#i'm super nervous posting metas in the tags but i worked hard on this one!!!

[maglors-anion-gap]

5,6,10 and 17 for the spread love ask :)

[from this ask game]

5. Recommend three (or more) blogs to follow

you gave me the hard question!! :( someone else asked me the same question so it's not as hard though, I won't have to narrow it down as much. Today's theme is resources! I am recommending @antiracist-tolkien because the blog has such a good collection of meta and general information. I go weeks sometimes not logging on or scrolling much and I miss so many good posts, so I really appreciate the dedication to running an archive blog of that sort! @tolkien-meta-library fills a similar niche; I'm so paranoid about missing The Definitive Treatise on something or other. I'm also recommending @expertsofarda because if you're not plugged into the silmarillion writers guild discord or don't already have beta readers or mutuals with niche knowledge, this is an excellent place to see who might be able to answer a question of yours. You don't even have to message ppl; just knowing who knows what means tag searching their blog might yield results.

6. Ship or platonic relationship that you got into because of the fans

I think this is a tie between hurin/morwen(/aerin) courtesy of outofangband and idril/tuor/maeglin courtesy of jaz-the-bard! polar opposite pairings, to be sure. The former is because I had no knowledge of the narn and had simply failed to appreciate how cool morwen is (I have since learned the error of my ways). The latter .... tfog was really hard for me to engage with personally for a long time so it was actually really nice to see what the rest of the fandom was up to in terms of putting the puzzle pieces together, deciding what to keep, what to modify, etc. It's about the balancing of it, I think? idril/tuor was not so interesting to me on its own, and idril/maeglin was unbalanced and sad. I think a lot of the ships I'm interested in are some variation of having deep interpersonal conflict but also deep love. shrugs. (I've given maeglin the curufin blorbo treatment - it's the being your father's shadow for me).

10. A popular character you actually really like and why

Umm I actually really like Maedhros (No one could guess from my AO3 works /sarcasm). I don't think bad takes are super unique to him as a character; greater popularity and greater emotional attachment are positively correlated with woobification, and greater popularity is positively correlated with more takes and thus more bad takes. *snl reaction image* he has everything: pain, killing instinct, self-destructiveness, appeasement, love, hatred, duplicitousness, self-serving nature, hope beyond hope, trans of gender. He's not the only one to have these characteristics, but I also like fucked up and evil men. I can't list any of the other feanorians bc they don't come close for popularity.

17. Something you love that you don’t often share because you’re worried what others will think

.... you know the answer to this, my friend! ;) That particular thread will bear fruit soon! But to give a second, evasive, answer: I feel like I do talk about this a fair amount, but it always makes me super nervous to write/post trans porn because ... idk I feel like people treat it like it's extra-perverse or extra-explicit, but like. That's just my life. I am simply just vibing yaknow? Or just, generally explicit fic. Because on the one hand I feel like it's very revealing and I feel weird exposing my sex life to people - not because I feel inhibited but rather that people will maybe find it odd. And on the other, I feel like there's a kind of narrow window past which you go from "freak (appreciative)" to "freak (derogatory)" and that window is vanishingly small for unpopular characters, queer freaks (moi), and kink.

[cherubchoirs]

An Explanation of Yaldabaoth

So with Christmas Eve coming up, let’s finally talk about Yaldabaoth – who he is, his motivations and goals, and why he suits P5’s story. Basically, I see a lot of confusion (as well as frustration) surrounding his character and his status as the final antagonist, but I totally get that. His writing is messy and his execution left a lot to be desired, despite the idea of him being sound, so I understand why so many players felt he came out of nowhere and screws up the story’s themes. As I am (unfortunately) a big fan of his character, I wanted to put together a post that might help people confused by him see how he fits in, why he was included in the story, and why he makes a satisfying final boss for the plot of P5. And even if you still hate him (totally fair! Everyone’s got different taste and no matter what, his handling is god awful), I just hope I can sort of explain him so he at least makes more sense. This is going to be long, so let’s get started!

