Hey there! How have you been doing! Just thought I'd check up on you! Hope you've been doing well! I don't really have much to say, except that you're epic and cool! Since I was sharing some of the ideas I've had today, I wanted to ask you if you'd be willing to do the same? :> You don't have to, but I'm just curious! Also, out of curiosity, have you ever received requests on this blog? :o Not that you have to write them, of course! Either way, I hope you have a nice day! :>

I'm doing well, I just got home and ate some cucumber slices! (and chugged like 2 full bottles of water lmao)

I have a ton of writing ideas rn. Like- I think there are 100+ vague ideas written in my notes app, and at least 30 active wips. I keep switching back and forth between them, chipping away at each one slowly but surely 🫡 (gonna end up finishing all of them at once or smt, idk)

Some of the ones that I've been working on the most are:

Bartender reader x Gaz after a bad breakup (it's gonna end up being like 5 parts if I ever decide to post it, shit goes crazy in that one)

Firefighter Valeria (I finally got it started instead of letting it rot in my head 🙌 I don't even know how many parts that would end up being)

Transmasc cbf Gaz x transmasc reader (really don't know where I'm going with this one)

I also have a handful of platonic and romantic Ghost x reader ficlets floating around, might finish some of those up at some point.

And I know I mentioned a hybrid poly 141 x reader fic a while ago- that one is technically finished, but I'm not happy with it yet so I might go back and revise it

And nah, I've never received requests on this blog. Probably because I haven't posted a ton of my writing + I don't even have a pinned post so my blog is like. Impossible to navigate 💀✋️

I used to take requests on my other blog tho! I stopped after my hyperfixation on cod took over (plus I got like a shit ton of requests in one night and got intimated by it, never looked at them again)

I haven't even deleted the old requests from my inbox even tho some of them are from as far back as September. I have a couple of drafts for some of those, so I'm just holding on to them in case I randomly get motivated to write for those requests again. Probably won't happen, but who knows?

I've definitely written a lot more since I stopped taking requests tbh. Well, on this blog at least. I haven't posted any writing of my own on my main blog since January 😶

Anyways, thanks for talking to me!!! I love chatting with you lovie 💕

I feel like on the "Selfish and Horrifying" meter, Sho is probably the least horrible of the Persona edgevillain boys...by like a very, VERY small margin. An almost nonexistent margin tbh.

Akechi and Adachi both take advantage of a Darling, especially since I think Adachi wouldn't initially view them as anything more than an outlet for his boredom. Like yeah, the world is still meaningless and sucks, but some free (albeit unwilling) pussy and someone to cook meals for him is pretty nice. He has a leg up on Akechi since Adachi has actual good relationships with people like Nanko, Dojima, and Yu. Like I don't know (and he doesn't either, I imagine) if that's genuine love for the closest thing to a family he has, but it stands to reason that he COULD develop a similar meaningful connection with a Darling. I think he's more likely to just want to use them though.

Akechi manipulates them by using his past and his own issues against them, and turns their sympathy into a way to keep them tied to him. He's one of two Wild Cards to weaponize their Personas for nefarious purposes, and it's only through a metric ton of effort/shit happening in Royal that he's even able to form meaningful connections with others. But this might cause him to double down on Darling; now that he realizes he can actually have feelings, then he wants to do that with them too! He's got actual friends now who know his real self, and he's still shocked that Darling was able to put up with all the hell he put them through. So he wants to make it up to them by being the closest thing to "good" he can be. It's broken and still fucked up, but he wants to try.

In P4's True End route and in Ultimax, Adachi clearly wants to atone for what he did and agrees to be taken to jail for the murders. So I think that he'd decide to cut ties with Darling entirely, just for their own sake. He kidnapped them, assaulted them, and they deserve a chance to move on from what he did to them. If they continued to seek him out in prison, he'd be surprised (especially since I imagine he'd confess to the cops for what he did to them, so they have NO reason to visit him in prison as their convicted assaulter). I think he'd assume they just have a form of Stockholm Syndrome and urge them to stop visiting him for their own sake. But if they keep insisting, he'll say they must be hopelessly broken to keep coming back to talk to him. He won't turn them away anymore, but he doesn't really like it either. It's difficult to find a way to atone for hurting people when one of your victims is so broken and warped by you, and it's all you can see/hear when the visit you in jail.

