#it's way more complicated than that

[dailyhatsune]

the old uncle who refuses to wear headphones on the train

[redpapercraness]

i wanna see that girl DEAD on the GROUND

[notbecauseofvictories]

I'm re-reading the Discworld series for reasons, and honestly the most relatable part of reading these as an adult is how many of the protagonists start out being tired, used to their little routine and vaguely disgruntled by the interruption of the Plot. Sam Vimes wants to lie drunk in a gutter and absolutely doesn't want to be arresting dragons. Rincewind is yanked into every situation he's ever encountered, though he'd much rather be lying in a gutter too. (Minus the alcohol. Plus regretting everything he's ever done said witnessed or even heard about fourth-hand in his whole life.) Granny Weatherwax is deeply suspicious of foreign parts and that includes the next town over; Nanny has leaned into the armor of "nothing ever happens to jolly grannies who terrorize their daughters-in-law and make Saucy Jokes"

Only the young people don't seem to have picked up on this---and that's fortunate, because someone has to run around making things happen, if only so Vimes and Granny and Rincewind have a reason to get up (complaining bitterly the whole time) and put it all to rights. Without Carrot, Margrat, Eric, etc. these characters don't have that reason; they're likely to stay in the metaphorical gutter and keep wondering where it all went wrong or why anything has to change.

............well, that's not quite true. You get the sense that Vetinari knows how much certain people hate the Plot. And as the person sitting behind the metaphorical lighting board of Ankh-Morpork, he takes no small pleasure in forcing the Plot-haters specifically to stand up, and say some lines.

[senblades]

I was just about to make this post and you beat me to it HAHAHA

You're absolutely right in this: it is essentially a question of whether the themes of persona 5 should apply to Joker through Akechi, or whether they should be able to apply to Akechi himself, too.

A bit of a mouthful of a sentance that only really makes sense with the context in my head, so I'll elaborate:

The themes of persona 5 can be argued at length, but it would be very difficult to refute this: Persona 5 is about the future that we, as individuals, carve for ourselves, in spite of what our circumstances may dictate we should be.

Trying to explain why I think this might end up long and rambly, but I'll try and condense it down with some literary analysis or something:

The Phantom Thieves have the power to change the minds of others. Joker often uses this to help his myriad friends across Toyko, using the power he has to help others when they cannot help themselves.

And, yet, outside of the main story quests, the PT don't use this power to get themselves out of simialr situations. Haru doesn't request her fiance be a target, Ryuji doesn't ask to change the heart of the new track team coach, Ann barely even has a bone to pick with Mika- they have a magic solution, and yet they don't use it for themselves in their confidant stories. (Futaba's case is a bit weird, because she submits a mementos request for the sake of her friend Kana rather than herself, so I think she still falls into the same category as the rest of the PT)

Now this pattern is fascinating, and also relates pretty heavily to Maruki's reality as well.

"Why didn't they just change x's heart?" "In Maruki's reality, everyone would be happy, though" These kinds of arguments, while true, are not the point this game is trying to make.

In the real world, our real world, there is no such thing as changing hearts, there is no such thing as a perfect reality. This will also be true for the Phantom Thieves, one the Metaverse is gone (excluding the spin offs. And the other spin off. And the other-), so the PT choosing to face the real world, without magic solutions at their fingertips, is asking the audience the question of "How are you going to stand up for yourself when it feels like everyone is against you? How will you carve the future for yourself, if you know you can't change the world?"

Bringing this back to Joker and Akechi; if Akechi is truly dead, this essentially makes Joker's "end of the game themes" a parallel to Maruki's: Maruki lost Rumi -in a sense- and took the easy, magic solution that was handed to him. Joker, meanwhile, in the true ending, loses Akechi and decides to forge on anyway, at Akechi's behest. All very neat and tidy, all very poignant, one last little "your reality kinda sucked, doc" to the newly-employed taxi driver.

If Persona 5 Royal was the last thing that Atlus ever made that's p5 related, I would agree the ending being ambiguous with Akechi's fate would be fine. That bow would be neat and tidy. It's not like there would be any more screentime to explore anything else, so why leave that door open?

But, Atlus loves making spin offs. So they have the screentime to do more with Akechi's character.

