“Please translate.”

You can already feel the conversation gnawing away at your brain, an urge to put a stop to it taking over all over again.

“It’s medical, so it’s none of your business.”

Keith frowns, his fingers twitching against the buttons on his camera. Another marker of shock – was he surprised at your defiance?

“Medical? Surely if it was medical, the teachers would have to let it slide. Yet here you are – in detention.”

He made a good point. You lower your head to the desk again, tossing your hood on over your bed-head which you had arrived with this afternoon.

“If you don’t tell me what all of that means, I’ll just look it up for myself and figure it out on my own. Do you want me to be misinformed?” Keith questions.

You groan. “I don’t even know you.”

“That’s why we’re talking. We’re getting to know each other.” You hear the screech of a chair against the floor – all too close for your liking. You look up from the confines your arms had made for your head to rest upon, eyes meeting with Keith’s almost immediately.

He had pulled a chair out to sit next to you – next to you. Usually, such an action wouldn’t bother you. You were always too lost in your own brain or too monotone that day to even care if somebody wanted to sit next to you. But there was something about Keith and the way he looked at you and the rumours that spiralled around his very existence that had you feeling even mildly uncomfortable.

“I don’t usually talk to people, you know,” he continues. “You’d have noticed that when I walked in. People – they aren’t my strong suit – but I love a good interesting person. A person who can keep me entertained with whatever shit they want to talk about.”

“My intelligence is mine, Keith. I don’t need to talk to you about it if I don’t want to.”

“That’s right. But as I said, I do plan on just searching this all up and figuring you out for myself. You’ve been a mystery in this school for years.”

Your eyebrow twitches in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“People wanna know about you. The infamous child genius-“

“Stop calling me that. I’m 17 years old.”

“The infamous teenage genius, then-“

You can’t help yourself. Before you can think rationally, you’ve slammed your hand against the table, silencing Keith. His mouth immediately zooms to a thin line, flinching back in his own chair as his social personality suddenly seems to melt off of him, replaced by the angsty kid who had walked in this room in the first place.

But you were far from calm anymore. You were angry, the words that Keith spoke zooming around in your head at one hundred miles an hour, because they were the words you had grown up hearing in whispered voices down the hall of the foster home, people talking about how your parents couldn’t cope with the genius. Nobody could cope with the genius. Ego’s were being hurt left right and centre and the human race was far too stuck up to let that happen.

Children aren’t meant to develop this quickly. Maybe she’s sick.

Maybe she has a photographic memory. I heard that can ruin lives.

They were right. But what ruined lives even more was whenever people diagnosed you with every illness under the sun instead of taking into consideration that maybe, just maybe, you were more than your god damn intelligence. You were more than your grades, or your above average test score, or your early acceptance to Harvard.

You were sick and tired of hearing people label you genius like you were some animal in the zoo.

Oh look! There’s the genius!

Oh, hey! There’s the genius!

The word made you sick, and hearing Keith say it over and over again without knowing just what it did to you was enough to make even you, an emotionless human being, snap.

“Can you just be quiet?” you nearly yell. “This hour has been long enough without you nagging in my ear. I don’t even know who you are! So if you could please shut your mouth, it would be very much appreciated. Go take pictures of the scenery or something – just leave me out of it.”

You gather up your school bag, slinging it over your shoulder before walking over to the far table, slumping down against the desk and ducking your head in your hands. This certainly wasn’t normal for you – you had a hard enough job of hacking into your emotions, let alone having somebody else do it for you.

But that word brought up memories. It made you remember all those years that that was all you were to people – smart. Too smart for your age, they often said. They belittled you because you were too smart, and they would do the exact same thing if you were stupid. You had to find a good balance, and the rules annoyed you.

Keith annoyed you.

The world annoyed you.

You just weren’t very good at processing that emotion.

Never before had you been so aware in a class before.

Usually, you only pulled yourself out of bed and to the classroom for the attendance record. If you’re attendance dropped below 65%, Ann-Marie would be getting a phone call home asking where I was. Which was why you even bothered.

You put very little effort into the classes you attended – you didn’t need to. Sure, some were better than others. You were incredible at the sciences and maths, and needed a little brushing up when it came to technology and practical subjects, but you were good enough to keep up fairly good grades in all the classes you took.

