#very passionate about bossfights guy here

[loderlied]

give him multiple phases with a cutscene in between phases!!!!!! megalomaniacal mania while showing off his actual magnum opus (giant mech)!!! let him show himself off as the ‘savior of baldur’s gate’ in front of a crowd!!!!!

[maranigai]

character ask: ornstein?

(also unrelated, i would like to hear if you have any thoughts about dragonslayer armour)

Honestly, my only thought about the Armour is that its original owner was that one dragonslayer from the Sacred Oath item description (you know, the guy who presumably served NK and Ornstein) and was probably executed by Gwyn after NK's betrayal, but I never had any deep headcanons about them.

Unlike Ornstein, heh, the man has been my favourite DS paper doll for ages, so...

favorite thing about them

His relationships with NK, but as far as I know, my perception of said relationships is... not exactly common in the fandom. You see, I hc that NK was everything to Ornstein before his betrayal. The master, the tutor, the god - an entire life in one person. And then he left without taking Ornstein with him, leaving him alone to deal with Gwyn's rage and the consequences of betrayal. This was what broke Ornstein as a person, entirely - and what he never forgave NK for. So yes, even after the betrayal, Ornstein still saw NK as his only true lord, the person he had sworn his soul and flesh to - but he hated him with passion, for the lies, for the abandonment, for that damned sacred oath and the impossibility of getting freedom from it. Ornstein had hated NK for so long and lost so much to this hatred that when he finally met NK, finally learned that he was genuinely sorry for leaving him... to Ornstein, it didn't matter anymore, because nothing really mattered. And even when NK freed him after all, it still didn't matter. To me, their story is one of caged loyalty, hollow love and betrayed trust without redemption; I admit this is a more tragic take on them, but I love it this way.

least favorite thing about them

Ornstein as a character consists mostly of my own headcanons, so obviously I like them all lol. But what I don't like is the lack of a normal one-on-one bossfight against him and no, Old Fanservisslayer from ds2 does not count. I mean, come on FromSoft, he's the bloody captain of the Gwyn's four knights, he could easily be on the same level of a fight as Gael or phase 3 Friede, and he's a recurring character in every game of the trilogy, you could easily fit him in as a proper boss somewhere in ds3! Pls sign my 8 year old petition to replace the Ancient Wyvern at the Archdragon Peak with Ornstein.

favorite line

The man doesn't have any lines in canon, so I'll reference my own fanfiction because I can.

Some oaths can only be broken by death, master. And I’ve been walking here for too long.

brOTP

Two of them, actually. The first one is Artorias, who once saw the broken ruin of a man consumed with paranoia and hatred and decided that screw it, this guy is friend shaped and needs an emotional support (cheers for him for at least partly restoring Ornstein's faith in people after NK's betrayal). The second one is Gwynevere, who was there when her brother first brought his new apprentice to Anor Londo, and remained by his side throughout the ages, untill the final days of the final apocalypse in Lothric kingdom. So yeah, Artorias was the one who helped Ornstein not to fall into the despair, at least for a while, but Gwynevere was the only one who actually knew him as a person.

OTP

Surprisingly, Ciaran, in some unhealthy "enemies with benefits" type of relationships. Ciaran doesn't trust him and thinks he's a traitor like his liege who somehow gained Gwyn's forgiveness only to betray him later, but this also means she doesn't care much about Ornstein as a man with actual emotions, and doesn't feel guilty for using his company to distract herself from her own tragic unrequited love for Artorias. Ornstein himself appreciates her brutally honest approach and, frankly, is lonely and broken enough to accept even this surrogate of intimacy. So yeah, if you think this pairing is some sort of fucked up angst, you're correct, it is.

nOTP

Gwyndolin. I hc their relationships to be cold. Very, very cold. For Ornstein, Gwyndolin is a boy who's trying to play for his master without having any actual right to it - and Ornstein is sick of having masters. For Gwyndolin, Ornstein is a dangerous beast on a very thin chain, basically uncontrollable and unpredictable. So when Ornstein left Anor Londo, it was a moment of relief for both of them.

random headcanon

Ornstein was a ringed knight before NK noticed him and took him on as an apprentice. For this reason, he was always out of place in both Anor Londo and human lands, even before NK's betrayal.

unpopular opinion

I believe, my hcs on his personality in general? My Ornstein is cold, paranoid and bitter man with no trust in people and very little personal devotion to the gods of Anor Londo. He's not a completely emotionless monster of course, but he's still far more morally dark than most other versions I've seen in the fandom.

song i associate with them

I failed to pick only one, mea culpa.