Let's face it- Akechi learning to live, being given a second chance, even after he was sure he would die, is incredible, thematically. The gain would be far more than the loss of Joker's "oh no, my friend, what will I choose," because:

a) I would argue that it doesn't negate the choice itself- Joker and Akechi didn't know what the outcome would be, so the gamble is still there. It's still, "Are you sure you want to face reality, when the outcome is uncertain? You could lose everything, are you sure?"

b) Joker's character isn't just the choice on Febuary 2nd. He's more than that, he existed before 2/2 existed- the choice still mattered, but even if it didn't, he's still there. However, Akechi dying would, as Dorked said, reduce him to a plot device to further Joker's character without room for more. Not entirely, of course, but as we see more and more story post-p5r unfold, it's like; why leave that potential untapped?

obviously people can have their own opinions about what happened in canon, we could argue at length, yadda yadda- but I will go to bat against the argument that Atlus bringing Akechi back would be a bad writing choice. Like, they could fuck it up, but persona 5 is not persona 3. The death does not matter more than the potential. "What will you do with your future?" is a fundamentally different question to "how do you live knowing you will die?"

so basically I want an Akechi spinoff atlus please- /j (but if they did I would buy it immediately)

I think one of my problems with the "Akechi dying is better for the themes of P5R and Joker's character growth and mourning" is like... Okay, but what about Akechi? That framing makes Akechi more of an object to Joker's character, IMO, whereas I think that him surviving in the max confidants ending has so much fascinating potential for Akechi having to live with his mistakes and move forward. He went in expecting to die, to have a simple final act of freedom... But I think him being forced to keep living, to face every day one at a time, to find ways to make peace with what he did and live in the world is just infinitely more compelling from a storytelling standpoint. For Akechi, I think it's a better outcome because it's lacking in elegant simplicity. Even if he lives, he was still willing to die for the sake of everyone's freedom. His survival doesn't erase that. It may "lessen" Joker's choice to reject Maruki's reality, but I think it also makes accepting that reality incredibly cruel, when a strong enough bond with him is enough to save his life and make a miracle happen. Mona describes the world itself as cognition. In P5's vanilla ending, he says it was the PT's bonds that allowed him to continue to exist as a cat in the real world. Given the significance of a maxed confidant making him appear in the postcredits, I believe that it is very simple to read his survival being because of that bond. That wish that they both shared, as confirmed by the Royal artbook. If you prefer exploring the grief and mourning, that's completely fair, but I think there are many ways to interpret Royal's themes, and Akechi living in a harsh reality where you can't escape your past but you can heal and do better is still very on point with what P5R is all about. Unlike P3, which centers more heavily on death, P5R simply touches on it as a part of its greater narrative. And even in P3, you can save a certain character from death via player choice and connections. So, yeah. :p

[wiisagi-maiingan]

I am actually a Native person who has always gone by animal names, both my deadname and every name I've used as a trans person, and I think if you have a Native character who you feel would have a nature name (because of hippy parents or because they're trans or whatever), then you can avoid stereotypes by having ~more than one Native character~

I know, it's a shocking concept, but it's actually pretty easy to avoid contributing to stereotypes in your works when you remember that you are allowed to have more than one character from the same ethnic and/or racial group. Just have a different Native character with a "normal" name. Problem solved. Have fun.

[chloesimaginationthings]

What is the relationship between Michael and Gregory like?

I’d say like dysfunctional brothers

[laniidae-passerine]

don’t get how you can watch iwtv and be a sincere diehard lestat hater. like the world’s biggest lestat hater is louis and that man can’t even commit to it for more than five minutes before literally hallucinating lestat wearing a wedding ring and talking pretty to him. this show is about louis and every road leads back to lestat for that man

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[canonkiller]

these are, he says, the kind of test results we see after a car crash.

[rufwooff]

ok, I think I can post this

(just wanted to imagine what the colors would look like, so come up with the context yourself)

've been doing things very productively lately

Raph doesn't have the right size pants, so he just wraps a piece of fabric around himself 🔥🔥🔥

[gay-cartoon-enjoyer]

Gravity Falls meme I made in 5 min

Might as well repost this, since it’s the month of Maybel. 💫

[barrenclan]

is it ok to ship ranger and rainhaze? in like an exclusively toxic way. tongues and teeth by the crane wives

I can’t really stop you, but I don’t personally care for it. Largely because I don’t think “shipping” really captures their relationship, and it’s also important to me that Ranger has no genuine feelings for Rainhaze outside of manipulation and amusement.

[gardenofskeletonss]

[chipper-smol]

So...... Loop and Odile huh?

v THE OTHER RESPONSE I DOODLED v

yeagh

[starry-bi-sky]

finally giving fem danyal her own au and fulfilling my 'danny is an animal whisperer' agenda at the same time: mother of monsters danyal 2.0

i say "2.0" because TECHNICALLY 'mother of monsters danyal' is an au I made back in June for Dark fem!Danyal (who I promptly named Layal). However, I haven't posted much for her yet, and I like the "mother of monsters" premise too much to leave it only to Layal. Plus Danyal in that au was going to become the mother of monsters anyway, just with significantly less world domination and mass extinction.

'Animal whisperer' Danny has been something I've been thinking about since my latest DP 'wolfpack au' post and it's! So fun to think about, and who no better to assign the idea to than Danyal Al Ghul? Who comes from a family infamously known for their love of animals and nature?