Biology was usually a breeze. You simply sat back and let the teacher ramble on and on about things you already knew – things you had known since you were 3 – and you jotted down any useful information every now and then. But most of the lesson was spent counting the ticking clock and doodling on the front of your notebooks at the back of the classroom.

Today was different, though, because suddenly you were hyperaware of the man sitting two rows in front of you – black hair, red jacket, camera set at his side amongst his other assortment of class belongings.

Keith had never sat so close to you before. He either didn’t show up to class, or he sat at the very front in the corner, by the window, where he would spend the lesson gazing out at the scenery. You often saw him after class, sprinting his way down the hallway because he had spent the biology lesson so inspired by the plants outside.

You would never understand that side of things. Biology was a lot more important than photography, and yet he insisted on throwing the subject away for something that would only get him so far in life.

But today he had showed up to class earlier than usual – still late, but earlier – and had taken the seat two rows in front of you. His eyes hadn’t drifted to the outside world once, and he instead was focusing firmly on the board in front of him.

There had to be a bigger motive towards his actions. If six years of high school with Keith Kogane taught you anything, it was that he didn’t just change seats. You had seen him get in multiple fights with people just because he had walked in to see them sitting in his preferred seat.

This was so unlike him, and you could only link up his strange behaviour to the conversation the two of you had had in detention the previous day.

“Has anybody got any questions before I get into explaining the project?” the teacher, Miss Shaw, asks from the front of the classroom.

Your jaw slackens whenever Keith’s hand goes up almost immediately.

He never spoke out in class. Even a few of the students around you stare at him in mild shock, clearly bewildered as to what he has to say.

“Yes, Mr Kogane?” Miss Shaw calls forward.

Keith shuffles upwards in his seat, messing with his camera – an anxiety marker. The man clearly had some social anxiety within him.

“Miss, I know this really has nothing to do with what we’re learning about, but I just want to know more about something I was researching yesterday,” Keith begins, and your entire stomach falls. “What does it mean if someone has a low emotional quota?”

Miss Shaw raises her brow, pulling her glasses off of the bridge of her nose to look at Keith properly. She leans one hand against her wooden desk, veins popping out of her wrinkled arms as a small smile finds its way onto her cheeks.

“Well, that is definitely more a question for your psychology teacher, but the basics around a low emotional quota means that the person struggles to feel emotions correctly. They often speak out of turn because they don’t care about consequences, or they struggle to form bonds with people because they don’t care about social life or other people.” Miss Shaw nods. Keith shuffles in his seat. You want to scream. “It’s certainly not the type of life you’d want to be living, Mr Kogane.”

Keith nods. “And what are the characteristics of a person with a low EQ?”

“Well, somebody who’s been abandoned in their life, somebody with trust issues, somebody who feels a little less than everybody else.”

“Somebody with a high IQ?” Keith suggests, and that’s when Miss Shaw’s eyes spark up to meet yours, her suddenly catching on to what Keith is saying.

But her smile doesn’t fade. In fact, it seems to only get brighter. She knows full well about your high IQ. Every teacher in the school knows about it. You were the student they didn’t know what to do with.

“Correct,” Miss Shaw finalises, before shaking her head. She’s still smiling. She must think your public embarrassment is a joke – or maybe she thinks you don’t care. You certainly hadn’t given her any reason to care about your well being over the past few years she had been teaching you. Her lack of emotion towards you was equal to your lack of emotion towards life.

She drops the subject, even if she is still smiling to herself. You let your eyes burn holes in the back of Keith’s head, hands clenching at your sides in an attempt to calm yourself down.

Deep breaths.

“Anyway, now that that is out of the way,” Miss Shaw continues. “I’m gonna read out the partners for the research project you guys will be doing for me this week and going on until the deadline. Please listen for your name.”

You can’t listen. You’re trying to grab onto any and every way possible to calm yourself down, but you were so unused to this feeling of overwhelming anger that you had never needed to calm yourself down. You were so used to feeling absolutely numb that this need to grasp onto reality was rare for you, and you didn’t quite know how to do it.

You zoned in on the ticking of the clock. Attempted to. Miss Shaw’s voice rang out over the top of it, making it incredible difficult for you to even catch a glimpse of the noise. The patterns were gone. Your brain was running haywire.