Sho is the one who would be unlikely to have a Darling in the first place, and getting feelings like that confuses/angers/scares the shit out of him. He was raised without any ability to connect with others and is, to put it bluntly, a sociopath with symptoms taken to a cartoonish extreme. He straight up says he can only experience bonds with others by trying to kill them in a fight to the death, after all. Empathy and sympathy is something that he can't even grasp. And while it'd be astronomically difficult, he might develop an interest in a Darling that spirals out of control. He's very distrustful of others, so those gentle/kind Darlings seem like (at first) they'd bore him or confuse him a lot. Why are they so eager to help him without anything in return? Are they trying to earn his trust and use him layer on?

A Darling that's a fighter/Persona user would have a far quicker time catching his interest. Maybe they're a "gentler" one like Fuuka, or they're a special case where they can use SMT spells without needing a Persona to "channel" shit through and they fight that way (which annoys him, since he can't carve off bits of their Persona the way he can with everyone else in Ultimax). And it pisses him off that they keep trying to "help him" and ask why he's doing all this while fighting him. Does it fucking matter? Focus on the fight, you idiot! He's about to kill you!

It would take a persistent kindness and a LOT of compassion on Darling's part for his interest to form. Throughout most of the story he dismisses bonds and sympathy as what weaklings do to cope with their own inferiority alone, and he comes to view Darling as his complete opposite. And their stupid tenacity in trying to reach out to him is equally annoying and interesting, similar to how he feels about Yu consistently trying to connect with him. But Yu, he's a fellow Wild Card like Sho. Why would some random nobody below his level of power be so determined to do that?

I think he'd spend what little spare time he has in the story occasionally just peeking in on Darling when he's not trying to fight/kill them. He just wants to know who he's dealing with, and see what their real goal is in gaining his trust. And when he discovers there IS NO hidden goal, he kind of...malfunctions. It just doesn't make sense to him. So he'd fixate more on them to prove that whatever they have in mind, they're wrong and he's going to kill them to prove it.

After the story ends, he wakes up in the hospital in Inaba and realizes that even if Ikutsuki threw him away, he still can't completely hate him. And that feeling makes him wonder what other bonds he has with people like Yu, Labrys, and...that one naive idiot who kept trying to reach out, despite their weakness. If he's going to take this chance to form bonds and find new meaning, he wants to explore it with them.

He's not really sure HOW to do that, so his go-to is to just follow them around/stalk them for a while before confronting them. They wanted to connect with him, right? Well here he is. He'll explain what his life was like since they may not have been there for that whole exposition dump, and then say that he's going to stick around for a while to learn more about them. It's only fair, considering how hard they pushed their way into HIS life.

He'll follow them around even if they say they don't want to befriend him after all the shit he did, or that they just need some time alone for a while after he tried to kill them and their friends so many times. But he's not gonna be able to let them be. They were so stubborn before about connecting with him, and NOW, when he's finally open to it, they say no? Nah, fuck that. He's part of their life whether they want it or not. He was planning on traveling the country/world to find himself, but no matter how long he's gone he always comes back to his Darling in the end. They'll think he's finally left after a few months, only for him to break into their home and crawl in bed like it's his own and like nothing happened. Darling's the closest thing he's got to a home, anyway.