Fem Danyal is just purely self-indulgent. *gestures wildly at her* i just lomvb,,, her,,,, I've only really mentioned her in context of the 'Things in Threes' au/my first Danyal al Ghul au with the facial scar, but she's!!! I love her. She deserves her own au <33

So kill three birds with one stone! Make a post about it.

Anyways, Danny has a large lair. Similar to cult leader danyal, her lair is a giant mountain region resembling nanda parbat with a big temple/palace-like area built into the mountain. It's large, it's overflowing with natural flora, with its own mini-floating islands hovering over some areas, and it's also completely empty.

Danny takes one look at her lair upon first meeting, -- noting that it looked relatively smaller from the outside -- and promptly, with the elegance of an Al Ghul, goes "What the hell??" Because yes, while she does enjoy her own solitude and privacy, this is a bit ridiculous.

For heaven's sake, there's even a massive lake in there! What's she going to do with all this space? Can she make it any smaller? Why is it so big in the first place? This looks borderline like one of the mega-islands!

She finds out later that apparently, the amount of ectoplasm a ghost has can have an effect on the size of their lair. And since she has such a large core, her lair reflects that. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, it's bigger on the inside so it doesn't take up "too much space" on the outside. Don't worry about it too much.

Danyal isn't totally opposed to having such a large lair, she's just... a bit baffled by it. It feels like so much wasted space is all. All this flora and no fauna to enjoy it with. It's practically eerie.

She decorates her temple-palace area, transforming rooms to match her needs as she sees fit. In the center of the inner gardens is a massive tree that she likes to climb, with twisting, winding branches. Sam and Tucker have honorary rooms, even if they can't safely leave the specter speeder for long periods of time, even with proper safety equipment. So does Jazz. Ali (Dani) has one too, but he can actually use that one, and Danny brought him to her lair so he could decorate it himself.

She has a personal garden, but for the most part she lets the flora exist as it is. Too much space to cultivate it en masse anyways.

Skip to a few weeks later, on her next visit to Clockwork. She developed a habit of going to see him semi-regularly just because. She enjoys his wisdom, and he has a lot of stories to tell, and when he's not being the cryptic and esoteric timekeeper, he's a bit goofy.

(pushing my dadwork agenda here,,, i think Danny deserves to go 'hey, Lord Clockwork, do you want me to buy you something' while she's at walmart, only to receive a singular glowing sticky note that says 'cucumber gatorade'.)

(She insists on referring to him with his proper titles even for the most mundane of things because it's proper, but Clockwork sees a future where she eventually calls him "Cee" and by all things in existence is he determined to get there. Anyways,,,)

On her next visit to Clockwork, just as she is about to leave, Clockwork stops her and goes; "Ah, I have something for you. Hold out your hands."

Danny does as such, and Clockwork doesn't give out things often, so her curiosity has spiked to the highest levels. He turns away from her for a moment, using his staff to summon whatever it is he needs, and when he turns around.

He drops a fish into her hands. Granted, a fish in a small glass tank. But a fish nonetheless. A small one, roughly about the size of her finger, with a blue-black, eel-shaped body and four sets of glowing eyes. She can see thin, almost translucent, but spiny fins down its back and the start of bioluminescent markings. It's swimming around in circles in its small container.

"Lord Clockwork." Danyal says all too calmly.

"Yes, Danyal?"

"What is this?"

"That is an adolescent leviathan, Danyal." She’s transfixed onto the tank, but she doesn’t need to see Clockwork’s face to hear the smile he’s stifling.

The myriad of emotions that runs through her all at once threatens to overwhelm her, and she can’t tell if the feelings are negative or positive. So she carefully closes her eyes to breathe in through her nose.

“Clockwork.”

“Ah, I see you’ve dropped formalities.”

She ignores that.

“Why have you given me an adolescent leviathan?”

She's expecting the trickster to look amused when she opens her eyes. Instead, he just looks endeared. "I know you're fond of animals," he says, "and you always look amazed when you come across an animal of the realms. So I thought you might enjoy taking care of the young beast, it's mother is dead so it has no one to care for it."

Oh.

"But, if you don't like it," Clockwork's hands reach out for the tank, "I can simply take it back--"

Danyal shifts the tank out from his reach and hugs it possessively. "I never said that. How do I care for it?"

And so clockwork gives her a list, and when Danyal returns to her lair, she sets up a large tank in her room for the leviathan to swim in -- it's much too small for the lake right now, she thinks. She'll feel better if it's somewhere she can find it. She names him Suhā.

Suhā grows quickly, and by the end of the mortal month she transforms one of the rooms into a large pond for him to swim around in. He's a very loyal beast, recognizing her as it's mother of some kind. Danyal takes great care ensuring that her beastie gets quality care, and Suhā swims to the surface to see her when he senses her in the room.