And then-

“Keith Kogane and Y/N L/N. You two will be doing a research project together on the animal kingdom.”

Keith spins around in his seat, a large smile pulling at his lips that he attempts to hide from the view of the other students by pulling his hood around his head.

You suddenly wish you hadn’t shown up to class that day.

256 notes · View notes

never-relaxed · 8 years ago

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On the Persona 5 translation

I’ve read a lot of extremely hot takes on the Persona 5 translation today. So many, in fact, that it’s difficult to address everything wholesale. To the their credits, the critics are both thorough & well-articulated, and their arguments are strong enough to get me thinking - strong enough, even, to kickstart me pushing out this writing blog I’ve been wanting to get off the ground.

I want to respond to the myriad of issues listed on the website being currently used as a sort of rallying-cry, http://www.personaproblems.com/ . It’s well-designed, and organizes the issues well. I’ll start at the top, then:

- “Yet no other form of media would ever get away with the number of errors found in Persona 5's English script.”

This is a very minor nitpick, but actually, yes. Other forms of media would, indeed, get away with any number of similar errors; viewers of foreign films, for instance, can tell you all about how perfect-world this sentiment is. Additionally, classic books aren’t retranslated for no reason; direct translation is not actually a Thing, and any translated work is going to display the biases, quirks, and language tendencies of its writer(s). This is why people learn dead or archaic languages just to read Cicero or Plato in the original text. It’s a bizarre claim, to say grammar issues are not a problem throughout other media. (Also, try reading a novel translated from a Slavic language, if you don’t like stiff dialog. Have fun.)

- “The baseline for any translation is this: readers of the translation should receive the same experience as readers of the original, as if the original creators had written it natively in both languages.“

If this is the writer’s goal when they go about their own work, it’s admirable. It’s also completely impossible. What does a “native” English speaker sound like? Are they American? British? Australian? Here’s the short of it: by translating a work in your own native tongue, you are co-authoring the piece. It is never, ever, going to be a 1:1 situation when facing down the realities of character limits, cultural differences, & even personal backgrounds. Some works get closer, some works get further, and it’s down to the writers to decide whether a strict or a loose translation better fits the text.

To a certain degree, the way we think - the actual way we formulate & process our thoughts - is influenced by language itself. If you ever communicate with folks who speak English as a second, third, fourth, or so on language - you’ll notice that, even when extremely proficient, they don’t just totally entirely lose the speech quirks that come with their parent language. Eliminating those quirks of speech already changes the context of the work. Is this a bad thing? No, not necessarily; but it’s presumptuous at best to believe yourself capable of understanding how another person would write “if only they were native” in your language.

- “Translation can be a murky concept, so first I'll define a standard to measure against: imagine if translation weren't necessary at all.”

I absolutely despise this. The assumption made is that any story could be told completely, and just as enjoyably, in any language, in any culture, without any change to structure. It is simply not how language works.

- “Translators do not convert words from one language to another: they convert ideas.”

Okay. Let’s keep this in mind.

- The entire “Why aren’t more people complaining?” section

This is one of the most bizarre, difficult-to-follow explanations I have ever seen. It makes totally weird assertions, such as the idea that people hold early, loose translations against current-day translators. That’s a really strange idea, considering the popularity of things like NA Kefka, or bounty-hunter-Samus. The truth is that if the translation was good back in the 90s, no one cared if it was inaccurate. Outside of Usenet, none of us really had a point of reference. The writer seems to have some sort of personal beef with Working Designs leaving Bill Clinton jokes in their work, or something. I am especially confused by the TV Tropes links here, and what they have to do with the point.

Cutting down on this section, we could just apply Occam’s razor: most people have no issue with the translation.

- I’m not going to go through all the examples. There are some I think are silly, some that I haven’t seen yet, some that are definitely awkward.

One thing that does frustrate me about these examples - it’s noted by the writer that the script does a fine job of getting _the idea_ across. There are few, if really any, examples of the game actually failing to convey meaning. By the author’s own definition of what a translator does, the script succeeds. No, it doesn’t flow the way it would if it were written by an American. Translate dialog this way, and it sounds weird for English speakers elsewhere in the world. It’s a give and take - we don’t all speak the same English. “But these are factual errors!” is a really silly argument here; if they are, why isn’t this an issue for everybody?