Лора Бочарова - О Магии и Предательстве (but I couldn't find this thing on youtube in remotely descent quality, so without the link, sorry)

Мельница - Рукописи

Мельница - Кащей

favorite picture of them

This art by azotho

[mutedeclipse]

OH BOY HERE WE GO

Sorry not sorry for unleashing this on the world

Im pretty sure ive ranted about phantom bomber ≠ brain bomber on twitter before but its fresh in my mind and i have to scream again because im so mentally ill

This shouldnt bother me but it does because the fandom wiki gives the impression theyre the same guy, referring to them as the same time in articles. Or. Not bothering to clarify. Granted. Theyre meant to be the same character in the same place but theyre fundamentally different characters in function and characterization with a similar coat of paint.

Brain bomber is a rancid little probably sadistic terrorist scientist with the achievement of almost killing a guy and maiming him to the point of needing cybernetics to function only to brainwash that poor fucking guy, he ALSO was the leader of the dastardlies at one point. His awful little nature fascinates me. Hes described as coldhearted, selfish, worthy of fear. He is likely the kind of character who deserves to be killed without hesitation, but due to his slippery tendencies he gets away with shit. Also hes short.

Phantom bomber, unlike brain, does not have such direct brutality, at least willingly. Ontill the events of super bomberman R 2 all we have is that he was brainwashed by buggler, and THATS why he did awful things. Hes shown to be helpful during the final bossfight and In the end credits hes shown being able to live normally, he probably got therapy and honestly deserves to have a better life and to be happy. Im chocking his weird freak behavior up to being neurodivergent and abnormal (affectionate)

When you think about its a complete flip on the portrayal, and dont get me wrong i dont want to make people feel bad for calling them the same character... But after the attatchment and love i feel for both of them i cant really understand, maybe im just particular maybe im irrational maybe everyone else is wrong and im right who the fuck knows. I just wish there was more art of brain specifically :{

In conclusion im deeply gay for both of these purple braniacs in very different ways. Im probably not going to change anybodies mind but i hope my passion is endearing if anyone actually reads this.

[radiantresplendence]

Doctor Takuto Maruki Was Right

Maruki is the Councillor Arcana in Persona 5 Royal and is a fantastic character that the original game was sorely lacking. I’ll be talking some spoilers here. Be warned. 

We can talk about how Demiurge/Yaldabaoth/Yagor/Jägermeister (or whatever you want to call him) is straight trash and shouldn’t be the overarching antagonist of Persona 5 another time, but that’s not what’s important here. 

What’s important here is that Maruki wasn’t in the original game and that does a disservice to everyone who played it. 

For the vast majority of P5R, Maruki is just the high school counselor who was brought in to the school in the aftermath of the Kamoshida incident as a means of damage control. He’s kind, emphatic and insightful and genuinely wants to help anyone seeking his services. 

The Phantom Thieves, due to their involvement in the Kamoshida incident are mandated by the school to talk to him; as the game progresses, most of the team members form some sort of connection to him, save for Akechi and Futaba (I believe) as Akechi is only a Phantom Thief when his goals align with the team and Futaba isn’t a student. 

Even Yoshizawa and Yusuke interact with Maruki, as Yusuke goes out of his way to do so after hearing about him from the other thieves and he was Yoshizawa’s counselor after the death of her sister. 

Over the course of his confidant, Joker gives Maruki his perspective on some of Maruki’s research, which is later revealed to be Cognitive Psience. At the end of his confidant arc, Maruki reveals that he’s known that Joker’s group were the Phantom Thieves since he saw them exit the Cognitive world during the first heist. He says he supports the thieves and their justice but he has to go a separate way. He then exits the story until after the defeat of the God of Control.