First, Yaldabaoth (also known as the Demiurge) is a figure from Gnostic lore, the false god of the material world. He came to be when Sophia, a part of the unknowable, Supreme God, decided to create something separate from the Pleroma (the divine totality) all on her own, without divine permission. So she gave birth to Yaldabaoth; however, he was so monstrous she grew immediately ashamed of her creation, and so provided him with a throne which she then wrapped in a cloud to hide him and make him ignorant in turn. Unable to behold his mother or the divine, he then believed himself to be god. Because of this, Yaldabaoth set about creating the material world, a place he unwittingly based upon the true world of divinity. His creations are animal, like him, but with Sophia’s divine spark as she provides him the power to create. This world is poorly made due to Yaldabaoth’s own incompetence and so that divine spark is trapped in the material, making it something like a spiritual prison. Because of this, however, humanity can ascend while Yaldabaoth cannot, making him envious of human beings. He grows to hate humanity, angered by their imperfection (as he bungles their creation) and the fact that they can ascend while he’s forever trapped in the depths – he turns spiteful, and he is sometimes thought of as the God of the Old Testament as an explanation for his cruelty. Obviously this is incredibly simplified (as I am by no means an expert on Gnosticism), but this is the basis of his character, and I think it really is something the writers played with (including that Satanael, his son, is the one to rebel against him and his ignorance, which is why he is cast from heaven).

A false, artificial god who believes himself to be the Supreme Being, resents humankind, and traps them in a prison...sounds pretty familiar. So what’s different about his character in P5? This Yaldabaoth is the creator of the Metaverse, and he is born from the will of the public – people wished for ease and comfort over free will, the luxury to be free of making decisions and taking responsibility for themselves, which the Holy Grail explains to the PTs as its origin.

However, Yaldabaoth is also just a manifestation of that need - one that gained sentience through the power it was fed, but he is still simply the unconscious desire of the public made material as pointed out by Lavenza (but this explanation scene is where things get rushed, confusing, and glossed over to a frustrating extent)

Yaldabaoth IS society, a tangible stand-in for the true villain of P5 – The people of the public that allow, condone, and even encourage those the PTs have fought. They can defeat criminals, but as long as society remains intact, another will immediately spring up to take their place. Makoto actually states as much when Joker comes to retrieve her from her cell:

Yaldabaoth, therefor, is not just a god thrown into the plot randomly for the biggest bad possible – he is the evils of society incarnate, the people who allow the heinous crimes the PTs had been fighting against, the people that consumed these devastating crimes as entertainment or turned a blind eye to people in need, the people that threw the PTs out the minute any doubt was cast on them. The apathetic, uncaring, callous public as a whole, the ones who constantly ignore or support these criminals until it is no longer convenient (more on that in a minute) – The palace rulers are absolute monsters and yet...we see them all over society because they are a product of that society. And then there’s Futaba, an orphan and mentally ill girl left to rot by society; Sae, a woman trying so hard to achieve her justice and support her sister, constantly stamped down in a society that says a woman can’t, a woman shouldn’t. Society is the true villain and Yaldabaoth is their collective will, manifested so that the final boss battle of the game can just be the PTs taking down the whole of a corrupt society. It’s really the ultimate culmination of their efforts and what they’ve fought against. Because as awful as they all are, the palace rulers are products of a screwed up society (one that reflects our own) – Totally and 100% responsible for their acts, but they were allowed to exist due to this society.

SO if they’re made by society, why are they “escaped convicts” from the Prison of Regression? This is a representation of how society is broken – it creates these criminals, it condones their actions, but once they become too “disruptive”, THEN and ONLY then do they become an issue. Yaldabaoth, to me, is similar to a supercomputer type villain (think AM, a very similar character imo) – the palace rulers are errant, erratic variables that upset the status quo and so must be culled. His dialogue reads very much like a sterile computer program and I think rather than completely outright malicious in his intent, he is performing what he believes to be a necessary function:

Society creates them, encourages them, and then becomes upset when their actions are brought to light and so punishes them (or in Shido’s case at first and so often irl, are let off) so as to quickly restore equilibrium where they can once again ignore all of their ills. Essentially, the palace rulers exhibit that the whole system is sick and doesn’t work, yet people by and large pretend it does because it’s so much easier to say it was one “bad apple” or blame the victims rather than admitting the entire framework of society is completely rotten from the inside out.