- “Unfortunately, while it's possible for a translation to be stiff but understandable, stiff but accurate translations are pretty much a myth.”

I hate this idea, too. “If it doesn’t sound right in American English, it’s incorrect, & doesn’t get the idea across.” The other thing I really don’t like about this is the vast majority of dialog in Persona 5 flows very smoothly for native English speakers! The writer even seems to be aware of that fact, as I’ll address later.

- “It's definitely great to get to experience the cultural aspect of a piece of foreign writing. However, that foreign nature should be expressed by the text's content, not by the text's awkwardness. This goes back to creator intent. If the original creator were perfectly fluent in English, would they have made their writing intentionally awkward just so readers could feel how “foreign” it is?”

I really fucking hate this! How are you ‘expressing’ the cultural aspect of a text by eliminating the speech quirks of the parent language - is the implication that you intentionally add lines to express the character’s nationality? It really feels like ‘thing that detracts from my experience by taking me out of my personal cultural & linguistic comfort zone should be removed and replaced with, y’know, something.’ And that final claim! People who write in two languages - or speak fluently two languages - will very, very often include quirks, stiffness, or other eccentricities in their own personal English. If the author means “fluent in the brand of English I speak and write,” that’s extremely irritating!

- “Consider—how would readers react if George R. R. Martin released his next book and every third sentence was awkward, with every fifth sentence containing an objective error? Writing is hard, and his novels are long, after all.“

I wish this author had simply not written this blurb, I was so much warmer on the criticism beforehand. George R. R. Martin works in an entirely different medium, in one language, with years and years between each published work. The criticisms even this writer has with Persona 5 do not extend to “every third sentence,” “with every fifth sentence” containing some sort of grand, inexcusable error. People would be far, far more upset if this were actually the case. This comparison fails in every conceivable way, & is just outright ignorant.

- “One reason someone might use this defense is that they genuinely don't see a problem, because to them those flaws aren't flaws. And that's valid, so long as they accept other people's right to believe otherwise.”

I like this. I wish the author didn’t hide this at the end, behind all of the assertions of objective “failure” and “outright errors.”

- “I haven't listed every mistake in Persona 5, or even a substantial fraction of them. I've also been forced to focus on the translation aspect of localization, which means I haven't properly addressed other failings such as bad typography, untranslated images and video, and voiced lines that are unsubbed even when Japanese audio is enabled.1 Nor have I dedicated time to the sometimes strange handling of honorifics.“

The typography complaint is valid, though one of the pettiest things I’ve seen in awhile now, and the untranslated images are a series staple, but the honorifics thing HAS bothered me since P3. Just commit or don’t, guys.. Anyway, not much to say about this chunk. I just wanted to say, man that honorifics stuff can be weird (& has been for years).

Listen: If you take nothing else from this write up, understand that I have no issue with people disliking the P5 translation. That’s totally fine. My problem is with the concept of there existing a ‘correct’ English, or a ‘correct’ translation. My problem is with the repeated emphasis this writer, and others expanding on them, place on their definition of “objective” errors. The vast majority of the moments picked out by this writer are not selections of terrible grammatical errors - and I’d argue that it’s /completely fine/ for a couple of those to exist in a fucking video game - but of what the author calls stiff language. That is to say: Neither meaning nor soul are impaired by the P5 translation.

The reverence with which this author refers to the text - referencing how the translation has ruined one of the ‘greatest RPGs of the last ten years’ for them, and so on, so forth - speaks to a kind of pedestal-hoisting that does no good for anyone. For example, in the Sae moment detailed on the site from the start of the game, with the “psychic detective”; what makes the original so good? In Japanese, the detective says “There’s been a call for you” right before she receives a call on her cell phone. Is this not silly as all fuck? Why is it so much better? Why did Sae’s boss call the detective first, why didn’t he just call her cell phone if he had it the whole time? The English script changes the moment to make the detective seem aware that she’s about to receive the call - emphasizing that the detective and Sae’s boss are working together no one in the scene can be trusted, while also positing Sae as an outsider. Watch the scene again and see if you get what I’m saying. https://youtu.be/f3bVM2mxh4k?t=876

It’s super frustrating that a changes like this get flak from this writer, while the worldview being pushed is one of ‘capturing the spirit, not the words.’ It’s also frustrating that many of the game’s legitimate, real problems (that aren’t fucking, the font used to spell out ‘hello’ on a calculator, god damn guys it’s okay most people have done that before) are ignored - such as the constant battle chatter every time you hit a weakpoint in a game centered on repeatedly exploiting weaknesses, or the intensity of the writing game’s first chapter. The writing is held in extremely high regard, & the translation is being used to try to assert the truth of controversial axioms without actually needing to discuss said assumed “truths.”

