#maybe I’ll revisit it

[worrygutz]

I’ve lost motivation to keep painting this aaa but I think it still gets the idea I was going for across

[eggwishing]

I ONCE TRIED TO WASH THAT SCUFFED OLD THING WHILE HE WAS TAKING ONE OF HIS NAPS, BUT WHEN I TOOK IT OFF HE WAS WEARING ANOTHER IDENTICAL ONE UNDERNEATH! AND ANOTHER! I GOT THROUGH TEN MORE LAYERS OF THE SAME THING BEFORE HE WOKE UP. I WAS SO FRUSTRATED! WHERE DID HE EVEN GET THOSE FROM? THEY ALL EVEN HAD THE SAME STAINS!!

[artaintfartwarriors]

Could i perhaps get moonpaw design please?

This is probably my 5th attempt at designing her, and I’m still not satisfied, but here she is!

[lycantropy14]

kinda wanted to try and do stab at mimicking those dime detective novel covers but lost steam

[tahsta]

[i-can-not-art]

Rushed asf Hermes because this is legit the first time I’ve seen a character with my exact eye shape

Also sorry for not posting like any actual illustrations this week, state testing beating me half to death

[thedaythatwas]

I’m just thinking long and hard about the way Akiren and Akechi are written as foils for each other. Because of course, the game drives it home for us that the two are narrative foils: Akiren is the champion of free will who finds power through his friendships, Akechi represents the ways society binds us. He is chained by his desire to be wanted (importantly, by the wrong people– I’ll get to that).

At first glance, Akiren and Akechi’s point of divergence has to do with their relationships– Akiren has confidants, Akechi doesn’t, and this is the deciding factor in Akiren’s victory over Akechi on November 20th and in the engine room. Still, while this is certainly part of what makes their relationship important as a narrative device, it’s not the full picture. That, I think, has more to do with the fact that they both desperately want the very relationships that are used to foil them. They have common ground, and that’s what makes the emotional beats of their differences hit as hard as they do.

Even though Akechi doesn’t have the close bonds that Akiren does with his friends, he is defined as a character by his desire to belong. He wants to be praised and given everything he feels he was denied by Shido’s callous disregard for his mother and society’s unjust treatment of him after her death. He was a self-proclaimed “undesirable child” who spent his young adult life doing everything in his power to never feel unwanted again. He literally spells it out in his engine room monologue– “I was extremely particular about my life, my grades, my public image, so someone would want me around!”

Akiren, like Akechi, begins his character arc as a social outcast. Unlike Akechi, who appeals to systemic power to claim social clout and chase his own sense of belonging (the Shido revenge plot, which would, uhm, theoretically end with Shido acknowledging his son’s worth), Akiren finds family with other outcasts. All of the Phantom Thieves understand his struggle, and because of this they foster a sense of understanding and community that Akechi never gets to experience.

It is important to note that these bonds are deepened when Akiren helps those around him. While there’s absolutely nothing bad about doing things for the people you care about– in fact, most would argue that this is what makes a friendship a good one– we can take a reasonable guess that Akiren craves the love of those around him just a bit more than is healthy for him. He plays therapist for half of Tokyo– he stretches himself absurdly thin for the sake of his friends. That’s a bit much to ask of one person, but Akiren seems to demand it of himself. This is the nature of confidant routes as a game mechanic, of course, but hey, reading into game mechanics is important to getting a solid reading of who Akiren is behind the mask!

The crux of it is, Akiren and Akechi are both lonely characters. Their desire to be loved quite literally drives the narrative of the game, both in terms of plot and gameplay. What makes their foiling so tragic is the fact that Akechi so obviously wants what he has himself determined he can’t have. He says as much in the engine room when he questions why Akiren has things that he doesn’t, despite being (as he says) criminal trash living in an attic.

And yet, Akechi’s isolation is frankly the result of his own decisions. He is the one who chooses to work for Shido. He is the one who acts on a worldview that requires he keep his cards close to his chest to win— against Shido and against the world that wronged him— and to be considered desirable (even despite the fact that this mindset obviously works against satiating his hunger to be loved. He really needs to go to therapy, but I digress).

I don’t think Akechi even knows how to go about claiming what Akiren managed to. Akechi has agency in the actions he takes, absolutely– he would be furious about any suggestion to the contrary– but in many ways, the choices he feels himself able to make are constrained by his circumstances and the lessons imparted to him by his past.

All this to say, Akechi and Akiren aren’t different because Akechi doesn’t want teammates, or even friends. He sincerely wants everything Akiren has. He tells us this in the engine room. He shoots himself in the foot by prioritizing approval from society and love from Shido above other relationships. But thinking from inside his shoes, what else was he going to do? Where else would he have thought to turn to find what he wanted? He was dealt a horrible hand and he played his cards according to the rule book he was given. If the world were just, Akiren and Akechi wouldn’t be foils. It’s the injustice implicit in that that really drives home the point I think P5 is trying to make when it foils Akiren and Akechi in the first place. It also, personally, has been making me want to scream all day.

On a related note, this is also the exact reason that Akechi being the one to bring up that things might have been different if only he met Akiren a few years sooner makes me want to throw things, but this post is long enough. I’ll save all that for later!

[1driedpersimmon]

I’ve been a bit too tired lately to finish things so here’s just a few Lights (and L) that I’ve doodled

[sonicbooom]

bar warmth

[drachen-katze]

So like, is this anything?

[emry-stars-art]

@neilimfinejosten and @prince-peachie requested cuddles/Andrew sleeping on Neil and I just. Imagine the first time Andrew says “screw it” and takes a lethal amount of Xanax before a plane trip

(Requests have since been closed - I’m here to post the ones I got over the holidays 😊)

[draconicdeityarts]

wheeeeeeeee :DD

[not-a-heretic]

here, i’m gonna give you guys a scrap from april because i haven’t posted in a minute

[fernsproutxx]

another one¿¿ yes another one.

this is like half a year old and just today i found it and thought “what if i color it” lmao. it is unfinished though (as shown by the side profile one).

tbh this was mostly made as an excuse to draw him covered in flowers, but the au goes like this; he basically never got out of the boarded up room, and fazbear’s frights never happened. with time the ceiling got water damaged and caved in a little, letting a bit of the outside elements in and claim the rest of the decaying corpse that was left inside, hence the “ammonium”, which is part of the nitrogen release process that decomposing bodies make which enhances plant growth. it’s a really interesting subject on how death brings back life in this never ending cycle.

[tevos]

i’m not even going to pretend that lisa going off over carla ‘overstepping the line’ with betsy wasn’t everything i’ve been waiting for (DELICIOUS) however HOWEVER there is something so roll over and expose your belly, expose your throat about her telling carla ‘you were right, i was wrong, you made things better by interfering, please do it more because i clearly need it’ and im talking gibberish and banging my head against a wall but do you SEE IT??

[shima-draws]

Me, suddenly remembering OCs I made YEARS ago and haven’t touched since: