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thecottageinthedark · 4 years ago

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Sorting Persona 4

Here again with another Sorting Hat Chats post! This one’s for Persona 4. Full disclaimer; this is based just on the game, not the anime. Also it’s behind a cut cause it is LONG. And has spoilers.

The system I’m using is explained here by @wisteria-lodge.

The Persona 4 MC, whose name is either Souji Seta or Yu Narukami depending on which supplemental materials you go by, is a really REALLY loud Badger secondary. His power is based on making Social Links with NPCs and shifting to become whatever they need-and also on patiently grinding to level up his attributes. And because he lives so much in this secondary-plus the fact that on a meta level he’s kind of a stand-in for the player-his Primary is hard to see.

But where it gets revealed in the end is the decisive moment when the ending you’re going to get is decided. The Investigation Team have discovered that Namatame’s been putting people into the TV, and thus are assuming he’s the murderer-and it’s become horribly personal, because one of the people he did that to was Nanako, and even though she’s been rescued, she’s deathly ill thanks to the TV World’s poison.

And now you-and the MC-have a choice. The IT are baying for Namatame’s blood, ready to kill. One Badger Primary method would be to appeal to the fact that he’s a person, you can’t just kill people….but nobody’s listening. Another would be to dehumanise him and say, he’s a murderer, he needs to die for the sake of everyone-going along with all the fury of the group. A Lion would lash out too-less because everyone’s doing it and more from their own gut feeling, but that would still lead to dead Namatame. A Snake might kill Namatame because he hurt Nanako...or, in the Golden remake, if they’ve done Adachi’s social link, they might cover for him. Either way, they’d be prioritising an inner circle member.

And all of those get you bad endings. Especially the Snake choice to cover for Adachi.

What gets the good ending, the happy ending where the MC is fulfilled and at peace, is to ignore all the emotion that’s running so high, and order everyone to step back and take time to think about whether the theory of Namatame being the killer makes sense. Pounce on the niggling little detail that doesn’t fit, and realise that the assumption everyone is labouring under isn’t true. And then prioritise the actual truth over personal loyalties or emotional reactions.

Bird Primary.

Because of course. This is a detective story. Your party are called both the Investigation Team and the Seekers of Truth. Even the title song hints at it; find the truth (Bird) by getting together with others (Badger).

Yosuke Hanamura’s a young, immature Snake Primary at game start, with the selfishness typical to that. His Shadow throws that back in his face, and he realises he doesn’t like being an asshole whose secret gut reaction to murders happening is ‘well at least I’m not bored anymore now something is happening in this dead-end town’.

So he does two things pretty much at the same time; he widens his inner circle to let in first Souji and then the rest of the IT, and he adds a model on top to let him care about things outside that circle. I think it’s a Lion model-a young Lion, just like his Snake, that edges into Glory Hound, but keeps hold of the idea that you should do certain things because they’re just right.

(It’s not based on the MC, though the MC is undoubtedly his most important person, who he even calls his partner. But then, as I said, the MC’s Bird is very quiet, so it’d be hard for Yosuke to perceive it well enough to mimic it. I think it’s actually based on Chie, who is after all the inner circle member he has known longest!)

And his secondary? Yosuke’s a support guy. He lifts his friends up. His family run Junes, and he leverages that connection to create a base location for the IT and secure a portal into the TV world that’s big enough to be usable. When Teddie comes to the human world, it’s Yosuke who gives him a place to stay. He’s a Badger secondary, and again, this makes perfect sense. The Lover sorting. No wonder so much of the fandom ships him with the MC.

Chie Satonaka is LOUD and BRASH and if you are a jerk she will KICK YOU IN THE FACE. She is so goddamn Lion Secondary, and utterly unapologetic about it.

Her primary, I think, is Lion again. The reason she has gotten possessive of Yukiko (as her Shadow calls her out on) isn’t that she wants Yukiko to be just hers-it’s that she wants to be Yukiko’s knight. Saving the princess is actually a textbook Lion cause. It lets her feel heroic and brave.

But that’s not good for either of them. Damsel in distress is a shitty role, one that doesn’t allow Yukiko to be strong and capable herself, and Chie pushing Yukiko into that role is really straining their relationship. It’s also something that Chie herself knows is wrong-that’s why her Shadow accuses her of it. (“I am a Shadow, the true self...”)

So instead Chie changes gears, because oh look a new Cause just popped up! Find the killer and bring them to justice! And on top of that, there’s always sexist prats to kick.

Yukiko Amagi models Badger Primary, because it’s expected of her. Running an inn is a really Badger kind of job. She also models Badger Secondary, for the same reasons. She feels this is who she’s meant to be; sweet, gentle, socially adept, community-focused and hard-working. The traditional Japanese ideal of womanhood.

But it chafes. The weight of societal expectations feels crushing. She doesn’t want to do stuff just because she’s meant to, because people think she should. She’s an Internal Primary, and needs to follow the voice of her own heart.

And where that heart leads her...is back to the Amagi Inn, except now she’s decided that she’s doing this for herself. She needed to feel that she could actually choose to not inherit the inn, before she could realise that she wanted to run it. She’s a Snake Primary, and the inn is important to her because it’s hers.