I just want to leave with one assertion: There is no “correct” English. It’s okay for a text to sound awkward (especially in visual media) _with the caveat_ that it must get the spirit of the original work across. It’s all right, for sure, for a foreign text to challenge or disrupt the expectations of a native English speaker in its translation. In some ways (and not even all), Persona 5′s translation does this. Is it a perfect translation? No, no translation is. Do you have to like it? No. Should you respect the opinion of players who do (as well as ESL players & those abroad!) enough to avoid making sweeping, generalized statements about the failure of the script to appeal to your individual sensibilities, complete with long, detailed theories as to why other people don’t seem to mind? Please. _Please_. Honestly, y’all make this game sound like it’s Chaos Wars, or Arc Rise Fantasia. The hyperbole is unreal, and it simply needs to stop.

#persona 5 #personaproblems #april 2017

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arcanevalves · 7 years ago

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Persona 5

What I Played: I initially started the game on Normal, but then dropped to Easy when I realized I had zero desire to lose any progress in a 90 hour game. Based mostly on blind play, I tried my best to maximize confidants and social stat grinding, although later on I did look up best methods to increase kindness. I used a persona calculator to solve the Strength confidant and otherwise just blind fired with combinations. I successfully maxed out about half of the confidants and pursued a romance with the Star confidant. I did reach the True ending and used a guide to avoid the Bad or Good endings (although I guess I probably could have reloaded the saves right beforehand, shrug).

I’m going to divide my thoughts into three areas: P5 as art, the thematic content based on the characters, and P5 as a game.

BLESS ART

Whatever negative things I might have to say about P5 in the other sections, it should be emphasized that the visual and auditory design of the game is astounding. While I was initially concerned that the menus might be too visually distracting, I overcame my own bewilderment and appreciated how they flowed and also matched the content. I am not in any way a visual artist, but the way that the game picked out a color scheme and stuck with it (here, mostly red and black) really appealed to me in terms of unifying the game visually. When the game stepped away from this, it was often for compelling reasons that stand out because they broke away from the mold (e.g., many of the All-Out Attack splash screens).

Likewise, the music is very pleasing and Last Surprise is up there with all-time great RPG battle themes. The use of instrumental and vocal versions of songs was also very compelling as I would find myself humming along to a repeated song only to realize that a vocalist had now rolled up on the scene. The use of new songs in the later palaces also helps keep the game fresh. Some of the music does get stale towards the end, but this is perhaps the unavoidable consequence of a 90 hour game. In this it reminded me a bit of Xenogears - an excellent soundtrack made to stretch over a very long game.

CHARACTERS

I am not truly convinced that the character arcs in Persona 5 pay off in the end. In particular, the main character’s arc is the most anomalous because in the end, none of his confidants really mattered? The narrative presents his criminal record as his greatest problem and, accordingly, the one that is resolved in the final act of the story as the substantial evidence is presented to overturn the record. However, despite the main character’s relationships with the various confidants and player characters and, in particular, a romantic relationship, the main character returns to parents and a hometown that he simply did not appear to miss? The main character never expresses any desire to return home nor any fondness for his parents. Perhaps I am overlooking some assumption that the main character desires to return home, but if any there were any inference I took from the opening, it is that the main character was incensed about receiving unjust treatment from all parties involved, including his parents and hometown.