If you finish Maruki’s Confidant Arc by the time that he leaves the school, Maruki completes a belated Cognitive Psience paper that he was working on with funding from a college in Toyko and winds up applying his theory when Mementos merges with the real world. 

In short, Maruki fully awakens to his persona with the special ability to rewrite cognition. When the cognitive world and the real world are merged, however this power becomes absurdly potent, and Maruki begins to warp reality in order to make a world where no one suffers. 

Maruki’s machinations affect all of the Phantom Thieves positively: Joker doesn’t go to prison because... Akechi is alive and confesses to his crimes in Joker’s stead. Akechi is let off the hook for his crimes. Morgana is a human. Ryuji was never injured and is still the star of the track team. Ann’s friend Shiho never attempted suicide. Yusuke was never exploited by Madarame, who instead acts as a passable father figure to him. Makoto and Sae’s dad was never assassinated. Futaba’s mother is alive and is presumably in some sort of relationship with Sojiro. Finally, Haru’s father wasn’t executed after his bossfight and he was never an exploitative egoist. 

There’s a lone exception to this: the girl who the game refused to let join the Phantom Thieves; a girl who had been receiving therapy from Dr. Maruki since before the start of the game due to her trauma from the death of her sister, Sumire Yoshizawa.

In a way, “Kasumi” was Maruki’s prototype for the world he wanted to create. She couldn’t process the guilt she felt for surviving the crash that killed her allegedly more talented sister and consequently wished that she was her late sibling. 

Now the world that Maruki creates is essentially a utopia, where no one suffers and crippling psychological harm is unable to befall anyone. Now we can consider the value of free will that Maruki is removing by becoming a new “God of Control”, but as a card carrying deterministic nihilist, I see it as more or less as trading the whims of an uncaring chaotic universe for those of a benevolent eccentric. The game frames this as a stagnation of humanity, something I don’t entirely agree with. Maruki understands that physical wounds (aka hardship) are inescapable (and can provide adversity to fuel growth) and his big theory revolves around altering cognition to inoculate against mental illness. Any issue with Maruki’s world revolves more around his personal flaws and lack of moderation than it does with his theoretical framework. Regardless, Maruki’s world is more ethical than what it replaces. 

In the third semester, if we ignore some of the alterations like reviving the dead as they’re more of a condition of the world than an effect of it, many people who would otherwise be sick or destitute are not, and the natural conclusion of Maruki gaining full control (as evidenced in the bad ending where you side with the doctor) is a world where no one is. Essentially, the Phantom Thieves in the third semester who fight against Maruki are condemning these people to poverty, despair and a miserable death. Ethically, for the sake of their own morality, the Phantom Thieves are the bad guys. 

Maruki’s motivations need to be examined closer. He is someone who has been largely unable to move past his own trauma (as evidenced by the entire third semester and foreshadowed in the scene where he runs into a college friend) so he has come to the conclusion that he should dedicate himself to moving others past theirs. I mean, mind-wiping your fiance of most of her life with you to cure her of her PTSD and having your life’s work stolen by Shido as you try to pick up the pieces would probably leave a guy feeling pretty empty. Essentially Maruki has resigned himself to his own sorrow after repeatedly being dealt a bad hand, so to speak. 

I think we can safely say that at the very least, Maruki has been emotionally displaced (if not worse) since the incident with Rumi and having his life's work defunded has led him to a place where his only real desire is the pursuit of a singular goal: obliterating sadness. Not his mind you, but everyone else's. 

Basically, Maruki is not well, emotionally or mentally, despite him being able to function as a productive member of society. Completing his contract with a cosmic entity and taking the throne of the god of control, enables him to pursue his goal far beyond what he was capable as a mere doctor with a special power. He infests the human subconscious to further his goal and relentlessly tightens his grip on the world. Despite having augmented physiology in the fused metaverse as a persona user, I feel that he's a mentally ill man who's burning the candle at both ends, so to speak. I think, if anything, fully awakening to Azathoth’s power exacerbated his preexisting mental state. 