Her secondary...actually I get the feeling she’s like Toph Beifong of Avatar, a Snake who likes to spend most of her time in neutral. She is delightfully quirky and weird, and owns that, but she doesn’t charge like a Lion and she’s comfy with wearing masks when the situation calls for it.

Kanji Tatsumi panics at the idea that he might be gay, and caretakes like a boss, and that might look at first sight like a Double Badger who’s scared that he might be one of the people he’s used to dehumanising. His Shadow screams that it wants to be accepted...but what calms it is when Kanji himself accepts it, and says that this resolution is about being true to himself. Kanji’s a Double Lion who burnt his primary because being given shit for the feminine, queer-coded parts of himself made him lose faith in his internal compass, worrying that it was leading him somewhere that he viewed as bad. Internalised homophobia’s a bitch of a thing.

Accepting his Shadow is the start of Kanji healing his primary-letting go of shame for being an oddball and telling the world to go fuck itself if it thinks it can make him conform. He does model Badger Secondary-as I said, he caretakes like a boss-but that’s more a thing he does as a gift to others. When it comes to solving problems, he charges in swinging, ready to beat up anyone from biker gangs to otherworldly monsters.

Rise Kujikawa is a cheerful, shameless Snake Primary, loving and ambitious. She became an idol to make friends, and enjoys the fame it gets her. And when she needs to take a break for the sake of her mental health, she has no compunctions about doing so.

But she needed that break because the idol life was stressing her out-unsurprisingly, it’s a really intense life. And the particular problem she had was to do with the conflicting expectations the public has of celebrities. Perfection is demanded...but so is authenticity.

Rise realised that she was face-shifting as an integral part of her career, and this knowledge sent her into a tailspin. The fans don’t like the real Rise Kujikawa-they like Risette. But who is the real Rise Kujikawa? She doesn’t know! It’s frightening! What if she’s just made of smoke and mirrors? How does she find out what’s underneath?

And the answer she comes to is that there is no real Rise Kujikawa...which is the same as saying that there is no false one. Rise is Risette is Rise, it’s all just her, adapting to the context as she needs to. She’s a Badger Secondary, and the act of performance is the true self.

And for her, that’s a good answer-it brings her peace. But now we need to talk about Teddie.

Because just hearing Rise say ‘there’s no real me’ sends Teddie into a Shadow crisis right there.

He completely fucking loses it. He’s a denizen of the TV world-he’s been immune to it all this time, never manifesting a Shadow, but this is what breaks him. And that just screams Bird Lion. It’s his Buzz Lightyear moment-or rather his first Buzz Lightyear moment, because there are two. This is the first, and he survives it by retreating into his Secondary. It allows him to bring Shadow Teddie under control...but this isn’t sustainable. He’s realised something terrible and can’t avoid that knowledge indefinitely.

And soon enough he admits it to himself (and to the MC). He is a Shadow, that somehow became self-aware. His Truth was never true. He can’t handle it, he has no idea how to even exist, and he outright tells the MC that he intends to commit suicide.

He recovers, though-and he does so because the MC tells him Nanako survived. That’s the first thing that gives him a glimmer of hope, because his Truth already had some Snakey elements in there about chosen people and ambitions. He comes back from the brink, reshapes his system to centre those Snake principles, and returns to the side of his friends.

Lastly, Naoto Shirogane, our other queer-coded character. (I’m using she pronouns for the sake of canon here-but I’m a firm believer in nonbinary Naoto, for the record.) I think she’s a Bird secondary-the only one of those here, jeez. She’s just so analytical. She’s a rapid-fire Bird too, Detective Prince working on a case, squarely in the middle of her comfort zone. But push her out of it-into a normal teenager social situation, say-and watch her squirm!

She has a Bird Primary performance, too. But performance is the operative word here. She’s trying to look adult and smart and collected, in order to be taken seriously by the police officers she works with. And she is smart, mind you, but that’s not the why of her though it is the how. It’s not Naoto who goes ‘wait, let’s think about this, we need more information’ at the crucial point, but the MC, who really is a Bird Primary. Naoto was the one to suggest doing a little vigilante justice vis-a-vis murdering Namatame.

Her real Primary is Lion. Being a detective is a Cause for her, not a Truth, and she is blazingly certain of her own sense of what’s right-so much so that she doesn’t stop and check it against other people’s. And she inspires people! She doesn’t even mean to, and certainly doesn’t know why, but she is just so cool that people flock to her and admire her. ‘The Detective Prince’ is, when you think about it, a really Lion Bird kind of title!

Her Shadow has two issues with her. First, it harps on the gender angle. Hey, self, there’s that thing about your identity that you’ve been refusing to think about! You need to go poke at it! And then it breaks down into a scared child. Self, your performance is eating you alive. You need to do it, yes, the Cause demands it, but you also need to be able to stop sometimes and let yourself have emotions!

In short:

MC/Souji/Yu: Bird primary, Badger secondary

Yosuke: Snake primary, Badger secondary, models Lion primary

Chie: Lion primary, Lion secondary

Yukiko: Snake primary, Snake secondary, with Badger primary and secondary models that start out pretty unhealthy for her.