I'm really attached to the idea of Henry meeting the assassins as a kid SO! I've decided that long before the games events he could meet an assassin(s) as (the child labor stuff was going quite a bit before 186whatever or 1885, whichever fused time this is)

And thus now I ramble <3

Kid Henry and his family are visiting London for a quick vacation (maybe a business trip as well on the parents part?) Henry gets separated from his family and one of the gangs kidnap him to make him work in one of their factories. Obviously this like. 10 year child cant really resist and is Absolutely Terrified. Maybe he's there for about a week? Mayyyybe a month? Until the assassins that probably have an actual group name that I just forgot, drop by and rescue Henry! He's a tad bit traumatized and just witnessed multiple people get murdered, but at the very least they were bad people. The assassins help little Henry reach whatever hotel his family is at and drop him off once they've located them! So now Henry knows these assassins are good! And if that's not enough reason to trust them he also probably wouldn't stop pestering his assassin rescuer with questions lmao

Fast forward years later! Evie and Jacob are on the scene, need whatever potion, and decide to ask local alchemist Henry Jekyll. They do what you said and slighty kidnap him and argue but instead of running away he sorta just sits there until they're done arguing. And is like "Hey I know what you guys are all about, I'll help as long it cant be connected to me and you pay well" (because knowingly being the stepping stone to someone murder deserves some pay. And also he needs it for the society) (also whatever way Jekyll actually said it was no doubt better worded than me XD)

And that's it! I'm tired so im going to sleep after sending this <3 also I got to the point in the game where I hide a dead body and those cops are so annoying. Esp since the ones I knocked out get reset once I die 😔

(I normally just imagine it as 1885 so I can ignore that the Jack the Ripper DLC ever happened and also so I can keep Jacob and Evie young bc I Do Not Like their older designs and my AC playing friend is going to bonk me for saying that </3)

(also side note; the gang Jacob starts is called The Rooks but the actual assassin gang I think is just called... The Order? The Order of the Assassins? I have no idea but ye <3)

Anyways!!! ABsolutely fuck yes I love love lovel ove this yes <3<3<3!!!! Oh my god getting helped and rescued by assassin's might have been a kick start to Henry's morbid interests, like in Bleeding heart he said it would be fascinating to get eaten by a monster, I am sure that being kidnapped and seeing assassins murder your kidnappers at the age of 10 would very much traumatize him and probably kickstart a lot of morbid fascination with a lot of stuff. Now I love to imagine the assassin just... Holding Henry as they jump over the rooftops bc it's quicker and they may or may not have some cops after them, and Henry is just so excited and fascinated and can't stop thanking them and rambling questions and I just want to imagine that the assassin/s are just so patient with him and just <3<3<3

That is the exact scenario I have been imagining for so long you have no idea how good it feels to ramble about it and have other people ramble it TO ME. I also love to imagine that scenario with them (Jacob) just... Knocking Henry out, taking him to the hideout/train, ties him to a chair, waits for him to wake up, Henry wakes up to Evie and Jacob arguing bc jfc Jacob DO YOU THINK HE IS GOING TO HELP US NOW???? They realize that Henry is awake, quickly explain the situation, Henry doesn't have time to answer before Mr. Green or Ned (have you met Ned yet? He is canonically trans and he owns my heart <3) enter the room and it's just the pointing spider man meme bc I really like to imagine Henry being friends with at least one of them, having gone to the same university or smt so everyone is just so confused and then they explain why they needed Henry in the first place and Henry just...

"Y'know, you could have just asked me? What do you think I would do, say no? When you are willing to pay so good for it? Especially since I know what you guys do??"

ANyways Henry becomes their poison supplier, cue shenanigans where Jacob tries to stop by for the weekly supply only to interrupt Henry when he is talking with a Lodger in his office, neither caring at all that the Lodger is seeing them, Jacob just jumping through the open window asking for the supply, Henry tsking and sighing that he has no manners and besides he gave him a supply just a few days ago does he think he just has a tone of poison laying around? Then sighing and admitting that yeah, he does, just straight up lifts up a crate filled with poison, handing them to Jacob, cursing his name when he leaves for interrupting him, then turning back to the Lodger like nothing happened jsdfhjsdfsdf

Persona 5

Last night, I finally finished Persona 5, and...it wasn’t as good as Persona 4. Now that I have all the available facts, I finally think I can fairly unpack my reasons why. Behind the cut, for anyone else who’s still working on it and doesn’t want spoilers.