A critical flaw in the game is, unfortunately, that none of the confidants tie in or pay off in the main narrative except for the ones that are tied to the main plot (Sae, Goro, Morgana, Fool). I happened to pick a romance option in Hifumi who was mostly isolated from the main narrative, but I can imagine choosing Ann or Makoto or Haru or Futaba and feeling somewhat bewildered at various interactions. Furthermore, some of the confidants I simply did not finish and so I feel less able to evaluate their journey because the game’s constrained calendar system simply left me unable to finish them out. Characters like Yusuke, Haru, Chihaya, Makoto just didn’t get finished and I was not going to a NG+ playthrough to discover how their subplots end up. Kawakami I should have finished but apparently her confidant subplot cannot be finished because you can’t do that shit once MC isn’t in school anymore.

As for the characters that I did finish, some were satisfying and some were not? Interestingly, many of the confidants required the use of Mementos to solve some problem and then this clued in that particular character to the Phantom Thief nature of the MC. This wanton use of the Metaverse to solve problems for friends struck me as an even bigger reason that the righteousness of the use of the Metaverse to steal hearts is largely left unexamined. I was initially very excited by the appearance of Goro because I thought he was going to push on this issue because he believed from working within the system. However, Goro is ultimately a clever narrative puzzle (and I did very much enjoy the November surprise) rather than a voice for pushing back on the ideology and actions of the Phantom Thieves. The morality of stealing hearts is ultimately thrown out the window.

Ultimately, the main thematic pull of P5 seems to be on placing blame on all of us collectively for speaking truth to power. The real villain was not any single specific abusive teacher or corrupt politician, but the collective will to accept injustice in exchange for comfort. However, the final dungeon and set of encounters still left me unconvinced what exactly our collective action was to this. How much was the final boss a metaphor for battling the collective will and how much was actual SMT plot exposition that a demon hijacked our collective consciousnesses. I’m not against the idea of putting the onus on all of us together to speak truth to power and perhaps this is exactly what the final subsequent sequence demonstrated: the collective action of the MC’s confidants was enough to overcome the injustice he bore in the form of a criminal record. This is the meaning I can take from the story that is the most satisfying and I think encourages us to rely on our friends and family and push them to not accept injustice in our everyday lives.

Personally, I found the romance with Hifumi to be very satisfying and this path was cemented for me when she appeared as an option on the Hawaii trip. I often find myself segmenting parts of my life apart and Hifumi’s separation from any other character in the game was deeply appealing to me as was her generally reserve demeanor. That dress is also cute, I will not front.

Additional note: P5, which spent some time pointing out examples of oppression very similar to real life, overlooked oppression relating to gender and gay stereotypes. Ann’s appearance and storyline is confused and not at all coherent or satisfying. Kawakami’s is likewise. Lastly, the two men who appear in Shinjuku and at the beach are aberrations and the blackest mark on this game.

P5 AS A GAME

I have only played Persona 1 and have not yet visited any other Persona or SMT game. Generally, I enjoyed the dungeon layouts and navigation and I also further enjoyed the flow of battles as the game initially presents it. What the game, however, fails to tell the player is that in the end game, enemies will have no weaknesses and so, simply, stat buffing and enemy debuffing is simply more important at the end of a long road in which covering elemental weaknesses was more important. I found this to be very frustrating. Coming from mostly playing FF, I often assume that status effects simply do not apply to bosses and so never bother with those and instead look for elemental weaknesses.

Initially, I thought this would be a pleasant game which gave me the opportunity to pace myself and do the dungeon or confidant or social stat building as I enjoyed it. However, by the summer I had begun to realize this was not a leisurely stroll. This was one of the most ridiculous min-max efficiency experiences I’ve ever encountered. Budgeting time to maximize social stats and confidant affection over 90 hours (including looking up the correct confidant responses to maximize confidant efficiency) is ridiculous and I would have been much more happy if the game had simply invented a way for me to repeat days or otherwise get the rest of the social links without having to do an entire NG+ playthrough. Knowing his now, I imagine my approaches to P3 and P4 when I get to them will be with a guide that points out to me these unknowable efficiencies so I can get on with my life.

P5 is beautiful, but I think it would be even better were it not chained to the SMT way of battling and the calendar system that has come to define the series.

#persona 5 #ps4 #complete

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evilradmedieval · 8 years ago

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Drake - “More Life” Review

For some reason, it seems like it’s been a hot minute since we’ve last heard from rap superstar and pop culture icon Drake. Either that, or Views was the most underwhelming and unmemorable project he’s dropped to date, giving most fans of IYRTITL a heaping mess of disappointment. Opting for whitewashed dancehall, cheesy one-liners about Channing Tatum and a very stupid story about eating at The Cheesecake Factory, I was devastated. But then again, it’s Drizzy Drake, and he was bound to come out with more material in the near future.