Kanji: Lion primary that starts out burnt and begins to unburn after his Shadow fight, Lion secondary. Models Badger secondary.

Rise: Snake primary, Badger secondary

Teddie: Bird primary, Lion secondary. Falls dramatically and recovers by shaping his system to be more Snakelike.

Naoto: Lion primary, Bird secondary, performs Bird primary

#persona 4 #sorting hat chats #harry potter

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thefruitloop-chan · 5 years ago

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My thoughts in Chapter 237

Just wanted to say, It’s really creepy how All For one’s eyes are just shown there, plus I see a hand like cover on that thug left over there.

So it seems that All for one is giving Tomura some toys as a reward in terms of him congratulating him for killing which is conditioning him that killing is okay and you have to continue doing so to get more rewards. As we can see the toys on Tomura’s table.

It’s also the case of Tomura wanted to do whatever he wanted, he feels so free. Since we do know now that his dad is pretty much an abusive parent that no matter what Tenko does, he would punish.

The way All for one addressed Tomura like the hand gestures is pretty much how you addressed a kid much more younger. Which is a strange behavior even turning his back just to be surprise on his ‘new look’

It’s also is strange that All for one gave Tenko the same almost identical design to Izuku’s shoes like huge in some way.

It is also kinda ironic

On one hand:

All for one lecturing Tomura in the way of, you should not have restrains.

On the other hand, All for one has a way to restrain him to keep him in check. More like controlling and manipulating.

It’s also is ironic because, ‘People who wanted the world to run smoothly’ is pretty much him back in the day where there was chaos.

In regards of last names. We get to see that ‘Shigaraki’ is ‘his’ last name which I will call that he is lying since we do know that he is a liar and he lied before.

As we can see on Chapter 116.

He took Tenko around at the age of 5, but we do know that he was injured around 5 to 6 years ago prior from the current events of BNHA. Which would mean that Tenko is around 15 years old when AfO was injured.

That was one of his lies. (We do know that he is a petty man that wanted to use Nana Shimura’s on relative to cause chaos and hurt All Might because that’s how petty he is)

Anyways, If Shigaraki was his last name, it would make sense in terms of puns, due to the fact Shigaraki has the literal translation of ‘Death Grip Tree’

Which in turn, Death Grip means, never letting go. The tree however is suspicious because, Trees are green and we do know where the green color is reference from *wink wink*

Like I say, in terms of puns, it would make sense due to the fact that:

All for one can’t let go of the past.

All for one clings to his anger and grudge at all might.

His possessive nature, a.k.a. when he mentioned of all might stole someone or something from him.

Again, it doesn’t mean that this debunks the DfO theory because we do know by fact that in the BNHA Universe.

It is uncommon to use a wife’s last name but it doesn’t mean it’s not impossible. As we can see on Jirou’s parents. That her last name is from her mother’s side of the family.

He could have dropped his last name and used ‘Midoriya’ instead which would mean:

A new identity, new life, leaving the past behind. (We kinda theorized that green is new. and a new life of retirement for All for one and such)

A false lead if the police is investigating or someone is aware of his real name since last names are being used to how someone addressed one self.

Come to think of it, It could also be that Shigaraki is his literal ‘last’ name but not a ‘family’ name. If you know what I mean. Like, a wanted man can have a lot of names throughout the years, how much more for a 200 year old cyptid that has been lurking around the shadows with a lot of names?

On how to make an broken orphaned kid trust you. They have to at least give him a name as if they are part of your family. It’s more like that in All for one and Tenko’s case.

Then again, it’s more like, it would be interesting if his last is Shigaraki if it’s a Dad for one theory case because.

Look at Izuku’s name:

His first name “出久”. The kanji “出” contains meanings like “Exit” and “Come Out”. Then “久” means “Long Time”.

Part of Izuku’s name is 久 (Hisashi) which would mean and is possible that Hisashi’s first name is used on making Izuku’s name.

Think of it this way, First names are more personal than the Last name.

Last names are addressed more formality. While First names are, ‘You’ as it’s who you are and it’s much more connected in the much more personal level if anything.

If anything though, him giving Tomura, his last name pretty much is saying in a literal sense that his word 'he will be the next 'me’’ not as a successor but as an identity. Dumping his work load on him and disappear in the background.

Parallels on Eri and Tenko

So we get to see the Bystander effect in regards to the society they have now. Which also reflects to our current society today.

Which is really sad, they could have at least made a call about a wondering lost child around and could have helped him.

We can also get to see how this also parallel to Eri as well on Chapter 129

When we got to see Mirio’s reaction to just leave her be at first. We need to not suspect anything bad happened to the little girl.

But to Eri’s case, Izuku happened to bump to her but the thing is that, he was able to helped her and even hold her tightly and secure and do whatever it took to keep her safe even for that short amount of time.

But this time though, its more of another parallel what All for one did to Tenko.

He reached out and helped Tenko.

Izuku reached out for Eri and comfort here.

Parallels are doing its wonders. :’)

And here are my thoughts.

#loop's discussion

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