To evidence my claim of Maruki’s declining illness, allow me to cite: putting a friend and confidant into a vegetative state because he couldn’t solve a moral dilemma in a month’s time, tentacling a teenage girl and brainwashing her because her dissent is a rejection of your life’s work, picking a fistfight with a high schooler while screaming about stuff unrelated to him, choosing to martyr yourself in resignation to your own suffering when you have the power to avert it. 

Imagine a world where Maruki became the new ruler of the Cognitive World, but acted in a more limited capacity that is more in line with his original research, than the extreme conclusion of it. Consider him acting more like the collective subconscious's guardian angel than the god of control, possibly with the blessing of the Phantom Thieves. I think that’s more what a sane Maruki would settle on, feeling responsible to use the powers he was granted by his contract with an outer god. 

With that out of the way, let’s discuss the way that Maruki implements his agenda.

While working at Shujin, Maruki isn't anything particularly special as a counselor, as it's neither something that he's particularly skilled at, nor is it something that he's passionate for. It's more or less a case of his job being something that he is qualified to do. 

We know that his real passion was cognitive psience research. In essence, he's a scientist over a health professional, even though the funding for his area of expertise was slashed to bits forcing him to take an alternate career path. Especially early on, the way he’d approach his job would certainly be influenced by his passion. To that end, I think you need to analyze his session with Yoshizawa from a research perspective. He rewrote her cognition to be that of her sister’s because he thought it would help her move on. His actions here were absolutely unethical, as he was experimenting on a minor without guardian consent or full disclosure of information, but initial results of his cognition rewrite were positive (especially in the short-term, despite Yoshizawa struggling more in the long term than she otherwise may have). 

"Kasumi" in a lot of ways is a proof of concept for the world he creates in the third semester, even if she isn't necessarily an optimally-functioning prototype. Now, I think Maruki was definitely acting as a bad counselor, and a "mad psientist", if you'll allow my pun, in the flashback. In the third semester however, there's no validity in examining him as a counselor, as he's not actively doing counseling. You can't even really examine him under the lens of ethical science, as he's essentially beyond morality. The man has the power to massively warp reality, raise the dead and alter memories. Essentially, his powers are such that only the end result of any action he takes really matters. If Maruki were to harm or kill someone, regardless of intent, he could make it never happen. So, only the ends of his actions can really be taken into account. 

The ends of his actions are, of course, to obliterate human misery, and he proved effective at this. The exceptions being Sumire Yoshizawa (albeit before the full implementation of his agenda) and himself (his palace is the Laboratory of Sorrow after all.) I guess what I'm getting at here is that, Maruki has to be judged as a god for all of his actions in the third semester, as that’s really the only lens applicable to his role there. 

With that in mind, the questionable actions that he takes in the third semester are basically just holding Akechi’s life hostage and forcing Yoshizawa to be Kasumi. He avoids physical altercation with the Phantom Thieves until they literally approach him with a mutual agreement of force. The Akechi situation is one that Maruki claims to be unintentional, and I do believe him. I think the awkwardness of that reveal is more due to Maruki’s social ineptitude and difficulty revealing that sensitive piece of information than it is anything nefarious. As for the Kasumi situation, Maruki has every ability to revive the real Kasumi and adjust Sumire’s life to become one more satisfying to her. In the end I think that that unfortunate situation has more to do with an ill man with unlimited power unable to distance Yoshizawa’s rejection of his initial gift as a personal sleight to everything he’s spent his life working towards. With his work being pretty much the only thing he’s currently attributed meaning to in his life his swift rejection of dissent makes a little more sense. 

This leads to something I consider mandatory, Yoshizawa needs to rebel against the fate Maruki assigned to her, or every member of the Phantom Thieves would be working against their and all of humanity’s best interests. 

I think no one would disagree with me when I say that his role in the third semester is that of a god antithetical to the themes of Persona 5, and thus narratively has to be deposed for a satisfying conclusion. Looking objectively at his grand plan however, even with his hiccups, I can’t really say he’s wrong, even if his implementation isn’t as clean as I (or even himself in a better frame of mind) would like.