With the release of singles such as “Fake Love” and “Sneakin’”, I was re-intrigued, if you will. “Fake Love” had the same intent as “Hotline Bling”, a catchy, accessible rap-sung track that may have already made you sick of hearing it all the time on the radio. The latter track, however, was one of my favorites, and despite my indifference towards 21 Savage and his slightly monotone and boring flow, his verse was actually had some punch to it. Drake borrows heavily from his feature, but matches the intensity well. Unfortunately, “Sneakin’” doesn’t make the final tracklisting for this “playlist”.

“Free Smoke” starts off with some smart braggadocio and a hilarious line about drunk texting J-Lo. Instrumentally, the song is sparse, complete with heavy bass and minimalistic high hats in a trap-flavored banger. It doesn’t go as hard as I’d like, but is a still solid introduction to the album. There’s a lot of cheesy patois commentary in the background as the song then transitions into another banger in “No Long Talk”, where he shows a lot of aggression and flows pretty well over this track with more smart braggadocio and some clever lines here and there, however I’m still on the fence with the Giggs feature. Not a fan of how Drake has been really trying to push for two things: his obsession with dancehall and his obsession with UK grime. I’m sure it’ll grow on me though, despite me not being a fan of him, Giggs does flow pretty nicely over the beat and makes for good variety early in the tracklisting.

We have our “Hold On We’re Going Home”/ “Find Your Love” of the album with “Passionfruit”. A synthpop-tinged simp song, Drake comes through with his typical single octave-hitting vocals that rides atop a lush, tropical-flavored instrumental. Though not as emotional as the latter spiritual predecessors, it still makes for a good head-bopper. I just did not think the demo-esque interlude in the beginning was necessary at all.

“Jorja Interlude” is interesting in the sense that Drake samples his own song “Doing It Wrong” with the Stevie Wonder harmonicas embedded towards the latter half of the instrumental. We get a decent feature from up-and-coming UK singer Jorja Smith. Drake’s verse on the track is decent, but I loved the piano sample and mixing of Jorja’s voice interpolating throughout the beat, giving the track a very atmospheric and moody vibe to it. The song then transitions into a vocal sample of Drake throwing shade at Meek Mill (again) and then jumps into… more fucking uninspired dancehall.

The next couple of tracks are absolute duds, however. All three of them feature the exact same shit that I loathed about Views. The song has a decent vocal feature, but the repetitive thumping beat and uninspired dancehall elements sound so awkward as a Drake song. It honestly feels so out of place. The next couple of songs I won’t even name because of how gaudy and uninspired they are. You would thing he had his dancehall fix after Views, right?

You guys already know my love for Sampha and his angelic voice on “4422″. As a matter of fact, his feature was so good, Drake didn’t even want to be on the same track as him so he didn’t get shown out on his own song. Although the song doesn’t seem to have much to offer lyrically, Sampha wrote and performed the song in the means of metaphorically talking about a deteriorating relationship, in which the “4422″ alludes to the IRS tax form when letting go property while under subject to state tax lien.

“Gyalchester” is another banger that seems to blends into the tracklisting for not being as quotable or having any noteworthy features. Again, we see a minimalistic, skeletal trap-flavored instrumental with Drake giving us more braggadocio. However, this song is overshadowed by the subsequent track in “Skepta’s Interlude”, a grime banger with Skepta going absolutely insane. This track honestly feels like a track off his debut album Konnichiwa. He gives a great performance, and again we find this track absolutely Drake-less. Maybe whenever Drake nabs a guest feature, he doesn’t join in on the fun if he feels like he’ll get bodied on his own track.

“Portland” was king of funny when I first heard the flute sample interpolating throughout the instrumental, but it just starts getting annoying as the song progresses. On this track, Drake enlists the help of Quavo, who gives a fantastic feature and catchy hook full of personality and steals the show. The Travi$ Scott feature was decent, but had nothing to noteworthy to report. Overall the track was slightly underwhelming, and seeing the two features thought the song would be way better.