The first thing to note is that I am a huge Persona 4 fan. It’s not a perfect game (but then, nothing is); it starts off very slowly, its once-lauded LGBT content is actually not good in the cold light of day when LGBT content is (however slowly) becoming more common in video games, and it has a long, LONG day that is just...awful. Misogynist and transphobic as hell. But overall, it’s a hell of a game that I recommend to almost anyone, even with those caveats. It’s also a game that’s almost 9 years old, so why do I think it’s better than the sequel that came out this year?

Certainly, Persona 5 has a lot of gameplay improvements. There’s more variety in combat, with new types of attacks and status effects you can inflict and have inflicted on you. Adding guns as another piece of equipment gives everyone in your party additional options. Most importantly, the social links the current Persona games rely on for their flavor have added gameplay benefits, as different ranks will grant you useful skills in and out of combat, at a pace that lets you naturally integrate the new options rather than being overwhelmed by them. And the negotiation system with the enemies (imported back from the base SMT series) means that what you fight can matter beyond “this is their weakness/XP gain/possible item drops.” In every measurable way, combat in 5 is better than 4. Even the dungeons are improved, because the set designs stand out better than 4′s randomized crawling. Plus if you do want random dungeon crawls, there’s a whole huge area that calls back to Persona 3′s Tartarus. The best of both worlds, right? The problem is that while combat in 5 is a great improvement, combat is not what I loved in Persona 4 anyway. It was the writing and the story.

If you haven’t played Persona 4, the main plot revolves around a series of murders in a rural Japanese town. After the first two, the main character and his recent friends discover another world, and that it’s connected to the murders so far. When a third person goes missing, they save them, and then decide to work on stopping any further murders and figure out who’s behind them. On its own, this is a workable plot that stands out among JRPGs for being decidedly small scale. You aren’t setting out to stop an evil empire or find your missing father, but it’s a worthy goal, and the fantastical elements explain why you can’t just go to the police about it.

What makes the game sing is the writing for the other members of your group, and for the social links you make to gain power. Your party is a bunch of teenagers, and sometimes they’re, well, shitty in the way teens so often are. They care for each other and stick their necks out, but they’ll also crack inappropriate jokes or be insensitive because they’re still learning how to act like adults. It occasionally goes too far (see Teddy), but mostly it felt believable, as did any of the romance scenes if you choose to date any of your classmates. On top of that, with the exception of the main character, you gain team members by saving them from their own Shadow, which stands for the parts of themselves they don’t want to admit are real. Sure, you beat them when they become the boss, but then the character in question has to accept the parts of themselves they don’t like to admit are there, something that all of us have.

Meanwhile, the social links do the heavy lifting of making the town feel like a real place. Sometimes you’re doing real work to improve someone’s life, sometimes you’re just there for them when they hit a snag and need to process it. But it’s a reminder that outside of the fantasy elements of going into the TV world and fighting weird creatures, you live in a town with “real” people that have real problems. That’s not quite what your team member’s social links are about, but instead it’s about someone who has admitted they have issues...and then you have to help them work through that. Admitting they have a problem is just the first step, not the solution.

If this sounds more like a review of Persona 4 than 5, I can understand that. But I needed to unpack what I love about 4 first, because if I’m going to say 5 isn’t as good, I think it’s only fair to explain what I love about 4 and why. And the main stumbling block for 5 is a combination of writing and, to a lesser degree, a mixed translation job.

The translation isn’t terrible-I don’t think it will spawn any memes online due to particular lines. But some subtlety is lost, and lines that should hit harder lose impact because the sentence structure doesn’t work as it should in English. It’s hard to say if it’s just a case of being too literal or being rushed for time, or some combination.