What is Yaldabaoth’s goal then? He sets up a game to see if society can be shaken from this apathy or if they no longer wish to lead their own lives. Joker plays the trickster, an antihero the public can root for, the rebellious and glamorous rogue that punishes criminals without help of the establishment. If he wins, this would indicate the public no longer wishes for the status quo, but for a new society that wants to reinvent itself, which is generally well explained...

Goro Akechi is his opposite – He creates chaos and fear in the public to push them back into their comfortable boxes, make them wish for the status quo represented by Shido so they can stop living in fear and return to their lives where they can ignore everything around them. If he wins, this would signal that the public don’t want to fight but instead only want security and familiarity, choosing to turn a blind eye to everything the trickster had accomplished in order to remain safe. (This is made much less clear in the dialogue, because they don’t go over Goro’s role much at all.)

He sets up the entire game on this premise, and the experiment runs...however, it ends unexpectedly. Joker succeeds in taking down Akechi and the PTs expose Shido’s crimes as well as the conspiracy itself, but the public still does not support the Phantom Thieves. They clamor for a disgraced Shido and THIS is why Joker still loses – remember, Yaldabaoth is only a representation of society itself, and society no longer believes in the Phantom Thieves. Yaldabaoth did expect the loss, he knew how far gone humanity was, he just didn’t expect this exact scenario. Of course, the game was rigged – as Lavenza says, Yaldabaoth expects Joker to fulfill the role of the Trickster and so he keeps him close, watching over him in an attempt to stall him out as Lavenza explains. 

However, due to the set up of the game, the only win condition is public support. Joker doesn’t earn it and therefor he loses, a decision that is not arbitrary despite possibly appearing so (although it is certainly unfair, pointed out by Morgana).

After offering Joker his deal (that’s a whole OTHER post I could write, y’all know I’m a clown), Yaldabaoth then moves to merge reality with Mementos in order to exert his will over the whole of the public. He wishes to rid them of their free will because, as Yaldabaoth sees it, it seems a vast majority of the public wish to no longer have it anyway and the ones that do merely become anomalies that must be purged from his system before they become too disruptive. Of course, this is an oversimplified way of viewing the issue, but again, he’s sort of like a computer – he will take care of the issue in the most efficient way possible, and that is to rule over society himself. (Again, using the word “administrator” invokes computer terminology and likens him to a mechanical program):

Interestingly, his defeat is brought about by the public backing the Phantom Thieves 100% - an action that triggers Arsene’s evolution into Satanael, Yaldabaoth’s rebellious son. Satanael is of the Fool Arcana, the confidant that represents Joker’s bond to Yaldabaoth himself...to the public, in a sense, and so it’s fitting that this persona is the one to destroy him as he is no longer needed.

So Yaldabaoth is both a character in his own right and representative of the will of the public as well. His writing is confusing, lacking in explanation, and relies heavily on obscure references to his Gnostic roots along with religious symbolism (eg., the floors of Mementos taking their names from the Qliphoth and the palace rulers being representative of the seven deadly sins), and I think that’s why he feels so out of place to so many players. However, the best possible final antagonist for P5’s themes and plot is society itself – the society that shunned them, the society that created the palace rulers, the society that desperately needs to be done away with if we wish for these travesties to come to an end. Because P5 isn’t about individual evil, it’s about institutional evils that create and perpetuate so much individual pain that goes unnoticed and uncared for. Yaldabaoth is the amalgamation and manifestation of that broken system, he gives it a presence and a voice so that the PTs can fight back against it physically. So even though his writing is handled poorly and his execution is lacking, I find him to be a perfect fit and a satisfying conclusion to P5’s themes as an unfair, cruel society turned into a dogmatic god. 

This meta really just gives an overview of everything he represents, so I can always go into more detail about any of the points but I hope this explanation helps those that were confused by his inclusion in P5! I’m perfectly happy to elaborate on anything I talked about and clear up any confusion (I didn’t want this post to go on literally FOREVER, so I know some things might require more info), so feel free to ask questions! Other than that have a happy Day of Reckoning and remember to celebrate Bad End Akira’s birthday 🥳🎉