The next track is too soft for what I expected. You have two of the most energetic rappers in the game in 2 Chainz and Young Thug, yet here we find both rappers giving very lowkey deliveries that don’t really fit well with their personalities and subject matter. I honestly felt like this was the softest delivery I’ve ever heard Young Thug perform of all time. If you’re gonna talk about “Sacrifices”, listen to the Big Sean and Migos version instead.

The tempo starts to slow down heavily after “Sacrifices” with “Nothing Into Something”, a demo-ish type track that sounds like a mindless interlude more than anything that was a leftover from the days of NTWS. However, I really enjoyed the follow-up track in “Teenage Fever”, which brings me back to the emotionally torturous days of NWTS. The vocal sample is simply astonishing and fits perfectly. The fact that he has J-Lo sampled in the hook was on the same level of me hearing Ginuwine sampled on “Legend”. Downtempo and trap-flavored, this is the epitome of Drake making simp tracks the right way.

We then quickly change the mood from #simplife to mindless bangers. “KMT” is another trap-flavored heavy-hitter that samples both Skepta and Sonic the Hedgehog, strangely enough. I don’t get why Giggs was brought on for another features, as I wasn’t completely enamored with his first one on the second track of the album. However, the track then transitions into a more introspective track with “Lose You”, where Drake actually delivers a lot of deeper lyrics with some great quotables. The track is has these flowing synths and a lovely piano sample as well, giving Drake room to really paint his lyrical story for a good five minutes. Definitely one of the better lyrical tracks on the album.

We see Drake again on his shit-talking tip with “Can’t Have Everything”, which actually has some great lyrical roasts to all his doubters and haters. Also one of my favorites, as the hook is equally catchy. Towards the tail-end of the track, we get a telephone interlude of Drake’s mother addressing his change in tone and negativity in some of his music, which is definitely apparent.

Drake and Kanye West together on a track sounds like a good idea, but this “Glow” song sounds god awful. Drake tries as hard as he can to hit the highest notes he could, but obviously does this with the assistance of poorly applied Autotune. Kanye awkwardly interpolates “Started From the Bottom” lyrics and also doesn’t give the best of a vocal performance as well. Of course, as it’s produced by Kanye, he throws in a random sample of Earth Wind & Fire’s ‘Devotion” at the end of the track.

Another Drake album, another PARTYNEXTDOOR feature, which can be hit or miss. Here on “Since Way Back”, PND gives a worthy contribution without ruining the song with some sus lyrics per usual on his lackluster P3 album. The song instrumentally sounds fantastic. Moody, atmospheric and varied, both Drake and PARTY sound great here.

Drake and Young Thug, however, do not mix well for some reason. Thugger gave an underwhelming performance on “Sacrifices” and here he just sounds completely out of place. “Ice Melts” isn’t a bad song, and Drake does sound good here vocally and lyrically. But all that I’m taking away from the track regarding Young Thug is: “WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA”.

On a lighter note, we get a fantastic closer track. Sampling R. Kelly with another trap-flavored banger with rattling high hats and booming bass, this joint is more introspective topically. Here, Drake sounds more confident as ever, while at the same time self-aware and reflective. It was a shame we didn’t get this Drake more on some songs, but then again it’s a Drake album.

Album, playlist, mixtape, whatever this thing is, More Life is not perfect. At all. However, I would not say that it’s a piece of shit that should be left out in the cold. We have some quality tracks, some that bring back some emotions and moments from previous Drake albums. We have a handful of quality trap-flavored bangers, half of them mindless and meandering while some loaded with clever bars and good features. Speaking of features, this thing was loaded with them, however the utilization of most of them were either underwhelming or just completely out of place. Quavo, Sampha, Skepta and PARTNEXTDOOR contributed fantastically. However, I was disappointed heavily with the Kanye, Thugger and Travi$ Scott features. We also had the unfortunate inclusion of shitty dancehall trash that we need to just end. Overall, the album isn’t my favorite project by hip-hop mogul Drizzy Drake, but it is definitely something to hold fans over until the next project, hence the denomination of More Life being called a “playlist”. Either way, it’s a definite improvement over Views, yet has me still feeling ultimately left wanting more despite its loaded 20+ song tracklisting.

RATING: 5/10

#drake #more life #ovo #music review #album review #hiphop review #rap review #review

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