But even with better translation, the writing just falls flat. 5 raises a lot of questions with its central premise, where your group “steals” the hearts of bad people to make them change and be good, but it’s resolutely uninterested in answering half of them. It will tell you all about the mechanics of how you do it and what happens to the person, but it doesn’t want to deal with the ethics at all for half of the game, and then when it comes up, it’s a half hearted ‘were we doing the right thing?” when people start saying bad stuff about the Phantom Thieves. Are all the villains you take down engaging in truly reprehensible behavior? Yes. Are they largely insulated from official control? Yes, and for reasons beyond general “looking the other way,” since the final human villain is revealed to be covering for everyone you fought before. But there’s never a conversation where your group, the people actually altering people’s personalities, ever ask themselves if it’s okay to be making such radical changes, or asking if you are returning them to normal versus changing a “normal” person into a different version that didn’t exist before. And even the half hearted attempts to question it get shot down by your character’s mouth piece, the fame whore, whose very questionable motivations for wanting to continue are ALSO never questioned, except very briefly near the end. I didn’t need the game to tell me I was wrong for what I was doing, but I at least wanted a discussion, even if it ended with “this may be a bad thing, but we need to do it because no one else can touch them.”

Perhaps the social links would have saved it, but almost all of them outside of the main party ones end the same way. You get up to rank 7 or 8, find out there’s a road block of someone being bad, and then you get a request to change their hearts. Rinse and repeat. This throws the question of how ethical your behavior is into even sharper relief, and adds in the issue of making every resolution to the social links be “I did magic, and then they figured out I was a Phantom Thief, but it’s okay because they said they would keep my secret.” The first few times, I found it charming. The 10nth time, I felt like I might as well stop pretending and just tell anyone who asked “Yeah, I’m one of them. Want me to change some guy’s head? I got my magic gun I can use.”

Most of the party member social links don’t involve that, but most of them also fall flat. Ryuji’s is just there, Ann involves helping her realize other models can be mean and she’ll lose out if she doesn’t put more effort in, Yusuke is having art block, and Haru needs to learn how to manage a corporation she unexpectedly inherited. None of them are offensive, but they’re mostly boring. Only Futaba (trying to reacclimate to society after being a recluse for years) and Makoto (mostly forgettable but she slaps another girl and then challenges a would be pimp to a street fight, which was great) stand out, or seem like you actually do anything to help other than be there as they talk it out on their own.

Then there’s the framing device, where you’ve already been captured and are telling a prosecutor the story of how you came to be the Phantom Thieves. It intrudes every time you hit a certain point in the plot, and whenever you start a new social link. It didn’t take long at all for me to roll my eyes every time it intruded to remind me I wasn’t ACTUALLY in May, I was just RECOUNTING what I did in May. Plus its plot hook of “someone betrayed you to us” was blunted when the person who did it joined my group last and was literally blackmailing us to quit after pulling “one last job.” Gee, wonder who could have sold us out to the cops? The shitty teen detective who talks about people as vermin? I’M SHOCKED. 

Now, I will give 5 credit, it has two solid plot twists. The first is when the framing device resolves (assuming you don’t get the bad ending), and Akechi shoots you...only to be revealed that your team was actually paying attention, realized he was lying, and used what they knew about the Metaverse to trick him into shooting a dupe. It wasn’t worth the hassle, but it was nice to see the group not be idiots. The second, that Igor was actually a fake as well and behind all the trouble, was more genuinely surprising, but it did make the voice change that we’d assumed was a weird miscast into a clue that we’d missed. 

The final boss fight being about pulling out a giant spirit gun and shooting a god in the head was goofy as hell, but unintentionally so, which is unfortunate.

Would I recommend Persona 5? With reservations. Along with all the issues I’ve noted, the game feels too long for the plot it has; I was close to 150 hours when I finished, and even taking out the grinding I did at different points, I felt like I went through a lot of filler dialogue to get there. Plus the opening to 5 is, if anything, even LONGER than 4. You show up in town on the 9nth, and it’s not until the 18nth that you have full control over your actions, with multiple mandatory tutorial sections.

At least the music is still great.