It spirals from there. Somehow, Pandora catches wind that Clockwork gave her a leviathan, and so the next time Danyal visits the Greater Athens, she gives her a baby chimera. It's eyes are still sealed shut, Danyal can't bring herself to say no. She names the little beastie Firas.

Frostbite hears about it too, and not to be outdone, gives her an animal she's never even heard of. Infinite-realms born, apparently. A fox-like creature with two small horns like an impala, four eyes, and tall legs. The name isn't something she's quite sure how to write down, and she's positive that her friends won't be able to comprehend it. She names her Eira.

Getting the three of them used to each other was... interesting. Suhā tried to eat Firas when Danyal first introduced the two, and they've hated each other ever since. Firas and Eira are seemingly getting along. Her island already feels full enough with the three of them on it.

Of course, that's not the end of it. With her luck, she begins stumbling across other monsters. Realms-borne or otherwise. An injured hydra in the Grecian islands that, through lots of trial and error, Danyal is able to rehabilitate and heal. It routinely comes to visit her afterwards.

A griffin with a broken wing that she moves permanently to the island that likes to keep to itself, but tends to come down when she's near. It gets along best with Firas.

A panther-like monster from the Shades Woods that had six legs and three tails, with ends that reminded her of a venus flytrap. It stuck around the heavy foliage and she can only make out where it was when she saw its golden eyes reflect.

She befriends a young indrik with its leg injured, and much like the hydra it follows her back to her island, and stays there in the mountains. It comes out when she's alone, much like her other beasts.

She receives two more leviathan -- one from clockwork, and one she finds herself while exploring the deeper and darker recesses of the Ghost Zone. It was huddled against the carcass of its mother, and she managed to befriend and get close enough to it to bring it back to her island. Suhā is fully grown by then, with a head bigger than Danyal herself and he still likes to stick her head out of the water for nuzzles when she's near.

He's not very happy with his new siblings, but he's not trying to eat them when she's not looking. So she calls it a win in her book.

And it's not just large beasts either; smaller animals begin popping up when she's not looking. Bird-like creatures and small mammals, and she swears she saw a doe (or something resembling a doe) grazing in the forest while she was walking by.

She takes back with her a lone snake egg once, and it grows so big it wraps around her island and sleeps with its massive head on the mountain beside the temple, like some smaller breed of Jörmungandr.

And on and on it goes. Some of the beasts she comes across never step foot onto her island, some of them follow her back, while others she has to carry back. Not all of the ones that follow her stay, and Danny rehabilitates the injured and releases them when they're fully healed.

It's hectic, and busy, and frankly she loves it. Some of her rehabilitated beasts return to visit her, or to have their children somewhere on the island, or whatever it is they need to do.

She becomes a bit infamous for it. She goes to visit Dorathea once, and as she's walking through the streets she can hear some of the denizens whispering while she walks past.

"Is that her?"

"Her highness' friend? Yes--"

"--that's the one--"

"--Mother of monsters--"

Danny's not sure how to feel about that.

Although, she can't say she's opposed.

Danyal Al Ghul, Mother of monsters, raiser of beasts. It has a nice ring to it.

[soft--dogs]

Ever wanted to be a marketable 90s fad that was doomed to fail? Well now your dreams can come true! For just $30 a character I will draw your fursona or character as a floppy beanie plushie :3 DM me if you're interested in grabbing a slot! I'll send you a quick form to fill out ^w^ Commission rules: - This is for art only! NO physical beanies are being made. - This is not a YCH! Poses may be similar but each one will be unique. - Character designs will be simplified!! - I’ll make it as accurate to your character as I can, but keep in mind these are supposed to be a little silly and wonky. - MUST have ref sheet or image I can work from. - No clothing, naked beanies only. - Accessories (glasses, piercings, etc) CAN be added but please specify! Otherwise they will be NUDE. - Small items/ props can be added for an additional charge! - If there is a certain style of beanie not listed here you want me to draw, feel free to ask if I can do it! I only drew a few examples, but there’s more out there. -  A lot of this is customizable, so if you want different tag color, no tag at all, whiskers/no whiskers, a different species on a certain beanie style, etc, I’m open to ideas!  - Payments through Paypal invoice only. - Turnaround time for these will vary. I’ll be working on them in between my regular commissions. Feel free to edit your commission and use as memes, icons, stickers or whatever! As long as you’re not selling it, you’re good x) Update: I had increase the price on these, they're taking me a lot longer to finish than I expected! I'm averaging about 4-5 hours to complete each beanie. Also I've had a pretty big demand for these, so my queue has gotten pretty long! Expect completion times for new slots to be about 2 months.